Hola All,
'We' in Europe are not really confident about what (who) the US elections next
November will bring, for 'us' especially ...
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Original to:
Trump’s return: Are we ready?
A second Trump presidency could tip an already destabilised world over the
edge. Our former ambassador to Washington says the UK is running out of time to
prepare
By Kim Darroch
Prospect Magazine, February 28, 2024 (to be printed in the April issue)
Those of us who are horror film fans know that it can be a lonely pursuit,
involving late nights in front of the television while the rest of the
household retreats. The genre includes a lot of repetitive dross, but, at its
best, it can be real art, as richly creative as anything in cinema. And when I
saw the acres of newsprint that followed Donald Trump’s crushing victory in the
Iowa caucus in January, much of it on the agitated side of overwrought, I was
irresistibly reminded of the words of Pennywise, the malevolent,
shape-shifting, reality-bending clown in the 1990 film of Stephen King’s novel
It: “I’m every nightmare you’ve ever had. I am your worst dream come true.”
So will Trump’s Second Coming really take him all the way back to the White
House? My answer would be somewhere between possible and likely. He has the
Republican nomination nailed down, barring a personal catastrophe. For what it
is worth at this early stage, he is ahead of Biden in the opinion polls in the
marginal states. There are some media reports suggesting that young voters, a
demographic that previously shunned Trump, are flocking to his banner. Well,
perhaps. But there are also reasons why Trump may come up short. Here, briefly,
are some of them.
First, Trump is the most divisive politician in America. He attracts
extraordinary loyalty; he is less a politician than a cult leader, with
followers rather than supporters. But that fanatical base is not enough. Trump
also turbocharges the Democrat turnout; Biden secured more votes in his 2020
victory than any candidate in history, beating his opponent in the popular vote
by no less than seven million. In particular, Biden won “independents”—voters
not affiliated to either of the two main parties. And while the top line from
the recent New Hampshire Republican primary was Trump’s 11-point victory over
Nikki Haley, the underlying message was that he remains unpopular outside his
base: Haley won independents by 58 per cent to 39 per cent. Add to this a Trump
campaign largely based on greatest hits and grievances rather than the future,
and it’s not obvious which new voters he will win over to turn 2020’s defeat
into victory.
Then there are Trump’s legal troubles. He’s just been fined $450m and banned
from doing business in New York for three years for falsifying his business
accounts. Next in the pipeline are four major criminal cases, amounting to 91
separate indictments. These comprise the “New York hush money” allegations
about undisclosed payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in violation of
campaign finance law; the classified documents case about hundreds of papers
found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort; the 6th January case about Trump’s efforts
to overturn the 2020 election result; and the Georgia allegations about Trump
personally pressuring the chief election officer in that state to “find” him
11,780 votes. The Trump legal team will try to delay all of these beyond the
election. But two of the trials are currently set for March and one for May. At
the very least, Trump will spend much of the next few months in court. At
worst, one of the trials will end in a conviction before the Republican
Convention in July. Trump will of course appeal. But polls suggest that a
significant number of his own supporters—24 per cent, according to one recent
New York Times poll—will not vote for Trump if he is handed a conviction. This
is essentially why Haley is staying in the race: it’s the “something might turn
up” strategy.
Third, Biden might start to do better. His personal ratings are underwater
essentially for two reasons: voter disappointment with the US economy, and
worries about his age. There is nothing much he can do about the latter, unless
one of the Silicon Valley technocrats invents a fountain of youth. But on the
economy, the US is doing much better than the market analysts had been
predicting: Europeans would be dancing in the streets if they were matching US
figures. US GDP grew at a 3.3 per cent annual rate in the final quarter of
2023. Inflation is dropping, manufacturing investment is up, consumer spending
is solid and predictions of recession in 2024 are being rewritten as fast as
analysts can get to their keyboards. Indeed Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal
Reserve, said in February that the US job market and economy were strong and
that interest rates might be cut three times through 2024. If the key to
election victory is, as Bill Clinton’s strategist James Carville said, “the
economy, stupid”, then the cavalry may be appearing.
The risk of terrorist attacks on European soil would rise
And finally, Trump is showing his age, too. In 2016 his energy levels were
inexhaustible, his campaigning relentless and his resilience unquenchable. This
time round, he looks heavier, his voice has aged, and his energy levels have
dropped. And, like the other candidates in this presidential race, he is
showing signs of “cognitive decline”. He sometimes forgets where he is, or
muddles names. In one recent speech he tore into Haley for supposed security
failings during the 6th January attack on the Capitol. He meant Nancy Pelosi.
