Trump ain’t stupid
The Brussels bubble assumes many things, and one of them is that Donald Trump is some sort of a clumsy idiot. This edition of The EurActiv Brief begs to differ…
The latest episode was his series of tweets in which he appeared to be trolling Emmanuel Macron as soon as he got off the plane from Paris. Seen from Brussels, this appeared as a brutish attitude toward his host.
But let’s have a second look. Trump wrote:
“Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the US, China and Russia. But it was Germany in World Wars One & Two – How did that work out for France? They were starting to learn German in Paris before the US came along. Pay for NATO or not!”
As if Trump had known that only a couple of hours later, Angela Merkel would deliver her speech in the European Parliament, calling for a “real, true European army”, the US President hit out both at Macron and Merkel, at the idea of having a European army, which is quite divisive for the EU as a whole.
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Let’s be blunt. Half of Europe, especially in the east, opposes the idea of EU defence duplicating NATO. Surprise-surprise, who does like the idea? None other than Vladimir Putin.
Another big foreign policy issue in the EU transatlantic agenda is the divide over the Iran nuclear deal. Here, Trump imposed sanctions on companies doing business with Tehran, and the EU responded by trying to put in place a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to be able to circumvent them.
Basically, an EU intermediary is supposed to handle the European companies trade with Iran. This could ensure, for example, that Iranian oil bought by Europeans could be paid for with EU goods and services of the same value.
However, no EU country is willing to host the SPV and run the risk of exposing itself to US wrath and sanctions. Moreover, as a US official recently said, the bigger news in Europe is that companies are withdrawing from Iran in droves.
To make things look worse for the EU, recent developments show that Iran is indeed harbouring terrorism, with two foiled attacks on EU soil – one in Denmark and another one in France.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said in Sofia that the Israeli secret services had prevented the attacks from happening.
Too bad for the European secret services if Mossad is better on European soil. But is the EU soft line on Iran better than Trump’s pressure for a new Iran agreement, one which would include restrictions on Iran’s nuclear programme, but also on its ballistic missiles and support for militant groups across the Middle East?
So who is stupid here?
[Source: By Georgi Gotev with Alexandra Brzozowski | EURACTIV.com -/- Media Relations] [Photo Credits: Photos inserted by Openeyesopinion.com (credits embedded)]
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