America Viewed from Europe

In a better world the question William Galston raises in his Wall Street Journal column would not be-- can we blame this on Trump?

While Trump certainly bears some responsibility for the state of our relations with Europe, we recall that the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, recently denounced woke American culture. To his mind, it was a sell out to Islamist terrorism. If you are fighting Islamophobia and not radical Islam, you have missed the point. So said President Macron, and one agrees with his point.

Besides, America saw a violent insurrection across its major cities for months on end last year. The insurrection received the overt support from important Democratic politicians. It showed a country divided against itself.

Anyway, Galston argues that Biden’s wish to rejoin the trans-Atlantic alliance is not going to be fulfilled. Apparently, Europe has changed its mind about America. It believes that America’s politics is broken and that the Biden election, like all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, is not going to put it back together again.

I would not call this a vote of confidence in senile old Joe. If I recall correctly, the first administration official to call the president of France was Veep Kamala Harris, not POTUS himself. Leadership, anyone?

You cannot have a broken political system without connivance on both sides. True enough, many Trump supporters believe that the most recent election was stolen. In some sense they have a point, not, as Tucker Carlson pointed out last night, because votes were rigged, but because tech giants like Google and Twitter made in-kind contributions to the Biden campaign-- skewing the news, suppressing unfavorable stories and influencing the American mind.

Again, when it comes to America’s broken democracy, blame must surely be shared. Tech tycoons who do not believe that America should be allowed to make up its own mind, without being manipulated by tech itself, are surely part of the problem.

Anyway, Galston reports from Europe:

President Biden set out to declare a triumphant U.S. return to the trans-Atlantic alliance. “America is back,” the president said in his speech this week to the Munich Security Conference. The leaders of France and Germany promptly made it clear that the four years of the Trump presidency had changed the relationship.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron renewed his call for Europe’s “strategic autonomy,” which would require the Continent to be prepared to defend itself. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel bluntly stated that the interests of the U.S. and Europe wouldn’t always converge, which most listeners took as a reference to the European Union’s recent trade pact with China, along with Germany’s determination to complete the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline from Russia. The U.S. may be back, but it can’t expect to reclaim its old seat at the head of the table.

As for Europe’s ability to defend itself, that must be a joke. Surely, Trump was right to see Europe as a bunch of freeloaders, living comfortably under the American military umbrella, while doing business with Russia and Iran. As I have often noted, if the EU wants to be treated like an ally, it should act like an ally. If the EU has now figured out that it cannot continue freeloading off of America, that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Galston continues that Europeans have lost faith in America because they believe that China will soon surpass America as the world’s leading nation:

Underlying the muted response to Mr. Biden’s speech is what the European Council on Foreign Relations calls a “massive change” in European public opinion toward the U.S. The group’s recent poll finds: “Majorities in key member states now think the US political system is broken, that China will be more powerful than the US within a decade, and that Europeans cannot rely on the US to defend them.”

Of course, this suggests that the Europeans are hedging their bets. If America remains disunited, because political leaders would rather dramatize than govern, would rather burn down cities than build industries, they might be correct.

These beliefs are driving fundamental changes in European policy preferences. “Large numbers think Europeans should invest in their own defense,” the poll found, “and look to Berlin rather than Washington as their most important partner. They want to be tougher with the US on economic issues. And, rather than aligning with Washington, they want their countries to stay neutral in a conflict between the US and Russia or China”—a stance endorsed by at least half the electorate in each of the 11 countries surveyed.

He continues:

Sixty-one percent of Europeans believe that the U.S. political system is “broken.” This figure includes 66% of the French, 71% of Germans and, remarkably, 81% of British respondents. In a such a system, gridlock and drift are the most likely outcomes.

In Europe’s eyes, America’s decline coincides with China’s rise. Fifty-nine percent of Europeans—including 56% of Germans, 58% of the British, and 62% of the French—believe that within 10 years, China will displace the U.S. as the world’s leading power. This helps explain why in case of disagreement between the U.S. and China, 60% of Europeans believe that their country should remain neutral, compared with 22% who say that they should take America’s side.

They see America as weak and decadent, which means that it is becoming more like Europe. As it happened Donald Trump wanted to reassert American strength-- and where did that get him? Trump might not have done a very good job at it, but at least he saw the problem.

As perceptions of America’s weakness mount, more Europeans are starting to favor being tougher on the U.S. on economic issues. These Europeans resist American pressure to distance themselves from China, which they regard as an important trading partner, and they will be in no rush to renegotiate their trade relationships with the U.S. “America First” has triggered a reaction—Europe First.