So writes German political theorist Herfried Münkler, who speculates on the pragmatic implications for European nations including Germany from a new Trump Presidency. European strategists are understandably particularly concerned about the policy Trump will follow towards NATO. The European NATO nations’ security policies have been intertwined with that of the US and its defense shield essentially since the end of the Second World War. NATO was formally established in 1949.
President Trump, however, does not think in geopolitical categories. He sees himself as a deal maker who exploits opportunities and is intent on giving his country advantages. Trump understands a grand strategy, a comprehensive strategic directive that describes challenges and risks and distinguishes between friend and foe, as a restriction of his freedom of action. He will not feel bound by such things, which is why he will also put the US guarantees for Europe up for grabs at the appropriate opportunity.His record from his first term on geopolitical issues isn’t impressive. He pressured other NATO members to raise their own defense expenditures. But to this day, he speaks publicly about that action as having collected more money for the United States from deadbeat allies. That’s only true in the sense that US defense contractors do more business when European members spend more on NATO-compatible equipment.
It's really not clear that Trump actually understands that, any more than he appears to understand what tariffs are and how they work, or how trade deficits functions. His recent talks about how the US is supposedly subsidizing Canada and Mexico appears to be based – so far as it connects with reality at all – on an assumption that a trade deficit means the country running the deficit is paying a subsidy to them.
Trump’s attack on the so-called Canada subsidy appears to be a reference to the U.S. trade deficit with its northern neighbor. A trade deficit means that the U.S. has purchased more goods and services from Canada than Canada has purchased from the U.S.; the U.S.-Canadian deficit was over $50 billion in 2022.To the extent that Trump understands deals as being a matter of one side winning and the other side losing, that is going to serious constrain his ability to achieve complex international agreements.
There is nothing innately wrong with having a trade deficit with a trading partner. But Trump thinks of every interaction as a zero-sum game and believes that you’re either ripping someone off, or you’re the one getting ripped off. His view is at odds with the perspective of most economists that trade is mutually beneficial and mostly a positive-sum game. That isn’t to say that massive international trade flows don’t have costs for society — they can disrupt labor markets — but to look at differences in exports and imports with one country as a sign of “winning” or “losing” is simply the wrong way to look at the entire enterprise of trade. [my emphasis] (2)
That factor alone, his inability to think of international relations in terms of any grand strategy beyond I-win-and-the-other-guy-loses will make it difficult for him to achieve anything like, for instance, a workable Russia-Ukraine agreement that doesn’t either throw the Ukrainians onto the mercy of Russia and Putin or set up an even more destructive threat of further war.
Münkler sees two basic possibilities for Europe if Trump actually does pull the US out of NATO or critically undermines its credibility as a defensive alliance:
But that basic strategic choice that Münkler describes there is the actual framework which European security considerations have to take into account. If the US pulls out of NATO, the Western nations will still need to maintain a credible military deterrent against Russian territorial and aggression and espionage. Even if the Putin-is-the-New-Hitler hawks who are sure Russia intends to take over everything between the Polish border to the English Canal prefer not to remember it, one of the major reasons that old Soviet Union fell apart was that the expense of maintaining a military presence and economic support for the former Warsaw Pact nations was too expensive.
Still, there are various reasons besides military conquest that Russia may want to impose its preferred policies on current NATO countries. And none of the current NATO members are likely to want to initiate anything like “unilateral disarmament.” And with President-elect Trump making bizarre threats about annexing Canada and Mexico and the Panama Canal and, uh, Greenland (?!), (3) European nations do have other military risks to think about than the proverbial Russian Bear.
Greenland, by the way, is an official part of the Kingdom of Denmark (a NATO ally). Greenland opera)tes under a Home Rule type of government, which is, broadly speaking, a type of regional autonomy.
And as the ice continues to melt around the Arctic, the US and Russia and various European countries will be maneuvering for advantageous positions in the new opportunities for access oil resources that are already opening up.
The other side of European risk and opportunity if the US abandons NATO is to work out new practical relationships with Russia that includes sufficient military and intelligence deterrents to Russian aggression and meddling while developing more constructive long-term relationships with it. After all, it was primarily the Americans who pushed the confrontation over Ukraine to the point it reached in 2014 and 2022. The European allies can certainly be criticized for not refusing to go along with the Cheney-Bush Administration’s insistence on proclaiming in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would someday be members of NATO that provided the background for the current Russia-Ukraine War. And, yes, we can recognize that practical reality while also recognizing that Russian aggression against its neighbors is unjustified.
And if Trump insists on shredding the transatlantic trade relationships between the US and the EU with his tariff obsession, there’s no reason that the EU countries and Russia have to be equally capricious and non-strategic in their foreign and military policies.
Münkler describes those possible options as follows:
Although Münkler is careful to add to his description of that idea that it would be a situation “in which Moscow sets the tone.”
Notes:
(1) Münkler, Herfried (2024): Der kurze Weg nach Osten. Der Spiegel 2024:47 (18.11.2024). My translation from German.
(2) Aleem, Zeeshan (2024): Trump's post about how we 'subsidize' Canada is nonsense. MSNBC/Yahoo! News 12/22/2024. <https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-trumps-post-subsidize-canada-112111498.html> (Accessed: 2024-23-12).
