Brussels bureaucrats have been bracing themselves for the Donald Trump presidency since November. But the scurrying has been in anticipation of Trump’s tariffs on EU goods.
What was not expected was the public humiliation of its leaders. The US has said that Europeans might not be at the table for peace negotiations with Vladimir Putin. That’s a brutal way of saying the Europeans don’t count.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, insists any peace without European involvement will fail. But it’s not clear what Kallas means.
It’s difficult to see how they can subvert a dirty peace arranged between Trump and Putin. Alone, Europeans can’t continue the war with Russia. Nor can they opt out of security – precisely because they’d be the first losers.
Europe’s impotence can be seen in the reaction of Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski. He warned, only half-jokingly, that Europe controls the Nobel Peace Prize and that Trump won’t get it if the peace is unsatisfactory.
If this schoolyard threat is the worst the EU can dish out, no wonder we’re being treated like children.
But there’s more. At the Munich Security Conference, there came a public dressing down by US Vice President J.D. Vance, who said the biggest security threat to the way of life defended by the US and EU came from within.
He wasn’t pointing to the right-wing populist parties making dramatic electoral gains.
He was wagging his finger at European leaders, saying their orthodoxy and laws constituted a “retreat from some of [the West’s] most fundamental values” – free speech and democracy.
In a not-so-innocent mistake, Vance referred to a former European commissioner, Thierry Breton, as a “Commissar”. He questioned the cancellation of elections in Romania (following allegations of foreign interference). He criticised the “firewall” against involving far-right parties (like Germany’s AfD) in government coalitions.
Once more, the European reaction missed the mark. Vance’s speech was called “unacceptable”. Really? Europeans had to put up with it. It’s Vance who snubbed the outgoing chancellor of Germany, not vice versa.
In the US, the speech was praised not just by the populist wing of the MAGA movement but also by the Big Tech wing, which can hardly disguise its contempt for Europe these days.
Some Europeans dismissed Vance as a redneck. Again, this playground reaction is a sign of weakness.
Vance is an Ivy League-educated lawyer with strong connections to Silicon Valley billionaires. He came to the security conference having just given a confident US vision for the future of AI – another occasion where he did not shy away from criticising the European approach of safety first.
In fact, if Vance’s Munich speech could be accused of anything, it is of advancing the interests of Silicon Valley in general and Elon Musk in particular.
What really stung in Vance’s speech is the direct, unapologetic way in which he delivered his rebuke to long-standing allies. It was a public humiliation that couldn’t just be denied as previous European humiliations have been.
The US has long treated the EU like a junior partner it could abuse in private. The Obama administration hacked the then German chancellor’s phone – but Germany could say that there were discussions and assurances given as a result.
To measure the weakness, we need to appreciate the one hard-hitting criticism that European leaders could have made but didn’t: Vance’s speech was breathtaking in its hypocrisy- Ranier Fsadni
The Biden administration approved the blowing up of Germany’s source of cheap energy, the Nord Stream pipeline. Again, there’s been German silence since, officially, it’s not proven the Americans did it.
Twenty years ago, the then US secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld spoke scornfully about “old Europe” (Western Europe, which largely refused to be part of the illegal invasion of Iraq) as distinct from “new Europe” (the central and eastern members of the 2004 enlargement).
Then, however, Rumsfeld could be dismissed with equal scorn. The Iraq war was being revealed as a blunder. The EU was the world’s largest economy and its prospects looked even better.
Today, the EU is only the third-largest economy, surpassed by China and the US. And its prospects look bleak. Both Germany and France need to rethink their economic model. The European Commission’s initiatives are criticised for having the wrong priorities.
Vance’s slap in the face rankled not because it was unacceptable but because, in a position of weakness, Europe had to put up with it.
To measure the weakness, we need to appreciate the one hard-hitting criticism that European leaders could have made but didn’t: Vance’s speech was breathtaking in its hypocrisy.
While it is true that Europe has been clamping down on free speech in a way that goes counter to the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, the laws and suppression pursued by different European governments have been at the encouragement of various agencies of the previous US administration.
Vance came to Europe speaking in the name of the US and, yet, he criticised Europeans for initiatives that had been supported by the US.
Likewise, the current European attitude towards Russia, and what makes for an acceptable peace, was pushed by the US (albeit the Biden administration). When, early in the war, leaders like France’s Emanuel Macron strove for mediation, he was slapped down.
On both Ukraine and free speech, therefore, European leaders have just been openly treated like chumps. The Americans are the ones who have behaved cavalierly but it’s the Europeans whose credibility is suffering most.
Recovering European dignity begins with recognising that, apart from issues of tone, the US is behaving consistently. It’s the EU that needs to change. It needs, once more, an independent sense of mission and something better than a decision-taking structure that mimics that of a superstate.