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JOSHUA ROBERTS / REUTERS

U.S. President Donald Trump in the Whit…

F RO M T H E A N T H O LO GY: THE BEST OF 2017 EX P LO R E T H E A N T H O LO GY

SNAPSHOT January 24, 2017 The Best of … Europe

Trump Takes Aim at

the European Union
Why the EU Won't Unify In Response
By Kathleen R. McNamara

A few days before his inauguration as U.S. president,

Donald J. Trump took aim at the United States’ most
important allies. In an interview co-published by
Germany’s Bild and The Times of London on January 15,
Trump disparaged NATO as “obsolete,” chastised German
Chancellor Angela Merkel for her government’s openness
to asylum seekers, and seemed to advocate the breakup of
the European Union, calling it a “vehicle for Germany.”
Those comments came two days after a different
bombshell: on January 13, Anthony Gardner, the outgoing
U.S. ambassador to the EU, said that officials from
Trump’s transition team had called EU leaders and asked
which EU country would be “leaving next.”

Trump’s words marked an extraordinary departure from

the norms of the postwar transatlantic relationship. For
decades, the United States and the EU have been each
other’s most important foreign policy partners, tightly
bound by a thicket of alliances and institutions, joined at
the hip in promoting liberal democratic values, and trading
and investing with each other at unprecedented levels.
Particularly in light of the uncertainties surrounding the
United Kingdom’s exit from the EU, Trump’s comments
shocked many observers who support the transatlantic
relationship and the broader liberal order it guarantees.

Might Trump’s attacks backfire by encouraging EU

countries to unify against him? A number of European
leaders have suggested as much. “We Europeans have our
fate in our own hands,” Merkel said on January 16, in a
forceful response to Trump’s comments. Others have
echoed French Finance Minister Michel Sapin, who said
on January 17 that “the more [Trump] makes this sort of
statement, the more Europeans close ranks.”

Unfortunately for supporters of the European project,

Sapin’s prediction is unlikely to hold. Instead of unifying
the EU, Trump’s apparent Euroskepticism may undermine
it by stirring up popular anger against internal enemies:
the faceless EU technocrats and disdained national elites
who seem disconnected from the day-to-day problems of
most European people.
 PETER MACDIARMID / REUTERS

At a demonstration against the Iraq war in London, February

2003.

LIKE NO OTHER

What are the reasons to believe that Trump’s presidency

might prompt the EU’s revival? The first is that people
tend to define their identities not only in reference to
those with whom they share values and cultures but also in
opposition to those with whom they do not. Social
psychologists have long argued that the construction of a
sharply drawn other encourages group solidarity. At first
glance, it appears that Trump could play precisely that
role.
The West has certainly seen that kind of dynamic before.
Consider the Europe-wide antiwar demonstrations that
took place on February 15, 2003, in Athens, Helsinki,
London, Madrid, Paris, and Rome, when millions marched
against then President George W. Bush and the imminent
U.S. invasion of Iraq. Citizens across the EU reviled Bush
for what they viewed as his illiberal warmongering and
rejection of international treaties on climate change and
human rights. European intellectuals such as Jacques
Derrida and Jürgen Habermas heralded the protests as
evidence of a newly united continent.

Much has happened since then to weaken European

solidarity. A global financial crisis and soaring income
inequality have brought economic stagnation to millions
on both sides of the Atlantic. Many Europeans now view
the EU as either the source of the problem (especially in
the countries most hurt by the eurozone crisis) or as an
accessory to it, and they blame EU policies supporting
open borders and the free movement of people for much of
Europe’s malaise. The increasingly popular argument that
the EU is governed by technocratic experts and
establishment party elites who are out of touch with the
people is giving populists all the material they need to win
at the ballot box, as was the case with the Brexit vote.

Trump may seem more like an ally than like an

other.

In this context, Trump may seem more like an ally than

like an other. That is why many of Europe’s populist
leaders, including the heads of France’s National Front and
Italy’s Five Star Movement and Northern League, have
embraced the new U.S. president. (So has the British
Conservative Party, the only centrist party in the EU to
have done so.)

But if the United States cannot play the role of a unifying

other for the EU, perhaps there is another way that
Trump’s jabs could solidify the bloc. Political unification
feeds on threats: most of today’s nation-states were formed
when governments centralized political and administrative
power in order to survive serious dangers, such as wars.
What is more, political communities often rally around the
flag and solidify their national identities during apparent
crises.

Here again, the answer to whether Trump could unify the

EU should offer only lukewarm comfort to the union’s
supporters. Trump’s inflammatory comments do not pose
an immediate existential threat to the bloc. If the entente
between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin
proves enduring and inflicts direct harm on Europe’s
interests, that may change, and Europeans may find
themselves forced to unify in response. But even if that
dynamic materializes, its effects might be drowned out by
popular demands for political change after years of
economic austerity and technocratic leadership.
TRUMP TAKES AIM AT THE EUROPEAN UNION
Kathleen R. McNamara
riobranco cabeludo SUBSCRIBE
 MICHAELA REHLE / REUTERS

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande in Ludwigsburg,
Germany, September 2012.

FEW SILVER LININGS

The imagined community of Europeans that the EU has

constructed offers only watered-down versions of the
cultural and emotional attachments of traditional
nationalism. The threats that Trump may present to the
EU are therefore unlikely to bring about an immediate or
heartfelt embrace of the European project. Instead, his
stance may encourage the kind of authoritarian populism
that has already taken hold in Hungary and Poland.

The EU and the transatlantic liberal order that Trump

recently attacked were created to advance American
interests at a time when the United States had unsurpassed
power. Out of the ashes of World War II, the United
States approved the constitution for postwar West
Germany, helped bring about the birth of the EU,
constructed the foundations of what would eventually
become the World Trade Organization, and drew up the
blueprint for NATO. These liberal institutions, created in
the United States’ image, acted as a bulwark against the
Soviet Union and underwrote prosperity and stability,
guaranteeing the same kinds of American wealth and
power that Trump has promised to restore.

The EU’s road ahead is steep. As it manages the

consequences of Trump’s election, it must also face its own
 shortcomings. EU leaders and citizens must confront the
passions of populism head on, responding with a full-
throated defense of the EU’s achievements while building
the capacity at both the national and European levels to
deal with the union’s challenges. As for the United States,
it may be in a deeper hole, since it must confront the
possibility that many of the institutions that have
historically underpinned its supremacy may be dismantled.
For the EU, that prospect offers few silver linings.

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