London
CNN
–
Maintaining a good relationship between the United States and Europe has long been seen as irrational by leaders on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. After all, it is this friendship that led to decades of peace, stability and prosperity.
Then US President Donald Trump came.
In his second term, Trump and his closest assistants have repeatedly expressed a deep contempt for Europe, focusing mainly on their belief that the continent benefits from the United States when it comes to security and trade.
They say that the United States for decades supports defensive spending in Europe, while slapping definitions and commercial barriers in return.
But they seem to hate at least in ideology.
Magda Roj, a senior policy colleague at the European Council for Foreign Relations, said that Trump's foreign policy is an extension of the cultural wars he and his administration against liberalism at home.
She said, “Europe is considered one of the strongholds of that liberal.”
She said that Trump “made America great again” is largely inspired by the disappointment of people from globalization.
“This depends on grievances and intellectual response against globalization, elites, against the international organization, national peers, and everything represented by the European Union,” Rouge told CNN. She added, “Then you have a violent reaction against progressive liberal policies on sex, on education, on immigration. Once again, Europe finds itself on the wrong side of the cultural war.”
The few in the Trump administration have shown a lot of contempt for Europe like JD Vice Vice President.
A few weeks after his term, Vans was amazed by European leaders using his speech at the Munich Security Conference to calm them on freedom of expression and immigration. It went to some extent that the biggest threat to European security was not Russia or China, but “the threat from the inside”, which he described as “the decline in Europe from some of its basic values.”
Follow this with a wide interview with a British website UNHERD on April 15, where he participated in frustrating the president and the president with European leaders.
He said: “The truth is – it is explicit to say that, but it is also correct – that the entire security infrastructure in Europe, throughout my life, has been supported by the United States of America.”
“It is not in the interest of Europe, and it is not in the interest of America, that Europe be a permanent security for the United States.”
However, how much it was hated on the continent is naked when the editor -in -chief of Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, was added by mistake to a group chat for the best Trump officials in the indication of the application of NGOs.
Vans suggested canceling an American attack on the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who were giving the main international shipping routes for several months, as it would help European economies more than America.
“I just hate to save Europe again,” Vans said in the chat.
This observation was in line with Trump's long belief that European countries were able to emphasize the defense because they knew that the United States would enter and save it.
He threatened to remove the United States from NATO and interrogate Article 5 of the treaty, the principle of collective defense – a major pillar of the coalition that was protest only once in its history, after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Trump has spent the defense a big case when he became an American leader for the first time and 22 out of 27 NATO members, 27 members spent less than 2 % of the GDP of defense.
Things have since changed-partly due to Trump's pressure, but mostly due to Russia's aggression against Ukraine, which was a great invitation to wake up to Europe.
In 2024, eight out of 32 of the enlarged alliance did not meet.
Although it is true that the United States has invested a lot of money and workforce in the security of Europe, experts say the image is much more accurate than how Vans and other Trump's first lieutenants are presented.
Rouge said: “The Americans did not do this motivated by their hearts,” Rouge said. “Regardless of the administration, the United States rarely raised something on the foreign policy front, which was not in favor of the national interests of the United States or is in line with it.”
Sudha David-Wilp, Vice President of Foreign Relations and his oldest colleague at the German Marshall Fund in the United States, agreed with this evaluation-warning that moving away from the coalition that has been tested time may end at the costs of the United States.
“Yes, the United States is investing more blood and treasure, but the United States has also benefited from this network that has been created over the past seventy years,” she said to CNN.
The United States managed to rely on supporting its European allies on a number of occasions, even when it did not necessarily benefit from its political position – such as when they refused to condemn the US decision to kill the Iranian general Qasmani in Iraq, or when they support the United States' invasion of Afghan and contributed to the forces to the multiple force required by the growth agreement.
“Is it perfect? ​​Certainly no. Do you need to repair? Yes. But by demolishing everything, it can make (the world) more dangerous and more dangerous for the United States.”
