Afrasianet - "for me, it's simple, the world is made up of herbivores and carnivores. If we decide to remain herbivores, the carnivores will triumph and we will be their market."
French President Emmanuel Macron
Donald Trump, who emerged 4 years ago from the White House in a miracle, returned again with the votes of American voters who chose him, throwing behind their backs Kamala Harris, the candidate of the Democratic Party and Vice President Joe Biden, who was burdened by the government and imposed its tax on her before she even ran alone.
The news was not good for Europeans, and they did not hide it even before the start of the electoral battle, and here are their tongues showing the anxiety that inhabits the hearts of the Republican president, whose orientations they have previously tested, to the top of the pyramid of the most powerful country in the world. The first voices of apprehension emerged from Budapest, the Hungarian capital, at the European Political Community summit last Thursday, during which French President Emmanuel Macron took the opportunity to talk about the need for Europeans to take their internal security issues seriously away from pledges. Americans and their sudden fluctuations.
Macron considered at the beginning of the summit that the current moment is a defining and decisive moment for Europeans, as the war waged by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the east of the continent, the US elections, and Chinese options in terms of technology, give the old continent the opportunity to write history instead of watching other parties write it as dictated by their interests. In the same speech, the French president will ask who will defend the Europeans' choices if the Americans have chosen someone to defend their interests.
Whoever will defend the Americans, according to Emmanuel Macron's intention, will be none other than the new old US President Donald Trump, a man who, to say the least, shows little enthusiasm and no clear love for Europeans not only now, but even before he ascended to power in his first term. During an interview with the British newspapers "The Times" and the German "Bild" in January 2017, days before his first term, Trump came out with statements that sparked a lot of controversy, in which he aimed the bullets of his words towards Europe and swore an oath NATO together. In this interview, Trump said that former German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a "catastrophic" mistake after flooding Europe with refugees after opening the borders to people fleeing the flames of war in the Middle East.
Trump said Germany should invest in creating no-fly zones in Syria to protect the Syrian people from bombing rather than hosting refugees. The president-elect's attack did not stop there, but considered that the entire European Union is only a tool for Germany, so he supported Britain's decision to withdraw from this union, considering that this decision is in the interest of the British, and expressing his desire to conclude a trade agreement with London quickly. Trump's statement is completely different Citing an earlier statement by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, who said that if Britain leaves the European Union, it must accept its place at the bottom of the line in order to be able to sign trade agreements with the United States.
Trump did not stop there, after a link of praise in love with Britain, from which his Scottish mother hails, he expressed a controversial prediction, especially that it came from Europe's greatest ally, stressing that the European Union is destined to collapse, and the reason is that other countries will join the exit caravan that London started because of the immigration policy pursued by the old continent.
Trump was therefore not reassuring to the Europeans in 2017, and cannot be described as reassuring until today, as the US president who returns to rule America next January after winning the US presidential elections earlier this month, has a vague and worrying plan to stop the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, according to him, and an equally ambiguous idea related to ending the conflict with China, and he did not give a brief about these ideas that can be predicted that they will not like neither Kiev nor Paris and Berlin.
The American "contempt" view of Europe goes back far before Trump. In fact, many American presidents have expressed – perhaps in more diplomatic ways – their resentment that Europeans, especially Germans, did not spend enough arming their armies and relying on the United States, until Trump came and took off the wooden mask of diplomacy and said in Europe what Malik did not say in wine, and considered the European Union the most dangerous for his country after China, thus evoking a history of tensions hidden by time behind the scene of apparent consensus. Between the two alliances on both sides of the Atlantic.
Extended colonial family
Outsiders usually put America and Europe in one basket under the name of the "West", on the basis that this West is one thing, united peoples, with the same outlook and goals, possessing the same past, and anticipating the future with the same concerns and expectations. But history and the present tell us that Westerners may not always be on the heart of one man, and that their relations can often be purely pragmatic.
Nothing is more illustrative than the way relations between the two allies were established on purely colonial rules. In 1607, Britain established its columns in the first colony in Jamestown, Virginia, where the British established their plantations along Chesapeake Bay after the discovery of tobacco. This was followed by the longest migration period from Europe that lasted for almost two centuries. During that period, European immigrants came looking for opportunities from Germany and the Netherlands, but the British remained the most frequent arrivals to the United States, where the majority worked. Overwhelming them are farmers.
