#us-eu relations

Donald Trump has offered an unequivocal answer when asked if he plans to hit the European Union with punitive trade tariffs, telling reporters gathered in the Oval Office: “Absolutely.” And the US President also confirmed he would slap levies of 25 percent on goods entering the US from Canada and Mexico, and of 10 percent on goods from China. Mr Trump, speaking on Friday, said: “Am I going to…

Washington, the European Union’s main ally, has in recent years earned the reputation of a country that creates rather than solves problems. But the EU can now normalise and restore recently broken relations with Russia, which has been and will remain an inseparable part of Europe, writes Anvar Azimov.

Taking the presidency of the Council, Croatia has assumed a very responsible duty during this turbulent time. The EU’s tasks today are quite complex, from strengthening competitiveness in the fight for the world markets, stimulating energy-climate transition, tackling instability in the Middle East, which could cause new “migration waves” but also greatly disrupt European security, all the way to a complicated situation in Ukraine.

The additional internal problems plaguing the EU – the crisis of the euro, Brexit, the decline in quality of life and the extinction of the middle class, one of the most important pillars of the economy – contribute to addressing these challenges.

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The ambassador is not wrong in that the US does create problems for the EU but does he seriously believe the EU should turn to the country that is trying its hardest to destroy the EU? Putin’s investments, both monetary and digital, in the far-right in Europe are not friendly gestures. Most if not all far-right parties are anti-EU. Johnson’s government in the UK still has not published the report into Russia influence in Brexit and the Tory party.

By Steven Erlanger, NY Times, Oct. 9, 2018

BRUSSELS--Of all the issues dividing Europe and the Trump administration, Iran has become the sharpest, with the Europeans actively working against United States policy, placing them in league with Russia, China and Iran.

Since earlier this year, when it pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal that was a centerpiece of former President Barack Obama’s diplomacy, the Trump administration has pressed ahead with punishing sanctions against Tehran.

The leading countries of Europe, meanwhile, trying to preserve the nuclear accord, are looking to set up an alternative payment mechanism that would sidestep the American-dominated banking system, and Washington’s new sanctions.

As they do so, they are pressing Iran to adhere strictly to the terms of the nuclear agreement, to avoid giving the United States and Israel a pretext for starting a war--an increasing concern.

And they are counseling Tehran to keep calm and wait out President Trump’s term, in the hope that he will not be re-elected, senior European diplomats say.

That, of course, could be wishful thinking, but the divergent policies toward Iran are leading to deeper tensions between the European Union and the Trump administration.

Last month, the national security adviser, John R. Bolton, mocked the European Union for being “strong on rhetoric and weak on follow-through,” adding: “We do not intend to allow our sanctions to be evaded by Europe or anyone else.”

Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal “opened a rift between the U.S. and its European allies that is unlikely to close again as long as he is in office,” wrote Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.

“Europe and the U.S. are not simply taking different approaches to Iran, but are actively working against one another in a policy field which is of significant strategic interest to both sides,” he said.

The dispute over the Iran deal, he continued, “is a major driver of European debates about a form of ‘strategic autonomy’ “ from the United States and represents a more serious cleavage in the Western alliance than did the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The latest American sanctions against Iran, scheduled to take effect Nov. 4, will be the toughest so far, hitting the country’s oil industry and central bank. The sale of Iranian oil and petrochemical products will be restricted, and foreign financial institutions will face sanctions for transactions with the Iranian central bank of other financial institutions designated under legislation Congress passed in 2012.

To get around the penalties, the Europeans are hoping to create a “special purpose vehicle” to allow payments related to Iranian exports, including oil, and Iranian imports, “to assist and reassure economic operators pursuing legitimate business with Iran,” according to the European Union.

The mechanism could use a form of barter, offsetting values of imports and exports priced in euros while avoiding banking transactions. The main objective is to allow Iran to keep selling its oil, on which much of its economy depends--exactly the reason Washington is trying to restrict that commerce.

