Over the past few decades, European countries developed a procedure for dealing with international problems. First, they formed the European Union with no military and no foreign policy authority. Second, they ignore the problem until it gets serious. Third, when it gets serious, they wring their hands and wait for the Americans to do something. Fourth, they complain about what the Americans do and complain about it with great self-satisfaction that they would have done better.
Over the past few weeks the Americans made it clear they will no longer show up to solve problems that Europe needs to solve. The U.S. will support it, but not be first into the breach.
Europe now is in a new fifth step: wailing. The sound of wailing about costs, responsibilities, and the Trump Administration reverberates through the halls of government, think tanks, and universities in Europe and the U.S. The United States set up a new economic and political system in Europe after WWII, which became known as the “liberal democratic order.” Europe was in ruins and unable to take care of itself at the time. The colonial empires were disintegrating and newly-independent former colonies were unstable. The U.S. was willing to take responsibility for these countries, but 80 years later, it is time for the kids to move out of the basement and make their own way.
A French parliament member gives a speech of which the first third is a rant about how awful Trump is and how America is letting Europe down. The rest of it is a lament about how they will have to figure out how they will pay for their own defense. A Dutch woman commentator is shocked over the sudden “hostility” of the U.S. to Europe. The new German chancellor is shocked about American abandonment of Europe; his defense minister worries about European defense against a U.S. attack. Everyone is “shocked.”
After years of polite requests to no avail, the Trump Team’s shock therapy seems to have jolted Europe out of its thirty-year coma.
Like most people coming out of a coma, Europeans are quite disoriented. The U.S. is not abandoning Europe, nor is it a threat to Europe. The U.S. is trying to get Europe to take the initiative in defending itself and looking after its own interests. The U.S. will join it and back it up, but is fed up with carrying the whole load. The European members of NATO have a population about 75% larger than the U.S. They are prosperous, rich countries. Why do they think the U.S. should defend them? They are not allies - they are dependents and quite satisfied to be so.
As I noted before, they descended into strange organizations in the 1990s. The European Union is a trade group that regulates the economy into paralysis. The EU has 27 members and requires unanimity for decisions, a recipe for inaction. They spent nearly two years debating the definition of a banana. Many EU members adopted the Euro so they could abdicate responsibility for their own currencies. The two memberships are not the same, nor are they the same as NATO.
The largest economy in Europe, Germany, for 16 years elected a woman raised in Communist East Germany as chancellor to lead it, and Europe, into stagnation. For power generation, Germany shunned coal (which it has in abundance) and shut down its nuclear plants, in favor of wind and solar. Its energy costs are about four times those in the U.S. A country known for heavy industry, precision machinery and equipment is shutting it down. The economy contracted two years in a row. Europe no longer innovates or participates in technological development; the EU and UK together hold only two percent of patents awarded for AI.
The British have already left the EU. As Europe wakes up and recovers some vitality, I predict more will follow and also leave the Euro. My guess for the next to leave is Italy. That will start the dissolution of the EU and the Euro as European countries realize they must rearm and re-vitalize themselves, if they expect relevance. Europe then could work with the U.S. to revitalize NATO.
If anyone listened to President Trump’s recent press conference, they would note that is his explicitly-stated objective – to make NATO much stronger. He announced a new sixth-generation fighter jet and noted our allies should realize that we are not going away.
If Europe continues as it is, the U.S. will move ahead into the future without them.