Will Europe respond to Trump with more servile Atlanticism?

Britain's conservative media says Trump should dictate who is the UK's ambassador. Baltic leaders are desperately trumpeting their military spending. It's a sad sight.

This weekend in the UK, the British media was busy berating Labour government ministers about their past negative comments about Donald Trump. They are putting pressure on the government to accept whatever the new US president might offer for a lop-sided trade deal, and want them to defer to Trump on dictating who becomes the next British ambassador in Washington. They are following the lead of Conservative Party politicians in the mould of former prime minister Boris Johnson, who have been hounding UK Foreign Minister David Lammy for calling Trump a “sociopath” in the past, conveniently forgetting that Johnson himself said Trump has "stupefying ignorance" and is "unfit for the office of the presidency" in 2015. There has been a chorus of voices in the British media demanding that Labour apologize to Trump for coordinating with their American political counterparts during the campaign (a common practice for both Labor and Tories which goes back decades, despite Trump’s legal filing making it look like something brand new). In other words, it’s time to grovel in order to protect the so-called “special relationship” with America (a term few in the US have ever even heard of).

But perhaps the most unsightly hounding over the weekend was seen on Sky News yesterday, where Sunday Morning host Trevor Philips seemed to tell Treasury Secretary Darren Jones that Labour should make far-right Reform Party leader Nigel Farage the UK’s ambassador to the United States. “He is close to Trump, Trump listens to him, why would you snub the offer of help?” he asked. “Unless you're putting your party’s interests and dislike of Farage before the country’s interests?" He presented it as a completely logical thing to do, whitewashing Farage’s history of praising Vladimir Putin and blaming NATO for the Ukraine war.

The “country’s interests” has been the key word in initial reactions. The instinctive reaction to Trump’s victory by the British establishment is that the government should immediately start thinking of ways to ingratiate themselves with the volatile new US president in order to preserve the “special relationship” and protect the UK economy from Trump’s threats of a 20% tariff on British exports. Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch wrote in The Telegraph that Starmer should dust off a supposed “oven-ready” free trade deal that Johnson had prepared during Trump’s first term (spoiler alert: there is no such oven-ready deal) and spurn the EU.

Meanwhile you have senior UK diplomats envisioning Britain adopting an ‘America First’ strategy because, “Trump hates the EU but quite likes the UK. He could offer the Brits a privileged position (fewer tariffs?) in Europe so long as they differentiate themselves from the EU - and don't line up closely with it.”. You’ve got people in the Trump team telling British journalists laughable bluster like “A special US deal for UK is under consideration. Trump feels that neither Tory nor Labour governments have made anything of Brexit. No Singapore in the Atlantic etc. So he will set a test, pulling UK further from EU alignment.” And Britain’s media, business and political elite seem only too eager to immediately run after these crumbs dropped by their new American overlord.

The hypocrisy of it all stinks to high heaven. These same Conservatives spent the past three years criticising Germany for having made gas deals with Putin before 2022, taking the easy road in order to avoid economic hardship. Economic benefits should never trump moral convictions, they insisted. And yet now they are arguing that the UK should make humiliating lop-sided deals with Trump, whose own former top generals and chief of staff have said is a fascist, to avoid the economic hardship that could come from attracting Trump’s wrath. People in the UK who have felt free to call out Trump’s authoritarianism in the past are now suddenly saying the UK needs to make deals with him no matter what, at any cost to Britain’s sovereignty. Authoritarianism in Russia? Bad. Authoritarianism in America? Good. On that side of the channel, the idea that Europe should collectively respond to the threat of Trump by staying united and quickly casting aside dependence on America doesn’t seem to be even considered by the British establishment. It is taken as given that the UK must remain an American vassal, even if America glides into fascism. These assumptions aren’t limited to the Conservatives. Right on cue, here come the Blairite Labour voices out of the woodwork and into government posts. The same people who blindly followed America into Iraq.

The hypocrisy is even more noxious considering the implications for Ukraine. These same chicken hawks like Boris Johnson who have claimed to be stalwart allies of Kyiv have also been enthusiastically backing a man who is quite clearly going to force Ukraine to surrender. Already over the weekend we got a sign of things to come, with Donald Trump Jr sharing a video from former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin showing President Zelenskyy with the caption “POV: you’re 38 days from losing your allowance”. Meanwhile the Trump team preemptively announced that Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo, and presumably anyone else who wants continued US support to Ukraine, will not be given any position in the new administration. But all that is apparently A-OK with conservatives in Britain, who are pressuring the government to appoint a Putin admirer who blames NATO for the Ukraine war as Britain’s ambassador to America.

Continental cowardice

It would at least be a comfort to think these humiliating shows of fealty were limited to the United Kingdom, but here in continental Europe it isn’t much better. On Wednesday morning, even before the race had been called for Trump by anyone except Fox News, the cloying and desperate-sounding messages of congratulations came pouring in. It started with Trump ally Viktor Orban, followed by Italy’s far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni. And then, it seemed no leader wanted to be the last one to congratulate Trump - for fear of attracting his wrath.

