Trump meets Putin

What does that have to do with Europe?

Source of the photo: Reuters

Right after the NATO summit, President Donald Trump scheduled a very important meeting with his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin. This comes in the midst of the so-called Russiagate, dealing with the alleged meddling of the Kremlin in the 2016 US general elections. They chose an EU country to meet, but a historically neutral one—Finland.

But what could they have discussed in the long two-hour meeting and what does it mean for Europe? First of all, the very fact that they met is already a good deal for Putin. For Trump, these bi-lateral meetings that he likes compared to the big G-7 or G-20 ones, where the US political and economic weight gets diluted, are intrinsically giving his interlocutor the status of equal and raising him to the level of the “Leader of the free world”. Of course, he’s not the first nor the last American president that will meet with another leader, but it highlights the fact that Putin’s geopolitical strategy is working and that Russia still plays a major role in the political world.

Having said that, we know for sure that Putin’s experience in politics runs much deeper than Trump and that he has absolute control over the decision-making process, or at least the geopolitical one. Trump, on the other hand, even without being overly enthusiastic in preparing for these meetings, can count on the absolute dominance of the US in economic, military and geopolitical terms but has to deal with the fact that he cannot promise too much, since Congress is effectively the true holder of power in the US.  Nevertheless, we can imagine two crucial requests from the US president: first, to limit Iran’s presence in Syria. At the moment the US are very much focused on limiting Persian influence in the Middle East, which is something Russia is very keen on doing already but it’s complicated by the fact that they know very well they couldn’t have achieved (or maintained) much in Syria without Iran’s support. Second, and this is of more direct interest to us Europeans, Trump asked Putin to cool off the already pretty cold relationship with Germany. The two nations do not like each other and that’s no news, but regardless, their relationship is co-dependent as evidenced by the fact that they are willing to strain the relationship with Eastern Europe in order to complete the Nord-Stream 2 pipeline, bypassing the east and linking the German market directly with Russia. This relationship, or better the potential of it, is what has worried the United States since the end of World War 2. At the moment, the White House is at odds with the EU that, for an American “pet project,” they now feel has become too functional for Germany and this could greatly affect the balance that the US has kept in the Continent for 70 years. For this reason, Trump has chosen Germany in particular as his target, as he feels it is the one he could have the greatest effect on, since the export-lead economy of Berlin (we are talking about over 40% of the GDP in export) could suffer greatly by the proposed tariffs while the US economy exports only account to around 11%. This means that it’s Germany that needs the current world order more and that the retaliations could only partially affect the US. The disproportion between the two is what the US are exploiting at the moment and, it seems, successfully so.

This is, from what I can tell at least, the scenario in which European/NATO countries have to play in. While Jean-Claude Juncker and many other have promised “tit for tat” retaliatory tariffs on the US, it is clear that the whole EU as it stands still greatly relies on the goodwill of the other global actors and, of course, lamed by its own internal instability, imbalances and power dynamics. Having realized they cannot count on the US anymore, it’s a given—but the situation is more grave than that: the US is not going to merely be less supportive of the EU, they could (and do) very much make the integration process more difficult on top of all the other destabilizing factors and players already. So if the ally overseas is not much of an ally anymore, that doesn’t mean we should jump straight to enemy. The US is still the most powerful country on the planet by a long shot and it can do much to damage an already fragile equilibrium. Of course it’s also in their interest to maintain stability in the continent, but a small rocking of the boat is already enough to make people jump ships. Keep steady, acknowledge the situation, and act accordingly.