Trump, Transatlantic Relations and the New EU-US Security Order

By Megan Eve O'Mahony and Ariadni Stavroula Zormpa

This blog post was written for the course "Current Issues in Global and EU Affairs", which took place from February 12-April 30, 2018.

Almost two years after Trump’s election, European leaders still struggle to make sense of his administration’s foreign policy. Trump’s “Doctrine of unpredictability” extends to the sensitive matter of  security and defense agendas. During his first State of the Union address, President Trump said his administration is restoring America’s strength and standing abroad. In a time where Trumps brinkmanship has challenged the global and international order, Europe seems to acknowledge, as Angela Merkel has posited, that the “times in which we could completely depend on each other, are to an extent over.”

To begin with, under the “America first” foreign policy, Trump’s administration published in January 2018 a new National Defense Strategy. Τhe Pentagon’s central message is that “Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security”. China and Russia have been clearly elevated to a top threat, with President Trump vowing to use “all available tools” to prevent China’s “statist policies” to fight trading policies detrimental to the US economy. Terrorism, relegated to a lesser-threat category. Furthermore, another critical point of the document is that the US military is “emerging from a period of strategic atrophy.” The word “atrophy” could be interpreted in different ways. However, we can imagine that in Trump’s vocabulary and under the ‘America first’ narrative, “atrophy” means economic decay concerning military power.

Mr. Trump’s brinkmanship is obvious when it comes to defense strategy. His administration is pursuing a policy to the verge of safety, sometimes forgetting that one of the two sides will eventually collapse. In his 80-minute speech, this is evident; “Around the world, we face rogue regimes, terrorist groups, and rivals like China and Russia that challenge our interests, our economy, and our values.”

It is worth noting, however, that in the context of history, Trump’s perception of transatlantic defence as a zero-sum game may not be an aberration in policy, but an acceleration of America’s retreat from bearing the financial brunt of the “defense burden” for the last 75 years.

America, a country tired by the financial ravages of war has long been critical of European “free riders” not paying their fair share. However, so has Obama, contending in 2014 that Great Britain would no longer be able to claim a “special relationship” if it did not, as part of NATO, commit to spending at least 2% on defence.

In the current administration which theoretically seems to be “strategically predictable but operationally unpredictable”, Merkel’s statement heeds warning. It is consequently imperative that initiatives, such as the European Union’s Global Strategy, PESCO etc., focus on furthering closer security and defence co-operation, as the rapidly changing security and defense  environment provides only one certainty, that nothing is certain.