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The oddest experience this job offers is the sensation of changing one’s mind during the writing of a column. This was going to be an attack on the EU for surrendering to Donald Trump over trade. In the construction of the argument, it became less and less clear that a better option was ever open.
All of America’s trading partners — China, India, Brazil — are in a pickle, but the EU is mired in a rather different substance. One of its neighbours is fighting for survival against Russia. Two current members have had their airspace compromised by the same trespasser in recent weeks. That so rich a continent still depends on American protection 80 years after the second world war is a disgraceful fact but it is, for now, a fact. If the price of that protection is being held over a barrel on the serious but ultimately not existential matter of trade, Europe must assume the position.
Quoted in Süddeutsche Zeitung last month, Sabine Weyand, the EU’s director-general for trade, did not even pretend the tariff capitulation had much to do with economics. “The European side was under massive pressure to find a quick solution to stabilise transatlantic relations with regard to security guarantees.” In case her point got lost in that fog of memorandum-speak, she clarified it. “We have a land war on the European continent. And we are completely dependent on the United States.” This is about as big a cheese as exists in officialdom. She is confessing not just that Europe pleaded “No Más” like Roberto Durán early on in the talks but that it did so for life-and-death reasons. Admire her candour, even as it disturbs your sleep.
The British, who have given Trump as many state visits as he has impeachments, are similarly frank in private. It is no fun to see your second consecutive monarch forcing a smile as a would-be election subverter of a guest points at things and calls them classy. But the reason for courting Trump isn’t (just) to puff up Britain on the world stage or to secure AI investments. It is to keep him engaged in Ukrainian and European security. Just be glad that he does respond to flattery and obeisance. Imagine if he didn’t.
We who believe that Ukraine is the issue of the century so far, that an adverse outcome there might embolden dictators as the Abyssinia Crisis did 90 years ago, can’t then balk at the cost in pride or even cash of swaying Trump on the subject. There are two important qualifications.
First, the case for propitiating Trump does not hold outside Europe. Most places have little to show for it. Qatar’s overtures to the president have been so lavish as to include the gift of a $400mn jet. A few months later, he did not or could not stop Israel striking the Gulf state. A still tougher education in the limits of Trump-flattery is the one undergone by India, which now faces some of the steepest US tariffs, as well as ongoing doubts about the cost of H-1B visas that its expats use in their thousands.
Second, even Europe must only appease Trump as a bridging tactic to a more self-reliant future. To defend itself in the 2030s, the continent will need not just cash but quicker, less consensual decision-making, perhaps outside EU structures, given the military clout of Britain (which is not a member) and the less pronounced fear of Russia in Spain and Italy (which are). The submission to Trump is only worthwhile if all this reform happens in parallel. The danger is that short-term trade concessions prove so fruitful — Trump said encouraging things about Ukraine on Tuesday — that it settles into permanent statecraft.
Those caveats set out, Europe has no choice but to cut its losses over trade and prioritise the big stuff. It looks ignoble, but then so do lots of wise acts.
History tends to under-reward those leaders who suffer for their successors. Rishi Sunak was blasted for scrapping a high-speed rail extension that was surreally late and over-budget. (The prime ministers who had mismanaged the project got less blame.) But the result is that Sir Keir Starmer no longer has that decision to make, unless he chooses to revive it. Likewise, Joe Biden took more heat for the botched exit from Afghanistan than his predecessors did for building nothing firmer than a Potemkin state there over nearly 20 years. But it means that no US president will have to quit Kabul again.
You might even take the Robert Harris view that Neville Chamberlain’s “appeasement” in 1938 bought Britain a year of rearmament time. He blew up his reputation, so goes that argument, to give his heir a fighting chance.
It seems that Europe’s current heads of government, plus Ursula von der Leyen and Nato boss Mark Rutte, will also be short-changed reputationally. All are condemned today for their subservience to Trump, when the focus should be on the past and the future. A previous cohort of leaders, intellectuals and ultimately voters brought the continent to this abject point. (Fools were still going about with “soft power” on their lips even after Crimea was annexed.)
As for the future, the humiliation of the von der Leyen generation might be what it takes to give their successors more hard power to work with. Commentators have often suggested that a steadily re-arming Europe must “play for time”. Except perhaps to swap the “l” for an “r”, it is harder than I had thought to disagree.
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