Stucking up to Donald Trump is the order of the day as European allies calculate what his impending return to the White House means. There seems to be a consensus I am massaging them with shameless flattery it is best to avoid repetition of past image and name calls. But another school of thought warns: Trump will be much worse this time. Know your enemy. Prepare to resist.
The US president-elect will appear in Paris this weekend, at restore Notre Dame cathedral, is akin to throwing down the gauntlet. Many Europeans believed that he made a return visit. It is true. Here he is again, demanding attention and adoration. The responses of the political sycophants who have previously vilified him speak volumes about the weakness and division of Europe.
It’s more of an inconvenience. Cloying’s praise is true in Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, and similar to the hard-right populist. Calin Georgescuwho calls himself Trump for Romania. The Emmanuel MacronThe unstable president of France is more disingenuous. He was one of the first to congratulate Trump on his election victory. Paris will come with him, rather pathetically, as a diplomatic matter.
Keir Starmer is wandering aimlessly somewhere in the middle of trouble, trying to be nice. Speaking last week, he rejected the idea that Trump had floated the monitors Britain has to choose between the US and Europe. The UK’s national interest required good relations with both. Recalling their dinner in New York in September, Starmer liberally described Trump as “thankful” — which should be the first.
Potentially embarrassing in another way is the attitude of Trump’s longtime critics as Poland’s prime minister; Donald Tusk. Like many others, he questions what Trump calls “dependence on Russian security services.” Poland takes over the EU presidency in January. The bad blood could exacerbate one of the major rifts in US-Europe relations: Trump’s pro-Putin sympathies and threats to cut military aid to Ukraine.
Trump’s conundrum is still complicated by politics tumult in France and Germany. Government vacuums could make them an easy target for technical dividends and rule-making. a new commission was approved. Berlin, chancellor; Olavi Scholz is waiting for the sack. And in Paris, Macron is playing footsie. It can be more convenient EU countermeasures to Trump trade tariffsfor example, the conversation is about how to buy it better.
Maybe Mark Rutte has magic. He owes his new job to Prince Nato in part to his reputation as a “whispering trumpet” – as the man who, as Dutch prime minister, built a relationship. Rutte “the right man at the time”Paul Rangel, Portugal’s foreign minister, said. Hope Rangel is right. Trump takes a look at Nato’s scam in Europe. The future and Ukraine is on the line.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s increasingly desperate president, is seeking Trump in his own way – and shouting, not whispering. He says American jobs will be lost if aid is cut. It warns of the worst style of rape in Afghanistan. Knowing that he wanted a trumpet, he offered it molecular concessions He speaks of the future peace, wanting to show it. But his bottom line is unchanging: Welcome members, now.
That is an option. There is flattery and rejection. It’s Zelenskyy’s way — appealing to self-interest and offering something in return — that plays to Trump’s transactional, businesslike nature. And it is Starmer’s realpolitik when he emphasizes the imperative to “cooperate”. However, all these strategies face a fundamental problem. At 78, Trump, more than ever, is shallow, egotistical, arrogant, and irrationally masculine. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do, let alone anyone else.
As a result, people with personal experience demand that an altogether more rigorous approach is required. When he was prime minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull found it necessary it will stand at Trumpet or steamrollered. “Two mistakes,” he said. “He was the first other person in office than in the war. The second way of dealing with him was to suck him up.
These errors still prevail in him; Luke Trent argued in a forensic analysis published by the United States Institute of Royal Services. “Hefty dose of air thinking around Trump is marking the reaction of many leaders,” he wrote. As of 2016, “the Trumpet has been particularly critical of European leaders who have rushed to congratulate him and be complimentary to the dictators of the world.”
But now there are great differences. The Trumpet is no longer controlled by the “adults in the room” – seasoned policy experts. Today’s councilors are chosen for their credibility, not their ability. Trump #2 is even more vague on foreign policy than before – but on climate, democracy, Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, security and trade, he challenges the interests of Europe and goods.
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Based at home on the conservative secret agenda, the infamous Project 2025. This first draft of the dictatorship aims to purge and arm the US government, the justice department, the CIA and the FBI, while attacking independent media, universities and other centers. power, opposition Analyst Thomas Edsall sees in this US version of what the South Africans call “capture of the state”.
One thing is certain, wrote Trenta. “Tubtura is not going to be any easier to work with this time around – if anything, it will be worse. World leaders are preparing for a US government that is less stable, less predictable and – most likely – less amenable to diplomacy and compromise.
The trumpet will still be dark. But his second administration is not so easily distracted, delighted, or hindered. Europelet them arrange, arrange, their affairs, as they conduct themselves and their people. Trump’s America will not necessarily be a friend, and may even become an enemy. As Starmer says, these are dangerous times.
Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s Foreign Affairs Commentator
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