MEETING OPPORTUNITIES FOR EUROPE

For now, Mrs. Angela Merkel retains her role as de facto European Chancellor, simply because there is no alternative. But can Mrs. Merkel's Europe now hold together? Can she become a worthy partner to President Trump in the approaching conflicts over trade relations and regulations, international agreements, relations with Russia ? Can Mrs.Merkel rely on European backing?

There are two opportunities next month for Europe to share its views and meet with representatives of the new administration.

The first opportunity is the meeting of G-20 Foreign Ministers that will take place in Bonn on 16 February. The President pick for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is expected to attend. 

The second opportunity is the Munich Security Conference that will take place on 17-19 February. Mr. Rex Tillerson might come to Munich, as well as might Vice President Mike Pence, Mr. James Mattis’s  President Trump’s designated Defense Secretary and twenty members of Congress are scheduled to attend.

BUT, Mrs. Merkel desperately needs a plan for how she should react to the challenge of Trump's presidency. In Europe, the time for merely talking about community has passed: It's time for a plan that combines an unavoidable deepening of foreign and security policies with greater national autonomy in other political areas. And Mrs.  Merkel needs to think about what long-term position she should take on trade balance surpluses. Germany's export strength is a trademark of its economy, but it is also a significant nuisance to the country's European partners and a target for Trump's protectionist rhetoric.

Now is the time for Europe to forge a constructive plan

The EU has huge stakes in preserving a rules-based global system. A relapse to a world dominated by protectionism, power politics, and competing nationalisms would undermine the EU’s foundation as a transnational union that seeks collective solutions to its members’ problems. The EU’s best defense is to lead the resistance to these tendencies and build support around the values on which it was founded. However, this would require a much greater focus on foreign and security policies, with mobilization of resources and increased solidarity among member states to take responsibility for this task.

 Over decades, Europeans neglected the development of independent strategic thinking and invested far too little in Europe’s own security and defense.

Building capacity must go hand in hand with building coherence. Europe will feature even lower on the Trump administration’s agenda than it has under his predecessor. The new U.S. focus will be on China, Russia, Iran, and the self-proclaimed Islamic State. To the extent that Washington engages with Europe at all, it will likely deal with countries individually. When a leader opposes his agenda, Trump’s government may well seek to play off one European against another. If EU leaders fail to pull together and speak up much more loudly than before, they risk being sidelined.

Rather than fall into despondency, Europeans should see the Trump presidency as a salutary shock. Finally there is real urgency for Europeans to get their act together. Trump has provided an alternative vision of foreign policy that grates against their instincts. His opposition could catalyze European action as no previous U.S. president’s encouragement did.

To take up this challenge, EU leaders will need to make a qualitative shift in the priority they give to external policies, which have too long suffered from political inattention, bureaucratic infighting, and a lack of serious resources. EU foreign policy has a rare chance to emerge from its teenage laziness into full maturity of taking responsibility. But EU leaders have to grasp this opportunity quickly, before the risks and costs become overwhelming as Mr. Trump takes office.

To rise to the challenges that Trump’s foreign policy will present to Europe, the EU must raise its game in several ways.

First of all, the EU must invest in its strengths. The EU has to become more capable of withstanding the onslaught of strongman politics based on transactional relationships by investing in foreign and security policies on the same scale as it has in economic policy. It should move faster toward pooling assets, sharing resources, and building stronger institutional capabilities. Even more importantly, the EU needs to change its mind-set. Foreign policy has long been a sideshow of European integration; now, EU leaders must give it much higher priority. For the first time in the EU’s history, foreign policy needs to become a core responsibility among its areas of competence.

 As a regional power with multilevel decision making, the EU is not well suited to becoming a major geopolitical actor. However, in a world of strongman leaders in the United States, Russia, Turkey, and elsewhere, the EU cannot abstain from realpolitik. In fact, it must get better at it. To start with, the union must streamline its heavy decision making processes and promote greater discipline to overcome its propensity to leaks. However, the need to find agreement among more than two dozen countries will prevent it from ever acting with the speed of a nation-state.

Europeans often point with pride to their ability to bring together an array of instruments, from diplomacy to military assets to trade and development assistance, in tackling international problems. In practice, the EU’s record has often been marred by fights between institutions and with national capitals, but the high representative has helped improve coordination between foreign and security policies, on one hand, and the European Commission’s roles in trade, development, humanitarian aid, and neighborhood policy, on the other. Yet for the EU to become a coherent and comprehensive external actor, its members need to align their policies much more with the common policy of the EU.

The EU needs to upgrade its security and defense. Of all the elements of the EU global strategy, security and defense have received the most attention since the UK referendum. The sense of urgency grows as turmoil in neighboring regions spreads and future U.S. commitment is in doubt.

Since the British referendum, the other 27 member states have made a rapid series of verbal pledges to upgrade investment in European security and defense, strengthen capabilities, enhance cooperation, and improve responsiveness to crises. However, they will need to follow through with stronger political will than they have demonstrated in the past to deliver on these commitments. Long before Trump’s election, U.S. administrations have understandably complained about unequal burden sharing for Europe’s security. Defense budgets are now rising again after a 12 percent drop over the past decade, but European governments need to do a great deal more. Upgrading Europe’s efforts in this area is more vital than ever—whether to convince a reluctant United States to remain engaged or to prepare in case it cannot be convinced.

The European Council, which has so far dealt with foreign policy mainly in crisis-management mode, needs to develop a more strategic approach. The EU’s national leaders need to engage in regular substantive discussions based on strategic analysis provided by the European External Action Service and the commission to build coherence and raise the EU’s collective ambition.