Trump Exposes EU Bankruptcy On Trade, War And Climate

In this situation, the EU cannot even revert to the old mantra of“strategic autonomy”. Unlike in 2016-20, neither China, India, South Africa, nor Turkey believes anything this EU is saying, not to mention Russia.

Even before 2020,“strategic autonomy” was only a label, never anything of substance: European politicians are too stupid and the EU is too weak to stand up an independent foreign and trade policy. They have always lacked the will to power. The only novelty is that the world will no longer be bluffed.

This situation has led to remarkable changes in the political landscape. The European Union elites in Brussels and Berlin have until now been the most faithful Atlanticists – Politico qualified EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as“Europe's American President” – but now they sound like Gaullists who swear by European autonomy.

Unlike the actual General de Gaulle, to be sure, they have neither ideas nor resources to effect such autonomy. On the other hand, parties that traditionally have been skeptical about America, like Germany's AfD, have discovered their political proximity to Trump and his MAGA vision, and at the same time have received substantive support in the media from Elon Musk.

During the last several years, the former Blackrock lobbyist and board member Friedrich Merz, foreseeably the next German Chancellor, tirelessly attacked the AfD's opposition from the right as well as the left-wing opposition of Sarah Wagenknecht, for their presumed skepticism about the transatlantic alliance.

Now it is borne in upon him that these supposed enemies of America sound just like Trump and Vance, while he, Merz, is at odds with the incoming Administration on all relevant issues.

At the level of the EU, Hungary's Viktor Orban was the whipping boy for all of Biden's acolytes, who reproached him for his diplomacy with Putin, Erdogan, Netanyahu, and Xi. Now Orban has privileged access when Trump moves back into the White House.

Opposite Orban stands the new EU foreign affairs commissioner Kaja Kallas, who got the job only because she is a fanatical Russia hater. The moment a peace agreement is concluded in Ukraine, her standing will zero out, and become a relic of a time that hopefully will soon be put behind us, of no further use in the present.

Those are the turnabouts of political life, except that the Eurocrats did nothing to prepare for them, which exposes them as a pack of amateurs. They are checkmated. They bet everything on a single card, and cannot explain why everything proceeded contrary to their expectations.

But that isn't simply a problem of communication, but rather one of economics: The Ukraine war was costly, and the Russian sanctions did more damage to the EU and especially Germany than they did to Russia. And to what end? The climate craze has ruined German industry-and to what purpose, now that the US is abandoning it?

This turn energizes the political right, which now feels the wind from America at its back. Until just now, the established German parties were in agreement that there could be no cooperation with the AfD.

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They even spoke of a“firewall” against the AfD. Now Elon Musk has taken up the cause of the AfD on X and in the nationally-read newspaper Die Welt. That raises the question of which way the firewall is directed – against Elon and the AfD, or the losers of German politics?

Donald Trump is changing the political landscape globally. The European political elite and its echo chamber in the mainstream media, with all their concepts and capabilities, have no place in this new landscape. For the political right, by contrast, unanticipated opportunities are opening. They only need to be recognized and seized upon.

Trump has made clear that America can't support world demand indefinitely with its enormous trade deficit. Europe must look to new markets in the Global South. Trump has warned Europe that it can't cower under America's defense umbrella while neglecting its own defense.

European patriots must provide for the defense of their countries rather than wasting their resources on counterproductive proxy wars. The time has come for the patriotic right to govern rather than merely complain. There is nothing to lose, but there is a world to win. Patriots of the world, unite!

Maximilian Krah is a member of the European Parliament

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