The future of European security is at stake
For more than seven decades, Europe has been subject to US foreign policy and power decisions. But it is only recently that US elections have become a source of deep concern. Since 2018, Europe has even been focusing on the US midterm elections.
During the Cold War, there was a bipartisan consensus that the country was committed to European security, and elections were not the European concern they are today.
In the 1990s, the United States faced choices about foreign policy, and the right choices were not obvious. Leadership mattered, and so elections mattered. U.S. President Bill Clinton’s decision to push for NATO expansion, initially to include the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, shaped a bipartisan consensus about what Europe’s security would look like after the Cold War. But Europe trusted the United States and was not obsessed with its elections.
The 2000 US presidential election had dramatic consequences for Europe. The US invasion of Iraq under President George W. Bush played a crucial role in weakening support for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the moderate wing of the Labour Party.
The 2016 presidential election put an end to any complacency about US elections. Europeans and their leaders began to actively anticipate the consequences of US elections for their foreign policy. After Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory, Europe found itself in the grip of a tariff war and was forced to acknowledge the end of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or Iran nuclear deal, that it had championed. During those four years, the United Kingdom lost confidence in its American anchor. This happened at a time of great domestic vulnerability, as it was implementing its withdrawal from the European Union.
Europe watched the 2020 elections with apprehension, and for good reason. Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory meant that NATO came together to defend Ukraine, and that the United States strengthened its ties with its European allies and the European Union. The consequences of the US passage of the Inflation Reduction Act pale in comparison to the havoc that a second Trump term would have wreaked on transatlantic relations.
Today, Europe’s anxiety about the 2024 elections is existential. So much so that it is now impossible to imagine a return to a world in which Europe would be either confident or complacent about a US election.
The US elections are already having consequences on the continent, as Europe perceives that they will have particularly significant consequences for its future security. There is a widespread sense that the re-election of Donald Trump would cause a significant and potentially irreversible rupture in transatlantic relations and in the nature of American democracy. A change in the US could mean a future in which shared values cease to be a source of common purpose, and the US and Europe simply drift apart as their economic and security interests diverge. In material terms, the elections matter for Ukraine, for NATO, for European security, for cooperation with China, for future alignment on economic security policy – the list goes on.
The fate of Europe will be very different if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected president of the United States. Harris’s foreign policy would be defined by shared values, a U.S. commitment to NATO and diplomacy. And on a long list of issues, including climate change, Harris and European politicians are broadly in agreement.
If, on the other hand, Trump is re-elected, everything will be called into question. The far right will be strengthened in the United States and Europe. Cooperation between states on climate change and artificial intelligence will come to an abrupt end. Europe’s need to be a geopolitical power will quickly become all the more essential. But in the face of a recalcitrant United States, these efforts will be more difficult to achieve.
Of course, elections are not everything. Cooperation on global challenges will be difficult in any case. The United States will continue to be wary of Europe’s regulatory tendencies. Europe will continue to feel pressure from the United States to spend more, do more, and collaborate more, regardless of who is next in the White House. Multiple wars, complex global problems, and an economically and politically constrained American state ensure this. However, a Trump victory would likely add chaos and instability and undermine the capacity for strategic thinking that is essential in today’s world.
