German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is planning a trip to China early this year, probably at the end of February. That includes British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose government just surrendered to Beijing by giving the green light to the “mega embassy,” assuring that the visit will go ahead. French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife traveled to the Chinese capital in early December.
Europe is desperately looking to China to achieve elusive trade and security goals. Sadly, as Margaget Thatcher once said, there is ‘the stench of appeasement’ in the air. European leaders are absolutely determined to appease the Chinese, regardless of what Beijing does to impoverish Europeans and endanger their homeland.
At the same time, the decline in support for the US across Europe is, as Mark Leonard, director and co-founder of the European Council on Foreign Relations, notes, “all the way across the continent.”
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“Europeans,” Leonard writes, “have already realized that Washington is more enemy than friend.”
Enemy? Europeans are now focused on President Donald Trump’s brazen demands to annex Greenland, a territory of Denmark. His implicit threats to use force – “anyway, we will get Greenland,” he told reporters this month – and tariff threats are alienating Europe, of course, but European leaders are not keeping their eyes on what is important.
In fact, they just don’t get Trump.
For starters, they should criticize themselves for ignoring the real threat: the Chinese and Russian armies were openly threatening to dominate the Arctic with frequent and aggressive air and sea patrols. China is additionally installing its own infrastructure of satellite earth stations and fiber optic cables in the region, as part of its Polar Silk Road and Digital Silk Road initiatives.
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Trump was right when he noted that Greenland’s defense now consists of “two dog sleds.”
NATO countries – France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium – are now sending military personnel to the world’s largest island. Yes, this small deployment is apparently intended to prevent Trump from invading, but it ensures that they take seriously Greenland’s defenses, which have long been neglected by both Denmark and NATO.
More generally, the American president has been good to Europe, shaking it out of an almost terminal slumber. Even after two Russian invasions of Ukraine, European leaders struggled to take necessary action.
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As NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stated last month, Trump has been good for the Atlantic Alliance, calling member states’ recent pledge to spend at least 5% of their economic output on defense the US president’s “greatest foreign policy success.” He also said that NATO is “stronger than ever” and that the US president “is good news” for both collective defense in general and for NATO in particular.
The Europeans are understandably furious at Trump’s abrasive tactics, but they did not back down when previous US presidents, including Trump himself in his first term, used only soft words to get them to increase absolutely necessary defense spending.
Trump’s actions for the second term were therefore necessary. And although Europe had effectively abandoned itself in its stupor, Trump has the best intentions. His National Security Strategy, published last month, makes this crucial point: “We will need a strong Europe to help us compete successfully, and to work with us to prevent an adversary from dominating Europe.”
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At this moment, Europeans are reacting emotionally. “The rules-based order is giving way to a world of spheres of influence, where might makes right and the West is divided from within,” Leonard wrote.
Leonard and others aren’t paying attention. Trump believes that foreign powers should keep out of the Western Hemisphere – the ‘Donroe Doctrine’, as it is now called – but he does not believe that Russia in Europe or China in Asia should have their own turf. Trump’s short and easy-to-read strategy document makes that clear.
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The National Security Strategy prioritizes regions, with Europe third after the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific. Whatever you think of Trump’s division of the world – I don’t think that with China and Russia challenging America across the board, the world can be broken up in that way now – Europe is still seen as a power in control of its own destiny.
Leonard, also author of Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail, rightly points out that the rules-based order is dead or dying. Many in Europe, including Leonard, blame Trump, but here they are wrong. China and Russia have undermined the rules-based order throughout the century, including with their invasions of Ukraine.
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Americans and Europeans, seeking to accommodate Beijing and Moscow, refused to defend that order when they had the chance. It is to his credit that Trump takes the world as it is. He uses American power to keep America safe.
In doing so, he also makes the world safe for Europe.
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