A standard congratulatory message is of course diplomatically necessary and logical. But that these were sent hours before the race was actually called shows the desperation on this continent right now. There is a difference between saying you *hope* for good relations and you *expect* good relations. That's where these reactions seem so dissonant with what citizens know is the reality. Former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the new Secretary General of NATO, claimed that, “President-elect Trump demonstrated strong US leadership throughout his first term in office.” President Zelenskyy said, "We look forward to an era of a strong USA under President Trump’s decisive leadership.” Norway’s prime minister wrote, “The US is Norway's most important partner and ally. I look forward to continuing to strengthen our relationship with the new Trump administration.” Latvia’s prime minister sent out a particularly desperate congratulatory tweet in which she mentioned that “Latvia spends over 3% on defence,” (please mighty emperor Trumo, go after the other Europeans, not us! We’re the good ones!). British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, "I know that the UK-US special relationship will continue to prosper.” Scottish First Minister John Swinney said he is “sure” that Scotland’s ties with the US “will flourish” during Trump’s presidency - for which he got an earful from the opposition. On what could they possibly be basing such assumptions? It comes off as at best naive and at worse desperate flattery. We all know they don't actually feel that way, and they would have been saying something very different about Trump if he had lost. Their citizens are scared of what Trump’s victory will bring to Europe and the world, and then they see their leaders fawning over the new US president seemingly without any thought to defending their own citizens. What are they supposed to think?

These are not the kinds of congratulatory messages European leaders have sent to people like Bolsonaro, Modi or Putin in the past. Those have been diplomatic boiler plate. These went above and beyond, and they contrast sharply with how self-sufficient sovereign countries around the world reacted to Trump’s win. Take China for example, where President Xi "pointed out that history has shown us that China and the United States will benefit from cooperation and suffer from confrontation." Europe is still a continent owned by the United States, and these congratulatory messages suggested an impulse by Europe’s leaders to stick with that status quo rather than reacting to this development with a push for European independence. This instinct comes from fear. With Trump promising retribution for his enemies, they are scared of attracting Trump’s wrath.

Some European leaders got the tone right. French President Emmanuel Macron, who used his speech at the European Political Community Summit in Budapest on Thursday to make an impassioned plea for European sovereignty, wrote in his congratulatory message on Wednesday that he is “ready to work together as we did for four years. With your convictions and mine. With respect and ambition.” Pedro Sanchez gave a short muted congratulations. European Parliament speaker Roberta Metsola wrote: “Europe is ready. To cooperate as we address unprecedented geopolitical challenges. To keep the transatlantic bond strong, rooted in our shared values of freedom, human rights, democracy and open markets.” I thought Metsola’s message particularly got the balance right - stressing that Europe is ready for good relations if Trump wants them, but the ball is in his court. She did not say she expects good relations, because obviously that would be a lie. It is a lie for all of these leaders except Orban and Meloni. Sadly, national leaders didn’t seem to have an appetite for this kind of nuance on Wednesday. I did note that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has been among the more courageous leaders in Europe in criticising Trump over the past year, was the last major leader to congratulate him (and, I think, the only one to wait until the race had been actually called). His message was short and not sweet.

It is understandable that Europe does not want to immediately pick a fight with the new US president. They hope that he will not go through with the trade war with Europe that he promised during the campaign, or with his pledge to end US support for Ukraine. It is understandable that they want to make clear that Europe is not the antagonist here, and the ball is in Trump’s court. The question is whether they are ready to accept reality in the next weeks when Trump demonstrates that he intends to move forward with this aggression toward Europe. Will they meekly fall into line, accepting his terms and begging for his favor? These initial reaction are troubling indications that they will. But it’s also possible that these are the kinds of niceties necessary at this moment, and a more realistic approach will develop over the coming weeks.

This is, without a doubt, an inflection point. Europe should have woken up eight years ago with the first election of Trump, but they didn’t. Now it may be too late, but it’s now or never. If Europe doesn’t end its servile relationship with the United States immediately, there is no hope for this continent’s future peace and prosperity. This will require quickly developing a Europe-only military pillar of NATO (through the EU or outside of it with the UK), and a complete re-evaluation of the NATO protectorate’s role on this continent. It requires strong and decisive action. This is, unfortunately, something that Europeans are not good at. And if past is prologue, this sleepy continent is unlikely to meet this moment and wake up. Particularly with the current crop of leaders, most of whom have failed their citizens deeply with their unshakable commitment to Atlanticism, it is really hard to imagine a good outcome here. But European sovereignty is our only hope. If Europe’s leaders are too blind to understand that, then it is Europe’s citizens that need to make them wake up.