Trump, Europe, and its future: awakening or humiliation
The European Commission prides itself on having negotiated the best possible deal in response to Trump's dictates. By accepting a unilateral increase in customs duties on its products entering the United States, Europe will pay tribute to the empire and be seen as the weak link in the West.
This mercantilist attitude, demanded by entrepreneurs and a majority of member states, could spell disaster for a European Union already heavily criticized for its geopolitical absence.
It is not the negotiation that is at issue, but the deliberate choice to negotiate.
The Union has ruined its main argument in entering into this unacceptable racketeering, being the world's leading trading power, the largest consumer market and the world's second currency. It has the potential to be a real power, provided it assumes this role and behaves as such, i.e., by refusing to have constraints imposed on it from outside against its will.
Some are quick to predict that Europe will face the same future as 19th-century China, which had “unequal treaties” imposed on it, the humiliation of which still resonates in the Chinese subconscious.
The US president is already threatening to take action against Europe again if it does not reverse its regulation of large platforms and monopolistic tech players. Europe cannot bow down forever to this friend of dictators.
The path suggested by Mario Draghi to avoid this humiliation and decline is the only one possible: to behave on the international stage as a state.
We can already hear the outdated champions of national independence crying wolf. But no one is proposing to create a federal state right now; it is simply a matter of collectively acquiring the attributes of statehood in a world that has changed dramatically, precisely to preserve our independence.
European states are paying dearly for their complacency after the Second World War, and the apostles of the “peace dividend” should be held accountable before the court of history for a disarmament whose true cost is now being felt.
Yet Europe have the human, intellectual, and technological resources to respond with an asset that few continents share: a cultural substratum comprising historical experiences, artistic and technical creations, and universal political messages that far exceed what a new-yorker real estate developer can conceive.
It is urgent for Europeans, even if only a few, to decide to be a great power and thus regain the enthusiastic support of citizens who are sceptical.
Vigorous efforts to complete a genuine single market for goods and capital, i.e., the abolition of borders between our states that weaken us, the creation of a common company law (28th regime), the implementation of a concerted defence policy with an imposed European preference, a more aggressive trade policy, and finally the acceptance of the slogan “Europe first” are measures that require courage on the part of those in power, the courage to rise to the vital challenge facing Europe: its survival in a more ruthless world.