That said, perhaps Trump is beyond this kind of analysis. This is an individual
who, thanks to his multi-annual starring role in The Apprentice, occupies a
unique position in the Venn diagram of popular culture; the place where the
three circles of politics, business and celebrity intersect. This is the
president who suggested people should inject disinfectant to combat Covid; who
wanted to buy Greenland; who reportedly proposed using nuclear weapons to
deflect hurricanes; and who reacted to losing the 2020 election by trying to
subvert American democracy. That ought to be enough counts against anyone. But
there is a Terminator-like indestructibility to Trump; it feels as though he is
always going to be with us. And to repeat, he could, may even be likely to, win
this election.
So what would a Trump 2.0 look like? On domestic policy, if Trump’s campaign
speeches and videos are an accurate guide, it will be four years of mayhem.
Revenge will be taken, grievances will be settled, the government bureaucracy
will be heavily politicised, the US Army will be despatched to stop illegal
immigration across the southern border, and oil and gas drilling will be
expanded. But the focus here in Europe will be on foreign policy, and in
particular on a handful of questions: what will a Trump administration do about
Ukraine, about Gaza, about relations with China, about climate change, about
Nato and about relations with the UK and Europe?
On Ukraine, Trump has said that he would stop the war “in 24 hours”. The
details of how he would accomplish this are yet to be described. But the plan
seems to amount to ending US military supplies to Ukraine, compelling Zelensky
to strike a deal, any deal, with Putin.
If this is right, the only deal imaginable is one in which Russia would keep at
least all of the land it has captured since the invasion, more than 15 per cent
of Ukrainian territory: it is inconceivable that Putin would settle for less.
This would be bad enough. But it would only mark a pause in the conflict, not
the end. Putin would use the time to replenish Russian forces and prepare to
take Kyiv and install a client government there. This, after all, has always
been Putin’s objective, as his original invasion plan demonstrated, and as his
ally, former president Dmitry Medvedev, has recently reaffirmed. So ending
military supplies to Ukraine would likely lead to a devastating defeat for the
west: Putin would have profited from his invasion by grabbing a significant
chunk of Ukraine, and would be poised to threaten other parts of Europe. And
that’s without factoring in the signal that this outcome would send to China in
relation to its ambitions for Taiwan.
What about the conflict in Gaza? During his presidency, Trump recognised
Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights; he moved the US
Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; he announced that Israeli settlements in
the West Bank did not contravene international law; he triggered a break in
relations with the Palestinian Authority; he halted US funding for UNRWA, the
UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees; and he closed down the
Palestinian Representation in Washington.
Against this background, and if the Israeli ground operation in Gaza were still
under way at the start of 2025, it is a stretch to imagine a Trump
administration pressing Israel to minimise civilian casualties in Gaza, or to
end the ground operation quickly. It is, moreover, equally difficult to see
Trump pressing Israel to commit to a new process to negotiate a two-state
solution. And in the absence of consistent US pressure, it is improbable that
Israel, deeply divided and traumatised by the events of 7th October, would
launch such a process itself.
This points to a continuing tense deadlock in Gaza and the West Bank, with the
two million Palestinians displaced from their homes in Gaza living in camps,
supported by aid agencies, and renewed conflict possible at any moment. The
west would continue to face a torrent of criticism from the Arab world and the
Global South for its failure to improve the situation or resolve the
Palestinian issue. Iran would carry on exploiting the situation, and might step
up its support for extremism across the region. The Houthis would go on
harassing international shipping in the Red Sea, prompting much of it to take
the long way round. Hezbollah would keep making trouble on the Israel-Lebanon
border. And the risk of terrorist attacks on European soil would rise.
On China, Trump has said relatively little since he started campaigning. There
are, however, clues from his first term. In 2018, he launched a trade war with
China which, combined with wider protectionism, amounted to an $80bn tax
increase on $380bn worth of exports to the US. It is arguable whether the
policy delivered. Some authoritative US economists argue that such tariffs are
effectively paid by US consumers through higher prices and US businesses
through higher costs. A study published in January 2021 by the US-China
Business Council concluded that the US economy shed 245,000 jobs as a result of
the policy. Nevertheless, the Trump campaign team is suggesting that, if Trump
wins, tariffs of 60 per cent plus will be imposed on China.
Trump’s views on Taiwan are more of a mystery. Chinese premier Xi Jinping has
said that China’s reunification with Taiwan is “inevitable”, and habitually
declines to rule out using force. When Trump was asked on Fox News last July
whether, as president, he would come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a Chinese
attack, he declined to answer. Though he added somewhat bizarrely that “Taiwan
did take all of our chip business… we should have tariffed them.”
