The victory of Donald J. Trump will test the ability of America’s European allies to maintain solidarity, do more to build up their own militaries and defend their economic interests.
In anticipation of a Trump victory, there have already been efforts to try to ensure continued support for Ukraine, continuity in NATO and to craft a response should Mr. Trump make good on his threat to apply blanket tariffs on goods imported into the United States.
But the Europeans have a long way to go. A second Trump presidency could serve as a catalyst for Europe to fortify itself in the face of a more undependable America. But it is far from clear the Continent is prepared to seize that moment.
With both the French and German governments weakened by domestic politics, a strong European response may be difficult to construct. And even after one term of Mr. Trump and a war in Ukraine, Europeans have been slow to change.
“A Trump victory is very painful for Europeans, as it confronts them with a question they’ve tried hard to hide from: ‘How do we deal with a United States that sees us more as a competitor and a nuisance than a friend to work with?’ ” said Georgina Wright, deputy director for International Studies at the Institut Montaigne in Paris. “It should unite Europe, but that does not mean Europe necessarily will unite.”
The unpredictability of Mr. Trump — emboldened and empowered by what may be a Republican sweep of both houses of Congress — concerns European allies, since unpredictability cannot be prepared for.
But they also know that Mr. Trump will maintain some clear positions. Those include skepticism for multilateral alliances, an admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and dislike of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, said François Heisbourg, a French defense analyst.
The Europeans will continue and intensify their efforts to keep lines of communication open to a new Trump administration and the key officials within in it, even as they maintain close ties to American legislators who support the trans-Atlantic alliance and NATO.
The main issues are the economy, security and democracy.
When in comes to the economy, the European Union has been planning for months how it might deal with a President Trump.
E.U. officials have put together an initial offer to buy more American goods to try to forestall new tariffs, and drafted reciprocal tariffs on American goods to respond if Mr. Trump does go more protectionist.
On security, there are worries about what a Trump presidency will mean for Ukraine, a war Mr. Trump insists he can end very quickly, and about Mr. Trump’s intermittent threats to withdraw the United States from NATO.
Mr. Trump has been correct and effective in demanding more military spending from Europeans, said Mr. Heisbourg. “But NATO’s Article 5,” a commitment to collective defense, “is not supposed to be a protection racket,” he said. “But that’s Trump’s position, and this time he’ll have more power than he had in the first term.”
Article 5 depends on credibility. Some, like Ivo Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO, think Mr. Trump could destroy that credibility and tempt Mr. Putin to test NATO simply by saying that he would not defend any country that does not pay at least NATO’s goal of 2 percent of gross domestic product toward defense.
Currently 23 of 32 member states do pay that amount or more, including those states most vulnerable to Russia, like Poland and the Baltic nations. But there is also general understanding that 2 percent “must be a floor, not a ceiling,” as NATO leaders keep saying, and that countries must spend even more given the Russian threat.
The new NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, a former prime minister in the Netherlands, knows Mr. Trump from his first term, and Mr. Trump has praised him. Mr. Rutte has told Europeans that they must spend more in their own interests, regardless of who the American president is.
At the same time, there have been some efforts to “Trump proof” support for Ukraine.
NATO is taking over the Ukraine Contact Group, which coordinates support for Ukraine, from the United States. NATO countries have promised to deliver at least 40 billion euros, or about $43 billion, to Ukraine next year, the same amount as this one. And the Group of 7 nations have agreed on using billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets to provide Ukraine $50 billion for next year.
Poland and other countries of Central Europe, including the Baltic nations and Hungary, had a good relationship with Mr. Trump during his first term.
The foreign minister of Poland, Radoslaw Sikorski, said in Warsaw that he was in regular contact with security advisers around Mr. Trump. But Europe, he said, “urgently needs to take more responsibility for its security with increased defense spending.”
He vowed that “Poland will be a leader in strengthening Europe’s resilience.”
That would be best done in cooperation with Britain, France and Germany, said Jana Puglierin of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. But like Mr. Heisbourg, she said that the weakness of the French and German governments can undermine that goal, and that Europeans may instead try to make bilateral deals with Mr. Trump, as they did last time.
“There is little leadership in Europe, and Europe can’t be led by the Commission or by the European Union institutions,” she said, referring to the bloc’s bureaucracy in Brussels, “but only by its strongest members.”
But Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany chose to prioritize his close relationship with President Biden and has not invested in Europe.
Paralyzed and divided, the governing coalition in Berlin collapsed Wednesday night. “Germany is seen as a problem in Europe now,” she said.
Most importantly, Ms. Puglierin said, “We in Europe must confront a lifetime illusion, thinking that Trump was the real aberration and overlooking the deep structural changes in America,” including the shift toward Asia and a growing fatigue with its global responsibilities. “So this is an election that Europeans should take very seriously,” she said.
The German government’s trans-Atlantic coordinator, Michael Link, said Trump’s re-election meant that both the European Union and the European pillar of NATO had to be strengthened and avoid divisions.
“We can’t just passively wait for what Trump will do, or what Putin will do,” he told German radio. But he also said that Europeans must “make clear what we expect of the U.S., that it must fulfill its NATO obligations, and that if it disengages from Ukraine, in the end that would only help China. That if Russia wins in Ukraine, China wins, too.”
There is also concern about democratic values and the rule of law, and Mr. Tump’s evident admiration for those he considers strong leaders, like Mr. Putin, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Xi Jinping of China.
Mr. Trump is seen as the standard-bearer for those populist center-right and right-wing leaders in Europe like Mr. Orban, who has established what he calls an “illiberal democracy,” as well as Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy.
His victory is inevitably going to inspire them and encourage others to duplicate more nationalist and less liberal policies built on stopping unwanted migration and on protectionism.
Europe is already seeing a decline in support for democratic, liberal, progressive values and the rise of extremist parties on the right. Mr. Trump’s victory will embolden them and weaken Europe’s coherence and its voice.
“Spreading liberal values is a lot harder when the president of the largest democracy, the United States, openly contests them,” Ms. Wright said.
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