Here’s Walter Russell Mead’s analysis of the Trump policy on Europe from his Wall Street Journal column:
There are five elements of the Trump critique of the European Union. First, some of the “new nationalists†believe multinational entities like the EU are much weaker and less effective than the governments of nation-states—so much so that the development of the EU has weakened the Western alliance as a whole. In this view, cooperation between nation-states is good and through it countries can achieve things they couldn’t achieve on their own. But trying to overinstitutionalize that cooperation is a mistake. The resulting bureaucratic structures and Byzantine politics and decision-making processes paralyze policy, alienate public opinion, and create a whole significantly less than the sum of its parts.
A second concern—in the Trump view—is that the European Union is too German. As some on the president’s team see it, German preferences mean the Continent is too hawkish when it comes to monetary and fiscal policy, and too dovish when it comes to defense. A fiscal and monetary straitjacket has cramped Europe’s growth, while the refusal of Germany to live up to its NATO commitments weakens the alliance as a whole.
A third concern is that the EU is too liberal—in the American meaning of the term, which is to say too statist on economics and too progressive on social issues. Besides the common American conservative view that statist economic policy undermines European dynamism and growth, Mr. Trump seems to believe European migration policy—especially Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to welcome more than a million mostly Muslim migrants to Germany—is a tragic mistake.
The fourth problem, as the Trumpians see it, is that the EU seeks to export its preferences on issues like capital punishment, climate policy, global governance, gender relations and so on to the rest of the world. Jacksonian American populists are deeply suspicious of virtually any form of global governance. On top of that, many of the causes that most engage the EU—LGBTQ issues, Palestinian statehood and carbon controls—aren’t exactly Jacksonian America’s cup of tea.
Finally, Mr. Trump doesn’t like the EU because on trade issues—the field where the EU operates most effectively in world politics—he believes it is an instrument intended to limit American power and reduce American leverage in trade negotiations.
I think that those “concerns” are just about right. As is not unusual they sound a lot more reasonable when they’re articulated by someone other than Trump. That fourth problem is interesting. I don’t think that the gilets jaunes protesters rallying in French cities every weekend as they have done since December are protesting “the causes that most engage the EU” other than very indirectly. Like Americans, they’re more concerned with basic bread and butter issues, ways and means rather than high level objectives.
And ways and means are my concerns about Trump’s Europe policies. I’m not convinced that his peripatetic, seat of the pants style will actually get results. As has been said in other contexts, at least he’s pushing in the right direction.
“the gilets jaunes protesters rallying in French cities every weekend ”
Looks to me like a lot of these are farmers and rural workers unhappy over losing subsidies.
“the Continent is too hawkish when it comes to monetary and fiscal policy, and too dovish when it comes to defense. ”
If they break up the EU I suspect that does not change. Germany is bigger than everyone else. If it doesn’t want to spends much on defense not sure what we can really do about it, especially if we break up the EU and NATO.
My sense is that Europe is much more in touch with the aftereffects of WW2 than the US. It had fairly small effects on us. I think they are willing to bear some inefficiencies to avoid war.We, on the other hand, seem to love every opportunity to bomb people and invade other countries to give them liberty, or something. (Why did we invade Iraq?)
Steve
As I said, their concerns are different than those Mead identifies as “causes that engage the EU”.
It’s less the dissolution of the EU than the collapse of the euro that would bother the Germans. Without the euro, they’d be forced to do the things they should be doing anyway. The Germans should be buying more Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Greek, etc. goods and be investing in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, etc. Instead they just take the euros and run.
If we dissolve the EU I don’t think Germany becomes a good actor. Greece doesn’t become a well run country. Not having the Euro changes things at the margins. The PIGS will hover around default status due to their own internal issues.
If the EU dissolves all the individual countries won’t suddenly become climate deniers. France and Germany and everyone else won’t suddenly become gay haters and join the NRA.
What would change, besides the Germans losing some of the advantage they gain from the euro, is putting individual countries in a weaker negotiating position with the US and China. It would make internal trade more difficult again. Since I think that conservatives now see trade as a zero sum game (at least their leader does), I guess they would like that.
Steve
Articulating complaints about the EU, doesn’t seem to amount to an expression of interests.
On the second point, German dominance is real, but Germany’s relative position in the EU has declined in the last five years, and Macron is clearly trying to make a play to become the dominant actor in the EU and appears to what to shift the EU into a more anti-American stance.
It’s not clear that Macron will succeed. On the one hand, Germany seems largely ambivalent on a whole host of issues other than monetary policy, so there is a potential leadership opportunity as Merkel leaves. But Macron is weakened in his own country, and German handling of the immigration and economic crisis have strengthened EU skeptic parties that make it difficult to create a common path to a closer Europe. Macron will probably be the force that pushes the UK out of the EU with a no-deal Brexit, so he won’t have to worry about them anymore, but the resulting economy waves might foment a recession in the EU.