But it remains unclear if the European efforts will succeed. Big multinational firms like Total, Peugeot, Renault, Eni, Siemens and Daimler are already pulling out of Iran, saying they cannot risk being shut out of the American financial system.

Iran’s oil exports have declined significantly since August, putting pressure on supporters of the nuclear deal in Tehran and strengthening more hard-line elements that want to break the deal and start enriching uranium again, in greater quality as well as quantity.

“The primary objective of the European Union is to provide a face-saving way for Iran to stay in the” nuclear deal, said Ellie Geranmayeh of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The Europeans are trying with Russia and China to create an economic package for Iran, but also some political steps to keep Iran in the deal, especially after Nov. 4.”

The Europeans are also trying to help small and medium enterprises with little exposure in the United States to continue trading with Iran.

The question is how far the Trump administration will go to enforce sanctions, and whether it will allow waivers, as it has in the past, for work with Iran’s civilian nuclear program, Ms. Geranmayeh said.

“But if the deal collapses altogether, you can bet Iran will expand its nuclear program,” she said, “and that would put everyone back in the pre-2013 condition, and Europe especially does not want to be there.”

Given the existing tensions between Iran and Sunni Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, not to speak of those with Israel, a war is not inconceivable.

By Karen DeYoung and John Hudson, Washington Post, June 26, 2018

Most of NATO’s 29 members say they have a good story to tell. The alliance has taken a firm stand against Russia, it has begun to undertake long-delayed modernizations, and defense budgets are slowly but surely increasing.

But in the run-up to their July 11-12 summit in Brussels--where the overriding goal is to show how unified they are--some leaders are worried that the result could be the opposite.

Most of their concerns center on President Trump. Last year’s gathering, when Trump scolded them as defense cheapskates and refused to say the United States was committed to their mutual defense pact, is still fresh in many minds.

This year, the specter of Vladimir Putin also looms large. White House national security adviser John Bolton is due Wednesday in Moscow, where he is expected to discuss plans for Trump to meet with the Russian president at some point while he is in Europe. Timing is already tight, with Trump set to visit Britain on July 13 and Putin likely to want to be in Moscow for the World Cup final on the 15th.

A warm and effusive Trump meeting with Putin could expose cracks in the alliance, which is divided over whether the West should further isolate Russia or open more dialogue and business dealings with it. As a result, some European governments are actively pressing the White House to hold the Putin meeting after the NATO summit.

But worries are so high that one senior European diplomat, in a recent conversation, halted mid-sentence to muse about whether it was worse for the two to meet before the NATO summit--when many alliance leaders fear the U.S. president might make big concessions to Putin without input from them--or after, when they would be unable to mop up a mess.

Both options are bad, concluded the diplomat, one of several who spoke about the summit on the condition of anonymity in advance of the NATO gathering.

Trump’s impatience with multilateral gatherings has already been factored in to the agenda, with planned work sessions on Georgia and Ukraine--both under siege from the Russians--combined into one meeting.

The downward spiral of relations between Europe, and now Canada, with the United States over a range of issues has become an ongoing refrain, with only Trump appearing unperturbed by it. In political rallies before cheering supporters at home, he often revels in describing them as security freeloaders and trade cheaters.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in an interview with CNN this week, insisted that “the rift between the United States and Europe is much overstated.” Differences over spending and trade “are in line with the kinds of discussions that America and Europe have had for decades,” he said, noting that he speaks regularly with his European counterparts.

But U.S. allies are less sanguine about the state of affairs. NATO leaders from Britain, France and Germany who attended the Group of Seven meeting in Canada this month remain angry and traumatized by what they saw as Trump’s insulting behavior. He came late, left early and refused to sign the final communique.

“The G-7 was an epic disaster--the diplomatic equivalent of a multiple-car pileup,” said Jeremy Shapiro, director of studies at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

In its wake, Trump called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “weak.” He tweeted that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was losing her grip on power amid, he falsely asserted, a rising domestic crime wave caused by immigrants.