The new land did not offer complete bliss to white Europeans, although what they were living in could by no means compare to the resident hell of blacks brought to the new land by white colonizers. Once on the newly discovered continent, the migrants worked on temporary contracts through which they received food, housing, and clothing without any salary for several years, after which the worker was free to marry and start a new life that began with the establishment of a private farm.
Migrations from Britain to the United States were not only economic, but also had some religious reasons, as some areas such as Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania experienced religious migrations such as the settlement of some of these areas by the British Religious Society of Friends, and then joined by groups from Northern Ireland and German Protestant sects who came to preach their vision of the Christian religion.
In the aftermath of the American War of Independence (1775-1783) the umbilical cord that united the New Land with its early colonizers was severed, however, rapprochement remained an indispensable strategic choice for both parties, with Europe's political dominance of the New World, but that hegemony began to disappear at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the outbreak of World War I. Initially, the United States took a neutral position to ensure economic dealings with the warring parties, supplying everyone with food commodities, military equipment, and raw materials, despite some difficulties. Germany reacted by its submarines targeting many American ships, including the passenger ship "Louisiana", which was sunk by German forces and had 198 American citizens on board.
America continued its policy of restraint despite everything that happened, especially since the number of German-Americans exceeded 4 million. However, several variables prompted Washington to modify its position, the first of which was the German cable to Mexico, which was intercepted by the Americans, which revealed that the German government expressed its readiness to help Mexico recover a number of US states, namely Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, in addition to Germany's intention to establish military bases in Washington's backyard in Latin America, in addition to increasing Its military presence in the Far East. The administration realized that neutrality was no longer feasible and that it was time to go to war on Britain's side.
The United States will enter the war in two stages, the first phase during which US President Woodrow Wilson announced on the third of February 1917 the severance of diplomatic relations between his country and Germany, and the second stage was the declaration of war on Germany officially on the sixth of April of the same year, after German submarines sunk other commercial ships, causing new material and human losses.
Washington's entry into World War I, which ended with Germany's request to America to mediate with the Allies to negotiate an end to the fighting, was overturned and the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. During the few months of the war in which the United States participated, it was able to achieve many gains, as it was the first creditor of Europe before and during the war, and was able to seize the property of the Germans and their factories, especially those active in the production of chemicals, accumulating very large economic and industrial gains. And most importantly All of this proved that Europe could not find clear formulas to resolve its differences, prompting US President Wilson to stress the need to change the form of diplomacy followed in the world at the time.
To put it more bluntly, the war changed the balance of power across the Atlantic, and America was given the upper hand in its relationship with Europe for the first time, as European countries began to rely on America for their military needs and even in the conduct of their economic affairs because of the great losses suffered by the whole of Europe, with its victors and defeaters. America has begun to climb the ladder of glory of global domination on the back of the Europeans themselves, but full accession to the throne of the world has not yet taken place, but it needed a second page, with a lot of ruin and many Bloodsuckers.
Transmission Drive
In an almost identical version of World War I, World War II began with a slight change in player level. The drums of war began to beat from afar because of a former German soldier who fought in World War I, who was not satisfied with the terms, circumstances and results of the war, so he wanted to redistribute the cards through a new round of German fire that would sweep Europe, this soldier of Austrian origin was called: Adolf Hitler.
Hitler soon declared war by forcibly annexing the territory of his neighbors, and it was not long before he took a souvenir photo in front of the Eiffel Tower, announcing the arrival of Nazism in the heart of Paris. At the same time, the United States took a position identical to its position during World War I, neutrality at first, and then a necessary clash when things reached such an extent that neutrality could not be maintained.
On December 7, 1941, the U.S. fleet was attacked by the Japanese Air Force and Navy in the Hawaiian Islands after Washington decided to cut off fuel supplies to Japan, prompting America to go to war against its will. Washington's entry into the war was an event no less important than the outbreak of the war itself, as it favored the Allies who had previously suffered from the alliance of fascism with Nazism, but the most important thing for Washington was not victory in the war, but what was to come. After the war, which ended with almost the same list of victors and defeaters during World War I, Washington rose as a global superpower.
But this rise was not without a rival who corrupted the Americans' dominance among the list of victors in the war: the Soviet Union led by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, a man America saw as no less dangerous than Hitler. In the end, Europe was divided between the Americans and the Soviets by an "iron curtain," in the words of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, an eastern part dominated by the Soviets, and a western part allied with the United States.
