Mark Leonard says Trump has been indulging in a „demolition“ frenzy since he came to office in January 2018, withdrawing from multilateral agreements – the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the nuclear deal with Iran and the Paris climate accord – that his predecessor concluded. In the course of 18 months he has humiliated allies and called treaties into question that America had upheld for decades.

Given Trump’s aversion toward multilateral organisations – like the European Union and the World Trade Organisation – that “strengthen smaller and weaker countries vis-à-vis the US” he prefers bilateral deals that allow him to bully inferior counterparts. But “because Trump has been able to pick new fights so fast, other countries have struggled to keep up, let alone form effective alliances against him.” However, it may more be a modus operandi than a strategy.

The author – a “committed Atlanticist and multilateralist – says it hurts him that Trump has repeatedly picked on Europe, calling it a “foe.” He has softened his stance after he met Jean-Claude Juncker yesterday. Nonetheless Trump can no longer be trusted. This leaves the EU as “the guardian of a status quo that has ceased to exist.” The widening Transatlantic gap, is not going to be closed soon. So “the time has come for Europe to redefine its interests, and to develop a new strategy for defending them.”

The EU must stand up to the US and preserve “the rules-based order that Trump hopes to tear down, and its interests with respect to the Middle East.” If the G7 has become obsolete, “a new G6 might offer a defense of the rules-based system.” While cooperating with the US as much as they can, Europeans must not “subordinate their own interests.” As Trump has threatened to withdraw from NATO and leave Europeans to their devices, they must “start investing in military and economic autonomy.”

Given the US dominance in the global finance, Europe remains “captive to the tyranny of the dollar system” and can not honour the nuclear deal with Iran, without risking sanctions from the Washington. The EU must be “ready to trade across different policy areas to make deals.” It could “gain more leverage” if it would “form an independent middle-power alliance” and avoid being “crushed between the rocks of a rising China and a declining America.”

What Europeans need to resist is foreign powers’ divide-and-conquer trick, that sows discord between EU member states and widens the east-west and north-south divides. Russia has long been playing this trick in Western Europe. Now China and the US do the same. How the Trump administration exercised pressure on eastern EU member states, like Romania, to “break ranks” with the EU, by urging Bucharest to move its embassy to Jerusalem, was appalling. Beijing used its economic might to force EU member states in southern and eastern Europe to “water down” a joint EU statement on China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

The author says it is unclear how the EU will cope with being “for itself.” No doubt investing more for a strong and secure bloc would reassure countries “on the periphery” that they would have “something to lose by undermining EU cohesion.” Perhaps the EU might rewin their trust and persuade them to honour the EU liberal values and forge closer foreign-policy cooperation. Nevertheless the EU “urgently needs to chart a new course. Rather than being perpetually surprised and outraged by Trump’s affronts, Europeans must develop their own foreign policy with which to confront his behavior.”