(3) Trump: The U.S. Should Control The Panama Canal, Greenland. NPR YouTube channel 12/23/2024. <https://youtu.be/IZP4mP7vmZ8?si=7CsANM9JR4CkgLTX> (Accessed: 2024-24-12).
(4) Pick, Hella (1989): Gorbachev outlines common home plan. The Guardian 07/07/1989. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/from-the-archive-blog/2019/jul/10/gorbachev-vision-for-a-common-european-home--july-1989> (Accessed: 2024-24-12).
The first is to move closer together, to strengthen the European Union and thereby to build up much greater military capabilities. At the heart of this must then be a separate European nuclear deterrence component. ...The history of the Cold War and the post-1989 “unipolar moment” of overwhelming US superiority as a world power has provided many examples where ostensibly defensive motives have provided cover for aggressive, imperialistic, sometimes criminal, and more often unnecessary actions that led to war or heightened the risk of doing so. And the human race being what we are, that kind of thing is likely to continue. The ongoing horrors of Israel’s current war in the Middle East, fully supported by Washington, is the ugliest and most dramatic reminder of that.
The alternative is to move closer to Russia and its political expectations. Then there is no need to build up capabilities to deter the Kremlin. Such a geopolitical turn, which the populist-led countries in Europe are already working towards, will be all the easier the lower the transatlantic trade volume is - and this will decrease if Trump's economic policy is also directed against the Europeans.
But that basic strategic choice that Münkler describes there is the actual framework which European security considerations have to take into account. If the US pulls out of NATO, the Western nations will still need to maintain a credible military deterrent against Russian territorial and aggression and espionage. Even if the Putin-is-the-New-Hitler hawks who are sure Russia intends to take over everything between the Polish border to the English Canal prefer not to remember it, one of the major reasons that old Soviet Union fell apart was that the expense of maintaining a military presence and economic support for the former Warsaw Pact nations was too expensive.
Still, there are various reasons besides military conquest that Russia may want to impose its preferred policies on current NATO countries. And none of the current NATO members are likely to want to initiate anything like “unilateral disarmament.” And with President-elect Trump making bizarre threats about annexing Canada and Mexico and the Panama Canal and, uh, Greenland (?!), (3) European nations do have other military risks to think about than the proverbial Russian Bear.
Greenland, by the way, is an official part of the Kingdom of Denmark (a NATO ally). Greenland opera)tes under a Home Rule type of government, which is, broadly speaking, a type of regional autonomy.
And as the ice continues to melt around the Arctic, the US and Russia and various European countries will be maneuvering for advantageous positions in the new opportunities for access oil resources that are already opening up.
The other side of European risk and opportunity if the US abandons NATO is to work out new practical relationships with Russia that includes sufficient military and intelligence deterrents to Russian aggression and meddling while developing more constructive long-term relationships with it. After all, it was primarily the Americans who pushed the confrontation over Ukraine to the point it reached in 2014 and 2022. The European allies can certainly be criticized for not refusing to go along with the Cheney-Bush Administration’s insistence on proclaiming in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would someday be members of NATO that provided the background for the current Russia-Ukraine War. And, yes, we can recognize that practical reality while also recognizing that Russian aggression against its neighbors is unjustified.
And if Trump insists on shredding the transatlantic trade relationships between the US and the EU with his tariff obsession, there’s no reason that the EU countries and Russia have to be equally capricious and non-strategic in their foreign and military policies.
Münkler describes those possible options as follows:
It is likely that German voters will be the decisive factor in deciding on the first or second path in Europe, and a continued snub by the second Trump administration will be offset by a number of tempting offers from the Kremlin. If the second way is thought through to the end, the transatlantic West will be replaced by the geopolitical concept of a Eurasian space that stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok and in which Moscow sets the tone.Yes, Münkler there is no doubt echoing the famous but unfulfilled idea of the Soviet Union’s last leader: “President Mikhail Gorbachev [in 1989] outlined his vision of a ‘unified European community for the 21st century’, based on political reality and a doctrine of restraint and targeted on the creation of a ‘vast economic space from the Atlantic to the Urals’.” (4)
Although Münkler is careful to add to his description of that idea that it would be a situation “in which Moscow sets the tone.”
Notes:
(1) Münkler, Herfried (2024): Der kurze Weg nach Osten. Der Spiegel 2024:47 (18.11.2024). My translation from German.
(2) Aleem, Zeeshan (2024): Trump's post about how we 'subsidize' Canada is nonsense. MSNBC/Yahoo! News 12/22/2024. <https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-trumps-post-subsidize-canada-112111498.html> (Accessed: 2024-23-12).
(3) Trump: The U.S. Should Control The Panama Canal, Greenland. NPR YouTube channel 12/23/2024. <https://youtu.be/IZP4mP7vmZ8?si=7CsANM9JR4CkgLTX> (Accessed: 2024-24-12).
(4) Pick, Hella (1989): Gorbachev outlines common home plan. The Guardian 07/07/1989. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/from-the-archive-blog/2019/jul/10/gorbachev-vision-for-a-common-european-home--july-1989> (Accessed: 2024-24-12).
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