Some respected analysts think Trump is simply indifferent to Taiwan. “During
the majority of the Trump administration,” said Evan Medeiros, a senior member
of the National Security Council staff under Barack Obama, “one of the worst
kept secrets in Washington was that Trump didn’t care about Taiwan.” John
Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser for 17 months, recalls in his memoir
one incident in the Oval Office when Trump made clear just how little
importance he attached to the smaller nation. He pointed to the tip of his
favoured Sharpie pen and said, “This is Taiwan,” then pointed to the famous
presidential desk and said, “This is China.” And the Chinese regime has
noticed. One of its spokesmen said recently that “the US will always pursue
America First and Taiwan can change from a chess piece to a discarded chess
piece at any time.”
So what does this mean for a second Trump term? A renewed trade war with China
looks likely, however ineffective and damaging to the US economy it might be.
That would have a wider disruptive effect on global trade. But on Taiwan, Xi
may see an opportunity. A full invasion isn’t likely; it would be high risk,
the Chinese military is not up to it (yet), and the inevitable western
sanctions would do considerable damage to China’s export-led economy, which is
recovering from a period of disappointing growth. But other forms of Chinese
pressure—such as a naval blockade—are conceivable. We could see a ramping up of
military incursions into Taiwanese waters and airspace alongside ever louder
public threats
and intimidation.
Why would this matter to the rest of the world? Taiwan is a crucial part of
global supply chains. A single Taiwanese company, the Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Company, makes more than half of the world’s silicon chips, and
90 per cent of the most advanced types. These chips power everything from
mobile phones to aircraft control systems to supercomputers. The world needs
more than a trillion chips a year: imagine the damage to the global economy if
supply was disrupted.
Trump intends to impose a 10 per cent tariff on all imports—potentially leading
to a global trade war
On climate change, Trump has form. During his first term he took the US out of
the Paris agreement, appointed fossil fuel lobbyists to environmental agencies
and predicted that global warming would soon spontaneously reverse. On the
campaign trail for 2024, he has promised to let fossil fuel production rip; to
“drill, drill, drill”. And he would presumably again take the US out of the
Paris deal (Biden having rejoined it in 2021).
The US is second only to China as a contributor to global CO2 levels, so an
American president championing large-scale fossil fuel production would in
itself be damaging. But perhaps the greatest impact would be psychological. To
reach net zero in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, emissions need to be
reduced by 45 per cent by 2030. Notwithstanding the efforts made at successive
COP conferences, the international community is well short of this target: on
present trajectories, emissions will have actually increased by almost 9 per
cent between 2010 and 2030. Getting to where we need to be will require a
genuinely global effort and real sacrifices, especially among the largest
polluters like China, India and the EU. The chances of this happening if the US
has opted out of the system are much reduced, perhaps even non-existent.
As for Nato, Trump has previously described it as “obsolete”, calling its
members who aren’t spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence “delinquents” and
hinting that he doesn’t accept Article 5 of the Nato treaty—the principle that
an attack on one is an attack on all. And in a campaign rally in South Carolina
on 10th February, he said that, as president, he would encourage Russia “to do
whatever the hell they want” to any Nato country that didn’t meet the spending
guidelines—a comment the White House described as “unhinged”. Added to this,
the French EU commissioner Thierry Breton revealed in January that, in a
private meeting with president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen
in 2020, Trump said: “You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we
will never come to help you and support you.” He continued by saying: “By the
way, Nato is dead and we will leave.” Bolton himself has said in an interview
that he is “convinced [Trump] will withdraw from Nato”.
In the face of this, some commentators have taken comfort from the fact that
senators added a bipartisan provision to the defence bill they passed in
December 2023, asserting that no president could take the US out of Nato
without approval from the Senate. But this is to misunderstand the essence of
Nato, which is the commitment to collective defence. As Ivo Daalder, a former
US ambassador to Nato, has pointed out, no one, not even Congress, can force an
American president to defend another nation with the full might of the US
military. And if there isn’t complete confidence in the US commitment to
Article 5, Nato becomes less a military alliance, more an exercise in bluster.
In these circumstances, and in a future world where Putin had already annexed
even more of Ukraine thanks to the ending of US military support, it is not a
stretch to imagine Putin looking at the Baltic states as the next phase in his
re-creation of the Soviet Union.