Trump and those who have long been close to him have pushed the United States to retreat from its traditional role as a policeman in the world, and they warned against America's participation in foreign conflicts.
Roj said that the paradox of this is that Vans and other residents of residents are compatible with many European countries that in the past criticized American interventions abroad.
“It could have saved the entire world from the strategic catastrophe that was the invasion led by Iraq,” said
Germany and France opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a position that greatly angered the Bush administration. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs threatened Cologne Powell France with the consequences of “its decision to stand up to Washington. It took the anti-Afranish feelings in the United States-with actions such as” french fries “that are called” Freedom Fries “in institutions throughout the country.
“If you are thinking about the sign chat, as they go to the bombing of the Houthis in Yemen and say,” We will give the bill to Europeans, “well, there is a degree of hypocrisy, because American action – especially in the Middle East and North Africa – has produced huge amounts of obligations in Europe.”
The United States has a wide network of military bases across Europe, where about 80,000 members of the service were deployed there, a decrease from its peak for 20 years of 105,000 at the time of the full invasion of Russia for Ukraine in 2022. The current number is nearly five what it was in the Cold War.
The strategy of developing American forces is closer to conflict areas to World War II and has proven to be beneficial again and again.
While the various departments have linked the number of forces and bases sites, the United States has always maintained a large military presence around the world.
“One can definitely provide reliable arguments that it is important to transfer assets to regions such as India and the Pacific, but it is still logical to have a presence in Europe, because a presence in Europe also helps the United States when it comes to conflict outside the region.”
According to the research conducted by the Atlantic Council, the American taxpayer will cost about $ 70 million annually to rotate the military forces inside and outside Europe instead of being based in Germany and Poland.
The huge investments made by the United States in defense in Europe and other places have directly benefited from the American economy.
Because while Trump and others often make it look as if the United States flows into Europe and Ukraine in particular, what the United States is often doing is pouring money in US defense contractors.
“With regard to what the coalition provided to the United States, along with all other benefits, only in terms of economy – the American economy () was extracted in terms of arms sales and arms production,” Rouge said.
Of more than $ 175 billion of aid allocated by the US Congress to Ukraine since the beginning of the full invasion, more than $ 120 billion has been spent directly with American companies or US forces, according to the Governorate Research Institute.
According to the KIEL Institute, which monitors aid to Ukraine, European countries have provided more assistance to Ukraine more than the United States – first using their current arsenals and then by buying weapons from Western defense industries. With four of the five best international defense contractors, the American industry gets a large part of this new work.
Trump has made his personal contempt for the European Union clear on multiple occasions in recent months. He even complained to Irish Prime Minister Michel Martin, incorrectly, that the bloc made it difficult for him to expand the golf resort in Ireland.
Last month, Trump claimed that the European Union “was formed for the United States Championship” when the “Tahrir Day” tariff was announced.
It was a strange proposal given that the European Union would not likely exist if this was not to pay post -war by the United States to help form it. President Harry Truman was a great defender of European unity, and his American and United States departments supported European integration, as Europe saw a more prosperous and stable commercial partner.
In Trump's global view, the United States is “drunk” by the European Union because it runs a comprehensive trade deficit with the bloc. However, as with defensive spending, the issue is more complicated than Trump may propose.
The United States and the European Union have the largest trade relationship in the world, as goods and services were traded at a value of $ 1.4 trillion in 2023, according to the latest official data available. While the United States turned a commercial deficit with the European Union in the goods, it had a surplus in services.
The two sides were shocked by the edge of the trade war after Trump revealed a 25 % tariff on European steel, aluminum and cars export, and 20 % of “mutual” tariffs on all other goods. The European Union said it will take revenge, but it puts a pause on the planned anti -actions after Trump announced that he would temporarily stop the definitions.
But while the full trade conflict has been avoided at the present time, confidence has been broken between both sides of the Atlantic Ocean-perhaps unorganized.