NATO leaders fully expect Trump to revisit the military spending issue, particularly regarding Germany, whose defense budget remains far short of the 2 percent of gross domestic product that all alliance members have pledged to reach by 2024.

Germany is girding for at least verbal jousting and appears determined not to be lectured. In recent weeks, senior German officials have gone on the offensive with statistics of their own indicating that the country’s GDP growth has masked higher defense expenditures.

The United States spends about 3.58 percent of its GDP on defense, an amount that reflects self-assumed global responsibilities as well as political will. While Trump often accuses other members of failing to pay their fair share to NATO, the GDP formulation applies to how much each country spends individually on its own defense budget rather than into a common NATO pool.

By Griff Witte and Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post, May 19, 2018

BERLIN--Since Jan. 20, 2017, European leaders have managed U.S. relations with one eye on the clock, anxiously counting down the hours until President Trump’s term is up and hoping the core of the Western alliance isn’t too badly damaged in the meantime.

But as Trump’s aggressive rhetoric toward America’s closest allies has evolved into hostile action this spring, a new fear has swept European capitals.

Trump may not be an aberration that can be waited out, with his successor likely to push reset after four or eight years of fraught ties. Instead, the blend of unilateralism, nationalism and protectionism Trump embodies may be the new American normal.

“It is dawning on a number of European players that Trump may not be an outlier,” said Josef Janning, head of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “More and more people are seeing it as a larger change in the United States.”

Even before Trump was elected, Europeans sensed that Washington’s traditional role as guarantor of the continent’s security and stability was slipping away, and that post-World War II ties were fading along with the generations that forged them.

But Trump’s seeming delight in smashing transatlantic bonds--and the lack of domestic constraints on his ability to do so--has signaled, Janning said, that the basis for Western strength and peace for 70-plus years “probably won’t come back.”

That carries serious implications for how Europe responds to Trump. Until now, key leaders have avoided open conflict with the U.S. president, trying instead to placate him or, at best, subtly persuade him. Above all, they have sought to preserve strong relationships at various levels within the U.S. government, if not with the man at the top of it, so there’s a foundation to build on after he is gone.

That is still the prevailing strategy. But a succession of adverse moves culminating in Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iranian nuclear deal has brought transatlantic relations to their lowest point since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, if not far longer.

If Trump is succeeded by a more traditional Democratic or Republican administration, the wounds could still heal. But, even then, it could take a long time, given the extent of the damage.

And close European observers of the United States are not optimistic about a reversion to the mean.

They study the increasing polarization of U.S. politics and see less enthusiasm for transatlantic ties at either end of the political spectrum. They have also been repeatedly disappointed as one supposed brake after another on Trump’s most extreme foreign policy impulses--Congress, the president’s own advisers and popular opinion--has fallen away. Trump, they note, is alienating America’s closest allies, and the American public doesn’t seem to mind.

Europeans have begun to wonder aloud whether they need to respond accordingly.

One sign of the evolving stance toward the United States was the unusually biting commentary this week from European Council President Donald Tusk, whose job in Brussels is to channel the ids of the 28 nations in the European Union. A mild-mannered former Polish prime minister, his statements are typically gentle efforts toward consensus, not international rallying cries.

Not this time.

“With friends like that, who needs enemies?” Tusk told reporters as he readied a summit of E.U. leaders largely focused on Trump-ignited brushfires. The faltering Iran nuclear agreement, the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip and the specter of a transatlantic trade war were all on the agenda.

Tusk denounced “the capricious assertiveness of the American administration,” using terms that just 16 months ago would more typically have been applied to international rogue nations such as North Korea and Russia.

His sharp tone matches the public mood. In Germany, a country that rebuilt itself after World War II in America’s image and with American money, polls show that Trump is seen as a bigger threat than Russian President Vladimir Putin.

More than two-thirds of Germans describe their country as moving away from the United States, and an equal number describe the relationship as “tense,” according to a survey released this week by the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.

