Oh please:
European leaders have long been alarmed that President Trump’s words and Twitter messages could undo a trans-Atlantic alliance that had grown stronger over seven decades. They had clung to the hope that those ties would bear up under the strain.
Have we forgotten how Britain and France invaded Egypt without consulting America?
Have we forgotten how France waged bloody colonial wars in Vietnam and Algeria that reduced their military in Europe, and which for the former sucked in America to wage a war there?
Have we forgotten how France pulled out of the military command of NATO?
Have we forgotten how West Germany reached out to East Germany in the Cold War which undermined NATO solidarity?
Have we forgotten the massive European protests (aided by Soviet interference) against theater nuclear weapons to match the Soviet build up?
Have we forgotten how Europe largely--with some notable exceptions--walked away from helping America fight in Iraq and Afghanistan?
And while I'm on this issue, are you freaking kidding me?
[Chancellor Angela Merkel and her defense minister Ursula von der Leyen] cited Mr. Trump’s recent announcements that American troops would leave northern Syria and Afghanistan[. ...
The Syria pullout, she continued, could only help Russia and Iran. That view was echoed by the French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who called American policy in Syria “a mystery to me.”]
The utter nerve of that complaint is amazing. What on Earth has Germany contributed to alliance military action in those places? Any combat troops sent to the latter were simply a burden on our logistics system!
And if we are speaking of things that help Russia and Iran, hello nearly non-existent German defense capabilities, the energy pipelines from Russia to Western Europe, and the farcical Iran nuclear deal.
By all means, if the French and Germans want to step up in eastern Syria and Afghanistan, I'm sure we'd help with the planning efforts.
Oh, and the nuanced Frenchman is mystified by our policy? Let me apply the clue bat as I worried long before Trump announced a pullout. After defeating ISIL in eastern Syria we need an objective to justify our presence. I wanted the objective to be helping enemies of Assad overthrow him, but we blew that chance over the last 5 years and Assad has crushed his enemies in the west. Staying without a real objective to attain just risks a Mogadishu or Beirut Marine Barracks disaster that will send us running in defeat because the American people won't support heavy casualties for less important reasons to stay.
I do want to help our local allies rather than abandon them to Assad's tender mercies. But I don't want to stay on inertia with no particular objective to achieve that Americans will support other than not looking like we are retreating. And again, if the French want to step up in eastern Syria, you go, girl. The Kurds and Arabs in eastern Syria only want 1,500 coalition troops on the ground. Surely France and the other Europeans gung ho on eastern Syria can scrape up that small amount of troops. We'd be happy to continue to supply the bulk of the air power, I'm sure.
But I digress.
Have we forgotten how European defense spending and capabilities plummeted since we won the Cold War? Only now are the Europeans taking steps to redress their shortcomings.
Have we forgotten how Europeans made excuses for Russia's invasion of Georgia; and how it has minimized its reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine?
Good grief, people, I'm just pulling stuff off the top of my head. Those Europeans have a lot of nerve given that under Trump our reinforcement of our forces in Europe to back up our treaty commitments is continuing without pause.
If the Europeans didn't complain about America during the Obama administration, it was because the Obama administration didn't ask them to do anything hard, and I'm including a NATO plan to eventually increase NATO European defense spending to 2% of GDP over a decade that most Europeans probably felt they'd never be pushed to meet. That suited Europeans just fine.
Trump is merely rude enough to point out the problems publicly. Although I'll grant that if the public comments become counter-productive they should be muted in our interest. I don't know if that has happened.
Look, ever since the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, I've expected NATO Europe to distance itself from America. And it has.
The reason is that the threat of the Soviet Union planted firmly in East Germany pushed America and Europe together for common defense. As I pointed out to my students in early American history (I briefly taught history at a community college in 1990-1992), the strained relations between the American colonies and Britain after the French and Indian War would be replicated between America and Europe because of the same reason--Europe no longer needed America for external defense nearly as much and didn't want to pay for defense. Which was a major point of friction between colonial Americans and Britain in the late 18th century. Friction that eventually led to the break between the two.
And in a similar situation as America's military power in Europe has receded post-Cold War and as European efforts to assert themselves independent of America by emphasizing the EU rather than NATO, the Europeans have drifted away from America.
And that distance is allowing Europeans to revert to their pre-World War II nature of being a mix of autocracy, monarchy, and democracy. I had to be reminded by this author that our long period of influence in Europe during the Cold War had a role in making Europe truly democratic:
It is easy to forget--and this was a useful reminder to me--that Europe with its autocracies and monarchies was not fully part of a free West (although obviously part of the Western tradition) until we rebuilt Western Europe in that template after World War II. And NATO expansion after defeating the Soviet Union was more explicit in demanding democracy and rule of law for new members.
If you want to really appreciate the bankruptcy of the argument that the divisions are unique and caused by Trump, check out this point made in the article:
Even the normally gloomy Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, happily noted the strains, remarking that the Euro-Atlantic relationship had become increasingly “tense.”
“We see new cracks forming, and old cracks deepening,” Mr. Lavrov said.
He's normally gloomy but I guess he brightened up at this topic, eh?
Russia wants to split America from Europe to make Europe an easier target. Perhaps Lavrov has an incentive to make the recent disputes seem unprecedented and irreversible--and caused by Trump--eh? Perhaps articles like this are better than any Russian Facebook campaign to sow division in NATO.
If a majority of French and German people now trust China more than America, as the article notes, that's on them. They're fucking idiots.
The trans-Atlantic alliance has not grown stronger for seventy years only to die at the hands of Trump. Trump is just highlighting how Europe has been steadily pulling away from America.
Trump is just an excuse that Europeans who have always disliked America have grasped enthusiastically to justify their views. Indeed, the article even recognizes this although the authors may not realize it:
But beyond the Trump administration, an increasing number of Europeans say they believe that relations with the United States will never be the same again.
If bad relations are due to Trump, why wouldn't trans-Atlantic relations bounce back after Trump? Clearly, Trump isn't the issue. Europe is the issue.
As much as the Europeans frustrate me, we can't walk away because Europe is a prize and not just a source of often weak allies.
Heck, Trump might actually save NATO, which is the key body for maintaining trans-Atlantic relations.
UPDATE: Of course, Europe is a big continent and because of Islamism, Turkey really is building a rift--between it and the rest of NATO, both European and North American:
[Most] Turks are uneasy about their own government, which identifies itself as Islamic and democratic but over the last decade has become more irrational, corrupt, authoritarian and paranoid. The Turks had long (since the 1930s) been seen as a secular and stabilizing force in the Middle East. But once the Soviet Union (a major threat to the Turks) collapsed in 1991 Turkish attitudes towards the West and the Middle East began to change. Since 2000 the ruling party has been one that identifies as “Islamic” and not interested in becoming more Western.
The rift is real enough that "a growing number of NATO members see the Turks as hostile and unreliable and not really worth keeping in NATO."
I'm torn about how to fight to keep Turkey a solid NATO ally. But they make it hard. And while I wouldn't kick Turkey out of NATO in the hope that those uneasy Turks can restore Turkey to its former place of trust, I would start to wall off Turkey from causing harm from within Turkey. Limit intelligence sharing. Find alternatives to NATO facilities in Turkey. Don't store nuclear bombs there. And don't sell the F-35 to Turkey. This is a real rift. And it is Erdogan's (and his party's) fault.
And yes, I do fear that pan-Europeanism could replicate in a politically unified Europe the effects of Islamism in Turkey.
