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What is the end of Donald Trump’s foreign policy game? That question has not been asked enough since the United States vice president, JD Vance, surprises with a speech in Munich.
It is clear that Trump and his cronies want to bury the international order based on rules and restore the great power of power that preceded it. They seem to prefer a world divided into spheres of influence under a handful of great states led by strong men.
But even if (especially yes) that is your goal, why would they want to push Europe to a sphere of Russian influence? Because this is the obvious consequence of withdrawing the protection of the United States or helping the equivalents of Europe to power to power. An abandoned Europe would also see less reasons to meet behind an aggressive American approach to China. If Trump’s worldview is reddish how the gangsters could divide a city into the gang territories, how does it make sense to evict the most lucrative and powerful territory outside their territory?
Thine are often projected, so take what they say about others as an indicator of what they think of themselves. That has been true for a long time for Trump, and also goes for Vance’s speech. Its most shocking line, “the threat that worries me the most” is not Russia or China, but “the threat from within” Europe, it is better that identifies the strongest adversary of Europe, but of the objectives of the Trump regime.
Russia and China, after all, can be geopolitical powers with which the United States must understand. But they do not raise any challenge, much less an alternative model, for the world of Maga, Trump and Vance are occupied by building, especially within the US It has the ability to put resistance that matters to Maga America and its great technological oligarchy.
It is true that it is not rival for the United States militarily, not even able to ensure its own defense without American help, yet. But even this is changing, like Elisabeth Braw recently indicated With respect to the relative self -sufficiency of the joint expeditionary force of the north in Europe in the Baltic Sea. Trump can find that assuming responsibility for his own security makes Europe less in a more flexible place.
Commercially, the EU is already a power to take into account. It is a huge market for Trump Tech Bro executives. When the EU chooses (it often does not), it can act autonomously throughout the world, pursue their interests strongly and, in particular, regulate its local market as it considers it convenient. That matters to him technology industry more than most.
Europeans reacted more viscerally to Vance’s reinforcement for the extreme right, but their name Elon Musk should give them so much pause. The new leadership of the United States fights EU regulation to pave the way to the power of the extreme right, or does it rest on the extreme right to promote governments willing to give great technology to the great technology? Like chickens and eggs, it is not a terribly useful question: both important. But do not minimize the impulse to discourage the regulatory sovereignty of Europe for the benefit of American technology. It is the most consistent conversation point between Trump’s henchmen.
Why do Europe care so much? In part, of course, because it is easier to earn money if you can sell the same extractive services to European consumers who have already inflicted Americans. Politically, because it replicates the greatly powerful tools to influence the voters that Trump’s camp has built in the United States.
But it is also due to the European insistence that technological developments must be done in a way that respect consumers and citizens foster the development of alternatives. The great technology of the United States often decreases European regulation on the argument that EU rules kill innovation in Europe. But if that were true, what would they have to complain about? The lack of innovation in Europe would reduce competition against them.
If, contrary to what they say, the technological regulations of Europe are necessary conditions (if not enough) so that alternative products and technologies arise, the visceral opposition of Big Tech makes more sense. It is a sign that Europe is on the right path. You must advance instead of deviating.
The EU and its member states should, in a perverse sense, be flattered. The insults and contempt have been designated as the most serious adversary in Trump’s magic world, one that must be discouraged first. Europe should embrace the paradox that Trump and his cronies keep the EU in greater esteem than the Europeans themselves, and demonstrates a worthy adversary.