Fearful that the communist East would precede them into a devastated Europe, Americans were determined to provide very bright support to Europe, a tailored economic support that would give the old continent the kiss of life. This support began with the so-called "Truman Doctrine", which takes its name from US President Harry Truman, an American commitment to support democracies (America's allies) in the face of authoritarian regimes (Soviet allies), which ended with the most important economic project Europe has known after two debilitating wars, the Marshall Plan.
Europeans were utterly powerless to help themselves build what had been destroyed by the flames of discord between them. So General George Catlett Marshall asked George Forrest Kennan, the foreign policy planner of the United States of America, to develop an economic assistance plan for Europe, and this project had two main goals, to help the European ally and prevent it from falling into the hands of the Soviet Union. This fall will certainly not be military, as Catlett saw, but the fear was all the fear was the exploitation of the economic discontent of the European Communist parties to pass Her ideas within Western societies.
The result of the Marshall Plan was $17 billion in aid to Europe over 4 years (equivalent to more than $200 billion in accounts today), distributed to 16 countries. The Marshall Plan helped Europe grow and invest, and helped modernize European industries and infrastructure, but stamped Europe's economic dependence on America, just as NATO did launched by Washington and its European allies after the Soviet siege of Berlin in 1949, to allow the deployment of American troops and weapons throughout Western Europe. He imposed U.S. military hegemony on the continent.
NATO initially resulted from French and British desire after World War II. During that period, the Russians had not left the territory they had controlled, which was dangerous for Europeans who were wary of the idea that Russia would not leave the territory it had controlled. But after the outbreak of the Korean War, which would result in two opposing Koreas, these countries quickly established an integrated military structure for NATO, and the role of this alliance was to "keep the Russians in abroad, Americans at home, Germans under trusteeship," says NATO First Secretary-General Lord Hastings Ismay.
Enemy Brothers
American hegemony over the Atlantic alliance continued throughout the Cold War, driven by Europe's fears of communist expansion coming from the East, but this hegemony appeared to be challenged in France, the stronghold of the Atlantic rebellion. It began during the First Indo-Chinese War, also known as the Vietnamese-French War, which showed the first differences between Washington and Paris, differences that were exacerbated by the return of the messenger of the Fifth French Republic, General de Gaulle, to power in France at the end of the fifties, expressing his clear desire to split a third line that does not He necessarily approaches Moscow, but he is not subservient to the White House.
De Gaulle demanded the sharing of leadership in NATO between America and Europe, and when Washington rejected his demands, he rushed to reduce his country's membership in NATO, withdrawing from the military leadership of NATO. It is noteworthy that this desire "independence" was not exclusive to de Gaulle, although he was the most prominent advocate of it, these calls have spread in many European regions, without forgetting the broadcast of intrigue made by France and Britain between the Soviets and the United States of America in the sixties, but these things were often done Contain it quickly in favor of the most important interests between the two parties.
In the seventies, the gap between the Atlantic allies widened even more. Economically, the Nixon shock (1971) and the disengagement between the dollar and gold caused a major recession in Europe, with a loss of confidence in America that dealt a major blow to European currencies without the slightest hesitation. Militarily and politically, the United States has been preoccupied with the war in Vietnam and Nixon and Kissinger's own initiative for rapprochement with China, pushing Europe down the list of American concerns.
Events such as the October 1973 war, the oil shock that hit Europe and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 cut the ropes of the US-European détente. Although relations were relatively calm in the eighties, some of U.S. President Reagan's initiatives, such as the Star Wars program and the bombing of Libya (1984), ignited muted differences among NATO allies, yet the alliance remained prosperous because the communist threat that originally gave rise to it remained.
But with the entry of McDonald's to Moscow in the early nineties, and the Russians lining up in groups and individually in front of the restaurant waiting for the Big Mac, it was clear that the communist empire had completely collapsed, and that America had achieved a great victory that may exceed its victory in the two world wars, overthrowing a great power that shared every inch of the world with it, thus opening a new page as the sole and essential hero of the scene.
As U.S. leadership took hold, Washington began to gradually disengage from Europe by closing many of its military bases, but began to forge a new balance of power in Europe to serve its interests by supporting the rise of a united Germany to rival rebellious France for leadership. On the other hand, the new Europe began to try to rely on itself through the establishment of the European Union, the adoption of the single European currency project, and the launch of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as a partial replacement for NATO, until the strikes of the trade center came on 11 September 2001 to change all plans and scatter all papers.