So for Europe, the future of the US in Nato will be the dominant preoccupation
in the event of a second Trump term. But it won’t be the only story. Trump is
no admirer of the EU, once describing it as “worse than China” in its treatment
of the US. He is, moreover, essentially a believer in protectionism: in his
first term, apart from launching a trade war with China, he imposed a 25 per
cent tariff on US steel imports and a 10 per cent tariff on aluminium imports.
Should he win in 2024, Trump intends to impose a 10 per cent tariff on all
imports, including those from Europe, with the supposed objective of
incentivising American domestic production. This proposition has been
underreported in Europe, but would be profoundly disruptive. There would almost
certainly be EU, and wider, retaliation, potentially leading to a global trade
war. Some respected US economists believe the policy and its fallout would
reduce the size of the US economy by 1 per cent, while smaller, more vulnerable
economies around the world might shrink by far more.
As for the UK, there is no evidence from Trump’s first term that we would
receive any sort of special treatment, whichever party captures Number 10 in
the next election; Trump is not sentimental about the “special relationship”.
And whatever the recent positive noises about a UK-US free trade deal during a
Trump 2.0 presidency, there should be no illusions about the price the US would
demand for this: virtually unfettered access for US industrial farming products
to the UK market, hormone-treated beef included. Try asking the National
Farmers’ Union what they’d think about this. So we are likely to face the same
challenges as the rest of Europe—though without the retaliatory capability
provided by being a member of the world’s largest trading bloc. Come January
2025, we might just feel rather isolated.
All of which leads to the question: what should we be doing to prepare for a
second Trump presidency? Here are some ideas.
Ukraine is the likeliest first transatlantic crisis of a Trump return to the
White House. Whatever the uncertainties about Trump’s attitude towards Nato,
few doubt that he would stop US military aid to Ukraine. Indeed, Maga
Republicans in Congress, egged on publicly by Trump, are already blocking the
next consignment. So the objective is to use the next 10 months to get Ukraine
in the best possible shape to survive, whatever 2025 brings. At the moment, the
largest military donor to Ukraine by far is the US. If it pulls back, Europe is
unlikely to be able to fill in for everything, but it should be able to do much
more than at present. The first priority will be ramping up European production
capacity. This will mean approaching Europe’s military industries and asking
them to prepare for substantially increased production, especially of basics
like shells and ammunition. This needs to start now.
Second, on the assumption that the Biden administration can overcome the
deadlock in Congress, we should encourage the US to pre-position and stockpile
supplies for Ukraine in central European Nato member states: once the supplies
are there, they are unlikely to be taken back, whatever the election outcome.
Third, there should be something for Ukraine at the Nato summit in Washington
this coming July. It isn’t going to be an accelerated path to membership:
there is substantial opposition to this around the Nato table, led by Germany.
But it could be an offer of practical assistance in the work that Ukraine has
to do to meet the criteria for membership.
Fourth, European ministers should be visiting Congress whenever they are in the
US and making the case for continuing military support for Ukraine. There is,
ultimately, a cross-aisle majority in Congress for this.
On Gaza, the reality is that the UK has little to no influence over Israeli
actions or policy. Nor do other European nations. The only country with real
influence is the US. Even here there are limits: ultimately, Netanyahu feels
able to defy American pressure when he chooses, as his current positioning
demonstrates.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission; Alexander De Croo,
prime minister of Belgium Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European
Commission; Alexander De Croo, prime minister of Belgium—both know the risks of
a second Trump term. Image: Thierry Monasse/Getty Images
Nevertheless, the priority here has to be around making things happen before
the US election, on the basis that after it, if Trump has won, all pressure on
Israel might disappear. So the UK should be supporting the Americans in
pressing for a quick end to the ground operation in Gaza. We should be planning
for the aftermath: how do we encourage a new Palestinian leadership, because it
cannot be Hamas; who will govern Gaza and oversee reconstruction; is there a
security role for the international community, whether on Israel’s borders or
in Gaza? And we should, in coordination with Washington, be talking to our Arab
friends about the parameters of a two-state solution, how to get negotiations
restarted, and in particular, what incentives and assurances Arab countries
might be able to offer to draw Israel into negotiations. Normalisation of
relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, on which the Americans are already
working, is one of the elements here.
On China, the main risk is of being pulled in two opposing directions. We have
our own commercial and economic interests with China. We also have our own
criticisms of Chinese policies and behaviour. But we are not in perfect
alignment with the US, even with the Biden administration. The gap will be
bigger with Trump in the White House. We will come under pressure to join in
American policies, whether imposing tariffs, or excluding Chinese firms from
participation in our infrastructure projects, or limiting the number of Chinese
students in our universities. There will be some difficult choices, which carry
costs whatever we decide. We will need to have thought through where our
balance of interests lies. In short, we need a strategy.
