In the weeks since he won the presidential election, the makings of a “Trump Doctrine” toward Europe appear to be taking shape. It includes a belief that the U.K. is better off on its own, Germany has stumbled as Europe’s leader and Russia can be a legitimate partner, according to Bloomberg.
Piecing together Trump’s comments on Twitter and in interviews, officials from Paris to Kiev are left to worry that the incoming president views little of the traditional U.S. foreign policy agenda as sacred.
“Everything is about breaking the current rules and regulations,” Piotr Wilczek, Poland’s ambassador to the U.S., said in an interview. “Trump has a kind of post-political, very unique approach. Especially for very experienced diplomats, it’s quite a shock. We are all thinking how do we deal with this administration?”
That question has added urgency as France and Germany, the two biggest members still committed to the European Union, face elections this year in which success for nationalist parties could further erode decades of work toward a unified continent. Leaders will be watching to see if Trump offers more clues about his foreign policy outlook in his inauguration address Friday.
‘Profoundly Unsettling’
“This is profoundly unsettling to people in Europe,” said Dennis Ross, who served as a foreign-policy adviser to the past three U.S. presidents. “He has a worldview, and I think it’s fair to say it’s a worldview that does not put a premium on alliances but puts a premium on transactions and what helps you in transactions.”
The incoming president’s approach particularly unnerves smaller countries, which find themselves strengthened economically and politically by historic alliances like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the EU, two institutions Trump has criticized. If that framework erodes, they could find themselves defenseless against an increasingly expansionist Russia and facing a new regime of trade barriers after decades of economic integration.
Both allies and adversaries have had to react to Trump’s often contradictory statements about where he’ll take U.S. relations with the world.
In a joint interview published last weekend by the Times of London and Germany’s Bild, Trump poked at historic fault lines in Europe by criticizing Germany’s dominance of the EU and the failure of most NATO allies to meet the alliance’s target for defense spending. He went on to fault German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s handling of the Syrian refugee crisis.
Especially concerning for a Europe unsettled by Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and its bombing campaign in Syria, Trump said “I start off trusting both” Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yet he went on to call NATO “very important,” said he respects Merkel, and professed to feel “very strongly toward Europe.”
A Trump transition adviser, who asked not to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly, said Trump’s criticism of the NATO alliance is only common sense, and rights a historical unfairness in the alliance. Officials in both the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations long complained about underspending by their European allies.
Only five of NATO’s 28 members currently meet its target to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. European allies can’t fail to live up to their commitments and still demand the U.S. honor them, according to the adviser.
While Europe frets, provoking anxiety may ultimately be a central part of Trump’s plan, according to Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who has advised Trump’s transition team. He pointed to recent promises from NATO countries to boost defense spending as a possible sign that Trump is gaining leverage with his remarks and getting what he wants.
Uncertainty as Strategy
“Our natural response is to assume these guys have no strategy and that this is chaotic, but I’m not sure the creation of fear, uncertainty and doubt isn’t a strategy,” Dubowitz said. “Trump seems to like to keep everybody off balance.”
Trump has seemed to relish challenging the norms that everyone else takes for granted. He has steadfastly refused to telegraph his priorities or clear up the contradictions in his stance.
“I don’t go out and say, ‘I’m gonna do this — I’m gonna do —’, I gotta do what I gotta do,” he said, according to the Times of London. “But I don’t wanna play. Who plays cards where you show everybody the hand before you play it?”
And it’s not just the Europeans who are on guard. Trump upended decades of policy in the days after his election by accepting a call from Taiwan’s president and repeatedly questioning both the “One-China” policy and trade ties that have been the base of relations with Beijing.
China, in response, has sought to head off any notion that foreign policy is one big negotiation.
"Not everything in the world can be bargained or traded off," spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing on Jan. 16.
Nominees at Odds
It hasn’t helped clarify the incoming Trump administration’s policies that his nominees for senior national security positions have contradicted his public views. His pick for defense secretary, James Mattis, said there was little room for talks with Russia and argued against tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, something Trump once vowed he’d do on his first day in office. Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, called U.S. commitments to defend NATO allies “inviolable.”
The outgoing administration, which would normally be engaged in frequent talks with the new president’s transition team, hasn’t been much help either. Asked at an event on Jan. 10 how the transition was going, departing Secretary of State John Kerry said it was proceeding smoothly “because there’s not an enormous amount of it.”
Behind all the contradictions there’s one constant -- Trump’s "America First" pledge, which appears to favor nation-to-nation deals over fidelity to long-running alliances and traditions. Under this logic, Russia’s help on terrorism could justify easing sanctions over Ukraine, Merkel’s welcoming of Syrian refugees put all of Europe at risk and bureaucrats at EU headquarters in Brussels shouldn’t set policy for the U.K. or other sovereign nations.
Most of all, politicians and analysts are realizing Trump’s unpredictable approach may be the hallmark of U.S. foreign policy for at least the next four years.
“Everyone is holding out hope that Trump becomes ‘more normal,”’ said Derek Chollet, a former Obama administration official who’s a senior adviser at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
“First it was the weight of being nominee would temper his behavior,” Chollet said. “Then it was being president-elect would temper his behavior, and now it’s, well, once he gets into the Oval Office and the weight of the presidency will temper his behavior. That hasn’t really happened.”