For the first time in its history, NATO will activate Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which states that all members of the Alliance must assist any member that has been attacked. America benefited from NATO support in Afghanistan, but Europe (with the exception of Britain) began to show its distress when it realized that the neoconservative war would not stop at the borders of Kabul, and that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their comrades wanted a green card to intervene wherever they wanted and in whatever ways they wanted to fight everything they called "terrorism." He pushed them towards another devastating adventure in Iraq.
Atlantic relations improved relatively during Obama's early years, with the easing of the war on terrorism and the US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, but that era was not without inconveniences, the most important of which was America's decision to focus on Asia, which Europe saw as marginalizing the Atlantic region, especially with Washington withdrawing more than 10,000 troops from Europe during Obama's second term, despite Russia proving its threat to Europe in practice by seizing Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014.
America First
European-American relations have never been hit as hard as Donald Trump, the man who ascended to the White House in early 2017 with the slogan "America First", returning his country to the pre-war "isolation" eras. Trump has scorned the alliance with Europe as no American president has done in history, calibrating Europeans for American protection, demanding that they pay for it, and attacking Germany, the most important country in the European Union, saying it has built prosperous cities and economies dependent on U.S. troops. Most importantly, He withdrew 12,000 U.S. troops from Germany, leaving the fewest U.S. troops in Europe since World War II.
However, there is no example that can explain the deterioration of European-American relations under Trump, perhaps in an unethical way, more than the era of the Corona pandemic in 2020, when transatlantic conflicts erupted not over weapons or money, but over masks and ventilators. During this period, the German authorities officially announced their protest against the "theft" by the United States of America of two hundred thousand medical masks that Berlin had purchased to confront the pandemic. The same thing will happen between America and France, when Valerie said Pécresse, president of the Ile-de-France region, said the Americans had received a shipment of masks that the French were supposed to receive in their last breath after Washington doubled the manufacturer's financial offer.
It was not surprising that Washington had done it again with a number of other French provinces, so much so that it seized a shipment from a Chinese airport runway that was supposed to arrive hours later on French soil, although US officials denied this. This was typical of what looked like pre-civilizational survival struggles, but it was brought to the present by the leaders of the free world, when their interests fundamentally conflicted.
The Joe Biden era has failed to address the effects of the Trump era, although Russia's war on Ukraine in 2022 temporarily revived the Atlantic alliance, after America pushed to send thousands of troops to Europe, as well as more than $175 billion in military expenditures and US economic aid due to the war. In the midst of the artificial spectacle of transatlantic unity, Western partners were putting each other's bodies behind the scenes, after the United States and Britain, its pre- and post-Brexit partner, unveiled the largest submarine deal. to Australia, as part of the AUCOS defence agreement, which will enable Australians to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
During the presentation ceremony, which was attended alongside Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese by US President Joe Biden and former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, details of the deal, which will be worth between $268 billion and $368 billion, aimed at Australia joining America and Britain to monitor China in the Pacific. This deal has created major problems, not for China, the main target of submarines according to the stated agenda, but for France, the party that forcibly removed from this agreement.
Against the backdrop of the US-British deal, Australia decided to cancel a submarine deal it had agreed with France, causing Paris to be angry, as Macron quickly recalled his ambassador, and France canceled a meeting that was supposed to bring together its Ministry of Defense with the Ministry of Defense of Great Britain. In a statement completely out of diplomatic tact, French President Macron publicly accused Australia's prime minister of lying in front of screens, and former French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian stated that his country had recalled its ambassadors in Canberra and Washington to reassess the situation, at an unprecedented point of decline in relations.
The submarine deal clearly showed the tense relationship hidden by the diplomatic smiles distributed in official forums among the Westerners themselves, especially the completely tense relationship between France and the United States. With Trump re-elected to the presidency, Europeans must face a new nightmare, which was the last thing they waited to face as the Russians hit the heart of Europe.
Former German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Trump's "America First" slogan should have an equally clear slogan of "Europe First." Trump's victory should lead the Europeans to unite more because of the ally's shift from his previous position, but this unification will never be easy, as the most fragile countries in Russia's neighborhood will be more eager to sign agreements with Trump than Berlin, Paris or even the European Commission.
From a European point of view, Trump poses an existential threat, but he is not the only danger, as the old continent is living many economic, political and social problems, without forgetting the rise of far-right currents, the first enemy of the European Union, which shows an anti-American stance and promises national sovereignty and non-dependence on any other party, even if this party is Washington and its white house, which means that the Atlantic separation may turn into a mutual desire of both parties in the end.