by Oui
Sat Feb 15th, 2025 at 06:28:08 PM EST
A complete reversal of policy ... Trump's first term already had the dna of his second term ... EU in Brussels is dumbfounded.
Members of the European Union are a playball for Trump to toy around with. See his refusal to accredit the ambassador to Washington from the European Union.
Europe will not sit at table for peace talks ...
The EU is not a country, has no standing armed forces and no one to call in case of an emergency ... BreXit is done and America's best partner is settled in London.
New Dutch government’s top NATO priority: Act normal | Politico - 15 July 2024 |
Support for Ukraine and maintaining a presence in Taiwan Strait will continue, new Dutch defense minister says.
Dutch PM Schoof The Netherlands is positive about participating in a peacekeeping force in Ukraine | Dutch News |
[link: https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/02/dutch-pm-says-nl-may-join-ukraine-peacekeeping-effort/]
Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof is among the European leaders meeting in Paris on Monday for an emergency session to discuss the latest developments in Ukraine.
French president Emmanuel Macron called the meeting following US vice president JD Vance’s controversial speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday and comments earlier in the week by president Donald Trump and defence secretary Peter Hegseth.
According to The Guardian, Vance’s speech “laid bare the collapse of the transatlantic alliance,” with Vance claiming that Europe’s greatest threat was not Russia or China, but a “danger from within.”
UK military too ’run down' to lead Ukraine peace mission - ex-Army chief
The transatlantic meaning of Donald Trump: a US-EU Power Audit | ECFR - 19 Sept. 2017 |
SUMMARY
- New ECFR research into how Europeans have adapted to the new US administration reveals three 'Trump effects': the Regency Effect, the Messiah Effect, and the Antichrist Effect.
- The Regency Effect dominates. European leaders have largely decided to hope the 'regents' around Donald Trump will ensure the familiar transatlantic relationship continues more or less in its current form.
- Other politicians see in Trump a 'Messiah' or 'Antichrist' figure. For one camp he is a leader set on restoring Western conservative, Christian values; for the other he is a figure to oppose and rally against.
- But Trump is a symptom of the rot in the transatlantic relationship, not the cause. Even before Trump, America was growing more self-interested and distant.
- Europeans could defend themselves, but they continue to look to America for security because they cannot resolve their own internal disputes.
- A 'post-American politics' in Europe is possible and even necessary, but will only come about if EU member states recognise the need. Germany is central to this but its 'regency' instincts run deep and it lacks support from other member states.
INTRODUCTION
Donald Trump is not shy about self-promotion. So it shocked no one when he shoved aside Duško Marković, the prime minister of tiny Montenegro, to get to the front of the official photograph at the May 2017 NATO summit. It was perhaps more surprising that Marković used the attention generated to "thank President Trump personally for his support" of Montenegro's entry into NATO, noting "it is natural for the president of the United States to be in the first row." Power has not been on more conspicuous display since Harry Whittington, the 78-year-old man whom Vice-President Dick Cheney shot in the face in 2006, apologised "for all that [Cheney] and his family have had to go through."
While Marković's manhandling and his response is an unusually naked example, it nonetheless neatly encapsulates the nature of the transatlantic relationship. One side pushes and the other asserts that it wanted to be pushed all along.
On the surface, there is no reason for this to be the case. Clearly, in both Europe and America, the election of Trump as president of the United States came as a shock. When we at the European Council on Foreign Relations surveyed viewpoints in the 28 member states of the European Union before the American election, only a couple of opposition parties expected Trump to win. Around Europe, governments saw a win for Hillary Clinton as nearly certain.
But the reaction has been completely different on the two sides of the Atlantic. The US is strongly divided on Trump and his administration, along familiar and roughly partisan lines. He has ignited fierce policy battles in Congress, within his own administration, and even on the streets of the normally placid Charlottesville, Virginia.
In Europe, there is a much greater consensus on Trump - with some important exceptions, he is very broadly unpopular, among both governments and the European population. In countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and France, the percentage of the population that has confidence in the US president to do the right thing has plummeted more than 50 points since Trump took office. Recent polls demonstrate that he is less popular in Europe than the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, a man who sporadically invades European countries.
Emmanuel Macron Was Supposed to Be the Anti-Trump. He's Not. | Feb 2018 |
The French darling of American liberals is slashing taxes for the rich and cracking down on immigrants.
Coming just months after the election of Donald Trump in the United States, and as illiberal authoritarianism seemed to be creeping all over Europe, the election of French president Emmanuel Macron brought a sigh of relief to many across Western democracies.
It was May 2017 when Macron, a pro-European centrist, decisively defeated the far-right, Euroskeptic Marine le Pen. Enthusiastic and patriotic messages such as "Vive la France" or "Vive l'Europe" poured in on Twitter from both sides of the Atlantic.