On climate change, I suggest there are three priorities in a Trump presidency.
The first is to stick to our own net zero plan and resist the temptation to use
US backsliding to weaken our commitments. The second is, as far as possible, to
ensure that the rest of the world sticks to the commitments they have made at
successive COP conferences, whatever the Americans are doing. And the third is
to work with individual US states on climate change, as we have done in the
past. Under the US federal system, states have the powers to pursue green
policies whatever the position at federal level, and some are big enough to
make a difference. California, for example, if a country, would be the fifth
largest in the world in terms of nominal GDP, ahead of India.
On Nato, the picture that Trump 2.0 would inherit is very different from the
2016 landscape. Back then only five member states were spending 2 per cent of
GDP on defence. By the end of 2024, notwithstanding Trump’s recent tirade on
countries’ underspending, Nato insiders estimate that 20 member states should
have reached the figure. Some of this is down to war in Europe. But it has to
be recognised that some of it is down to the pressure that Trump applied during
his first term.
At the core of this is Germany. At their first meeting in 2017, Trump
reportedly presented former German chancellor Angela Merkel with an invoice for
hundreds of billions of dollars, supposedly representing the amount the US had
spent over the decades protecting Germany. Both sides denied the story, but
relations between Merkel and Trump were clearly frosty. By contrast, Germany
has now overtaken the UK as the second-biggest defence spender in Nato.
In the light of this, if I were advising Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary
general of Nato who developed a reputation as a Trump-whisperer during Trump’s
first term, I would be urging him to open up a private channel to the
president’s team—perhaps to the man personally—in order to get across three
messages.
The objective is to get Ukraine in the best possible shape to survive—whatever
2025 brings
First, things have changed dramatically in terms of European defence spending.
This opens the way to Trump asserting a personal triumph at the first Nato
summit of his second term, claiming that his leadership has brought about the
biggest transformation in defence spending in a generation, even if he would
still like Nato allies to go further. The Europeans should agree publicly that
this spending was down to Trump.
Second, Stoltenberg should try to persuade Trump that there is simply no
benefit for Trump personally in being drawn into public comment on the
principle of collective defence—whether the US would always, sometimes, or
never come to the support of a Nato member under attack. The relevant treaty
article is actually ambiguous on what exactly allies are obliged to do in terms
of support: that ambiguity should be left intact.
Third, Stoltenberg should remind Trump that the US defence industry earned
$120bn from defence sales to Nato allies through 2022 and 2023. Those sales
would go elsewhere if the US opted for isolationism. And meanwhile, if I were
an official in any prime minister’s office around Europe, I would be
commissioning the experts in government to start doing some contingency
thinking about how a Nato without the United States would look and
function—just in case.
There are two further, broader, lessons for us in this. The first is that,
despite Brexit, if Trump is back in the White House in 2025, we will need to
get closer to Europe—because there won’t be an American wing under which to
shelter. Trump doesn’t see the world in terms of alliances and friendships. To
the extent that he has a worldview, it is one of big power relationships; the
world should be sorted out through deals between him, Putin and Xi.
Alexander De Croo, the prime minister of Belgium, recently expressed the
problem with a minimum of diplomacy but admirable clarity: “If 2024 brings us
America First again, it will be more than ever Europe on its own… [Europe must
become] stronger, more sovereign, more self-reliant.” And if we are to avoid
lonely mid-Atlantic isolation, we will need to have developed the structures
and relationships through which we can consult, coordinate and—where
necessary—act with Europe, whether it is retaliating to trade tariffs or
sharing the burden in supporting Ukraine or working together to save the
international response to climate change. This may not sit easily with the
aspirations of Brexit, but the world will have moved on.
Second, it feels as if European governments have been taken by surprise by the
possibility of Trump returning to the White House; a sudden lurch from
complacency to panic. It shouldn’t be like this. It was clear from the day
after he lost that Trump would run again. It was equally clear that his
fanatical base would not move on. History tells us that the US periodically
detaches itself from the world: the non-interventionism of the 19th century,
the isolationism of the 1930s. And every serious foreign ministry has a team
focused on anticipating and planning for future problems. We should have seen
this coming, and been contingency planning all this time rather than scrambling
in election year. One more from the horror film lexicon, this time from Freddy
Krueger: “You shouldn’t have buried me. I’m not dead.”
Kim Darroch was British ambassador to the US from 2016 to 2019, and British
ambassador to the EU from 2007 to 2011