After the U.S. pullout from the Iran deal, the influential weekly Der Spiegel called on Germany to become part of the “resistance against America,” and pictured Trump on its cover as a yellow-haired middle finger to the continent.

Some of Europe’s anger reflects a long-standing current of anti-Americanism. But even fans of the United States say they are losing faith now that the country that built the liberal democratic order seems intent on dismantling it.

Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, who oversees the German Marshall Fund’s office in Berlin, said that up until recently, it was popular for defenders of close American ties to console themselves with the mantra “watch what they say, not what they do.”

But that was before Trump canceled U.S. participation in the Iran deal, threatened European businesses with sanctions and launched steel and aluminum tariffs that could hit Europe as soon as next month.

“Now the actions are piling up,” he said. “You keep thinking it doesn’t get any worse. But boy, we’re being educated.”

For all the transatlantic tiffs in the first year of the Trump administration, the U.S. pullout from the Iran nuclear agreement and the tariff threats have the potential to be far more explosive, because they could lead to Europe and Washington actively trying to undermine each other.

Adam Thomson, director of the European Leadership Network, a London-based think tank, and a former senior British diplomat, recently co-wrote a paper calling for Europe’s militaries to make themselves better able to operate independently from the United States--not out of spite, but because improved European defenses would serve both sides.

Jörg Lau, foreign editor of the German newspaper Die Zeit, said such steps are long overdue, and need to take account that the United States isn’t coming back as the steadfast protector it once appeared to be.

Whether it’s Trump in office or any other American president, he said, “U.S. priorities have changed, and why shouldn’t they? It’s not something we should complain about. It’s a fact we have to acknowledge.”

Europe is peaceful, it’s wealthy, and it’s time, he said, for the continent to take care of its own security.

By Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post, May 16, 2018

BRUSSELS--Even by the stressed standards of relations between Europe and the United States in the Trump era, European Council President Donald Tusk’s Wednesday criticisms were unusually cutting.

At the outset of a summit of European leaders whose agenda items, point by point, have to do with the flames of crises that many Europeans see as ignited by President Trump, Tusk ripped into what he called “the capricious assertiveness of the American administration” over issues including Iran, Gaza, trade tariffs and North Korea.

In comments to reporters and a subsequent tweet, he suggested the White House had lost touch with reality. He said Europe didn’t need enemies when it had friends like the United States. And he exhorted European leaders not to be reliant on Washington.

Just 16 months ago, such comments would have been unimaginable coming from an E.U. leader, whose continent modeled itself on the U.S. image in the aftermath of World War II. But Europeans are increasingly exasperated by the way Trump is steering U.S. policy, objecting not only to his stances but also to what they say is erratic policymaking that switches on the whim of Fox News programmers. The shifting desires make it nearly impossible to negotiate with the White House, many diplomats say, because they cannot strike a bargain to get close to what Trump wants when he doesn’t know it himself.

Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland who now presides over one branch of E.U. policymaking, went full zen in his angry description of Trump’s effect on Europe.

By James Traub, Foreign Policy, May 11, 2018

The Atlantic alliance, built to contain the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War II, began to die when the Cold War ended. What kept it alive over the last three decades has been less strategic necessity than a convergence of values--the values of the liberal postwar order. Now, the senior partner of the alliance, the United States, has lost interest in those values. The alliance was already a corpse, but Donald Trump drove the last nail into its coffin when he decided this week to withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran.

What now? The United States will lurch from crisis to crisis, but Europe faces more existential questions: It has been expelled from the garden--albeit a very thorny one--maintained by U.S. military and diplomatic power and now must build a new home of its own. The European diplomats, ex-diplomats, and scholars I have spent the last few days talking to agree on that much. They’re less sure whether Europe is up to the task.

