Europe Is Not Ready for Trump
One of nine thinkers on the continent’s future without America’s embrace.
When Donald Trump was elected U.S. president in 2016, it unified Europe. The continent’s capitals were still reeling from the decision by British voters to leave the European Union a few months before, and leaders feared that Brexit would trigger a domino effect of other exits. The scars of the European debt crisis and bitter divisions over migration were still fresh.
EUROPE ALONE: This story is part of a package featuring nine thinkers on a future without America’s embrace. Read the full analysis here.
Trump shook Europeans from their navel-gazing, reminding them what their union was all about: democracy, multilateralism, and the rules-based order. With Washington checked out of that order, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel—the undisputed leader of the EU at the time—became the voice of the free world. Europeans knew they couldn’t afford to be divided: Their continent was already on fire then, with Russia having annexed Crimea and nationalist populism on the rise. Faced with escalating threats and abandoned by Washington, Europeans understood they had to stick together.
The question haunting Europe today is whether it will be united once again if Trump returns to the White House. Of course, Trump is not the only reason Europe should be unified. Europe and its neighborhood are even more ablaze today than in 2016. Europe itself is at war, with Russian officials openly stating that their imperial appetites won’t be sated with the subjugation of Ukraine. To the southeast of Europe, the Israel-Hamas war is teetering on the brink of a wider conflict. In Africa’s vast Sahel region, European powers and the United States have been pushed out as Russia strengthens its grip—with all the options that gives the Kremlin to impact Europe, not least by weaponizing migration.
Turning farther east, Europe no longer harbors illusions that China will become a responsible stakeholder of the liberal order. Unlike in 2016, the EU is not as gullible to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s claims of championing multilateralism. As Xi’s visit to France, Serbia, and Hungary in May showed, Chinese divide-and-rule tactics have become blatant enough for the most naive European to see. Globally, whereas in 2016 we were wondering if a multipolar world was compatible with multilateralism and the liberal order, it’s clear today that the latter two are on life support. Given all the threats facing Europe, the unifying effect Trump had on the EU in 2016 should be exponentially stronger now.
This may be wishful thinking. Europe’s democracies are in the grip of similar political convulsions as the United States, with right-wing nationalism on the rise. High inflation and insufficient economic growth have blown wind in the hard right’s sails once again. What’s more, Europe’s nationalists have changed tack—they no longer seek to emulate Britain’s disastrous exit but to hollow out the EU from within. They dominate politics not only in a small number of Eastern European countries—such as Hungary and Slovakia—but have come to power in Italy and the Netherlands, and they may win in Austria later this year. And they are increasingly coordinating in Brussels, asserting their collective weight in EU affairs, and trying to drive a wedge into the broad majority of conservatives, socialists, liberals, and greens that has spearheaded European unity and integration for decades.
Trump 2.0 would enter the scene in this much more fraught and fractured Europe. This time, there is a bigger contingent of European governments that see eye to eye with Trump—and agree with his disparaging of the EU. Trump would have the same opportunity as Xi to play divide-and-rule with Europe.
The fractures extend to vast areas of European policy. With nationalists exerting their growing power—and possibly allying with Trump—it will be hard for the EU to agree on ambitious steps forward on defense, climate, energy, technology, and EU enlargement, even as the war in Ukraine and other crises make these policies increasingly urgent.
Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the EU, predicted that the continent’s union would develop through crisis. So far, his dictum has proved true, as various political and economic upheavals since 1945 have galvanized Europeans to build their ever closer union. Another Trump term—coupled with a genuine fraying of the trans-Atlantic bond in a time of growing threats to Europe—could be the crisis that breaks the EU’s back.
Nathalie Tocci is the director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, an honorary professor at the University of Tübingen, an adjunct professor at the European University Institute, and a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences. Twitter: @NathalieTocci