Am I--and my interlocutors--inflating a very bad moment into a mortal one? Perhaps that would be true if the problem were only Trump. In fact, Europe ceased to be the world’s geostrategic center when the Soviet menace disappeared. The humanitarian crises of the next decade reinforced the shared values of Western nations, but 9/11 abruptly diverted the United States to an obsessive focus on the Middle East. Though Barack Obama restored the shared faith in multilateralism and institutions that George W. Bush had breached, his own interests lay more in the Pacific. He yearned to pivot away from the yawning pit of the Arab world to Asia. Obama wanted the United States to face toward the future, not the past.

The American people, meanwhile, preferred to face home. They wanted a pivot to America, and they voted for the candidate who promised to deliver it. It has thus fallen to Trump to deliver the coup de grâce to the alliance that has defined the postwar world. The Iran decision followed his decision to impose tariffs on European aluminum and steel, which followed his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accords. Trump is no more contemptuous toward European allies than Asian or Latin ones; the only opinion to which he defers is that of his base.

François Delattre, France’s ambassador to the United Nations, says he regards the Iran decision as “the best illustration of the Jacksonian moment the United States is going through--the uni-isolationist moment.” A new president, he concedes, might restore multilateralism. But, Delattre adds, “I am personally afraid the withdrawal is durable. The disengagement started before President Trump, and I am afraid it will last after him.”

The Iran decision has resonated among European leaders as none of Trump’s previous follies has. First, Europeans regard the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the pact is called, as the foremost proof of their capacity to act coherently and effectively. The Iran diplomacy came hard on the heels of the debacle over the Iraq War, when a divided Europe watched a U.S. president stumble into disaster. “Iran was the opposite of that,” says Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Instead of standing blinded in the headlights of American policy, Europe figured out what its own interests were.” European diplomats negotiated with the Iranians when the Bush administration refused to do so, designing a package of sanctions and incentives ultimately adopted and pushed through the U.N. Security Council by Obama.

Europe hoped to reduce tensions in the Middle East by drawing Iran out of its revolutionary shell. And it succeeded. The deal, Leonard says, was a “massive source of pride.”

As a simple matter of geographical proximity, Europe is threatened by conflict in the Middle East as the United States is not. The tidal wave of asylum-seekers from Syria in 2015 upended European politics and exposed a popular vein of xenophobia and illiberalism that has thrown a terrible scare into European elites. Europe simply cannot afford to follow the American lead if the United States is prepared to sow further chaos in the region.

Of course, Europe’s old reputation for deference and submission to the United States was reinforced by the spectacle of French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel visiting the White House in the hope of propitiating the First Bully and then being dismissed with scarcely a “by your leave”--and oh, by the way, we’re still coming after your steel industry. But perhaps Europe’s leaders needed the shock. Hours after Trump’s announcement, Macron, Merkel, and British Prime Minister Theresa May issued a joint statement reminding the world that the deal had been “unanimously endorsed by the U.N. Security Council” and thus remained “the binding international legal framework” on Iran’s nuclear program. European Council President Donald Tusk announced that Trump’s Iran and trade policies “will meet a united European approach.”

The fur will fly if the United States goes ahead with secondary sanctions targeting European companies that continue to do business with Iran. Given the current bellicose mood in Washington, there is good reason to think that it will do so. Hours after assuming his post as U.S. ambassador in Berlin, Richard Grenell tweeted, “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.” That would be Europe’s put-up-or-shut-up moment. “We’re going to have to treat the U.S. as a hostile power,” Leonard says. “We might have to introduce countermeasures against U.S. companies.” The mind reels. No, the heart breaks.

By Steven Erlanger, NY Times, May 9, 2018

BRUSSELS--It is by now a familiar, humiliating pattern. European leaders cajole, argue and beg, trying to persuade President Trump to change his mind on a vital issue for the trans-Atlantic alliance. Mr. Trump appears to enjoy the show, dangling them, before ultimately choosing not to listen.

Instead, he demands compliance, seemingly bent on providing just the split with powerful and important allies that China, Iran and Russia would like to exploit.

Such is the case with the efforts to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear pact. Both the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, made the pilgrimage to Washington to urge Mr. Trump not to scrap the agreement. Their failure is very similar to what happened with the Paris climate accord, and to what is happening now with unilateral American sanctions imposed on steel and aluminum imports, and to Mr. Trump’s decision to move the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

And with each breach, it becomes clearer that trans-Atlantic relations are in trouble, and that the options are not good for the United States’ closest European allies.

However angry and humiliated, those allies do not seem ready to confront Mr. Trump, wishing to believe that he and his aides can be influenced over time. To some, it is reminiscent of what Samuel Johnson said of second marriages: a triumph of hope over experience.

But there are signs that patience is wearing thin, and that many are searching for solutions as Mr. Trump, in the name of “America First,” creates a vacuum of trans-Atlantic leadership that the Europeans have so far seemed incapable or unwilling to fill.

“The allies are certainly sick of this but don’t seem to have an alternative,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former career State Department official now at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“The Europeans are invested down a path of trying to please the president, not out of belief but more hope against hope that they will convince him,” he added. “And they only pursue this at such a level of embarrassment because they don’t have an alternative.”

At least for now. After their statement on Tuesday regretting Mr. Trump’s response and promising to work with Iran to preserve the deal, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany are to meet on Monday with Iranian officials “to consider the entire situation,” said the French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian.

Already, Mr. Macron spoke by telephone on Wednesday with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani. Afterward the Élysée Palace issued a statement saying that it was “the will of France to continue to enforce the Iran nuclear deal in all its dimensions,” potentially widening a breach with the Trump administration.

“He pointed out the necessity for Iran to do the same,” the statement added.

But the real question for the Europeans, Mr. Shapiro said, “is not if they stick with the deal but will they stand up to the American effort to unravel it and take active measures to protect their companies and banks trading in Iran?” That would be “an extremely confrontational stance,” he said, “and it’s not clear that their companies really want that.”

While some think that they should double down on what has now become a pattern--keep talking to Mr. Trump and his aides, hoping to convince them of the need for trans-Atlantic solidarity--others have had enough.

There are increasing voices for rupture within the European Union. In a reflection of the mood, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s bureaucracy, said that under Mr. Trump, the United States is turning its back on multilateral relations and friendly cooperation “with a ferocity that can only surprise us.”

He told Belgium’s Flemish regional parliament that Washington “no longer wants to cooperate with other parts in the world,” according to The Associated Press. “At this point, we have to replace the United States, which as an international actor has lost vigor, and because of it, in the long term, influence,” he said.

In Britain, Emily Thornberry, the Labour Party spokeswoman on foreign affairs, said on Tuesday that it was time for Europeans to stop “this long and unnecessary indulgence of Donald Trump.”

A senior adviser to the European Union, Nathalie Tocci, said that the Iran deal was a lost cause, because “Trump and Europe have fundamentally different objectives.”

She said that Mr. Trump “is not interested in keeping a nuclear nonproliferation agreement but in regime change in Iran--it’s as simple as that.”

“We have to stop being wimps,” she added.

On climate and trade, on international law, and on the importance of multilateral institutions like the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, the rift with the Trump administration is real, said Ms. Tocci, director of the Italian Institute of International Relations and a close adviser to the European Union foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini.

“Can’t we defend what our own interests are?” Ms. Tocci asked. “There is something as fundamental at stake here as the trans-Atlantic bond, because Europe can’t exist in a nonmultilateral space,” a world of competing nationalism and protectionism.

“Isn’t it wiser,” she asked, “to temporarily part ways with the Trump administration?” After all, she noted, something similar happened in 2003 over the American-led invasion of Iraq, yet relations were repaired when a new president came along.

Ivo H. Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO, sees such as break as inevitable. “At some point--after having pushed the Europeans on NATO, Paris, the Jerusalem embassy move, trade and now Iran--the Europeans will come to the conclusion that they’re better off going their own way,” he said. “And that point is rapidly approaching.”

But whatever the mutterings in Berlin, London and Paris, European governments currently show no palpable sign that they are ready to make that sort of separation.