Europe Looks Beyond the United States |
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The publication of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy has forced Europe to confront its potential geopolitical isolation. That effort came to a crossroad this week. The European Union had to decide how to keep Ukraine financially afloat for the next two years. It also needed to decide whether to commit to a new free trade agreement with South America.
Does supporting Europe’s far right advance U.S. interests? What’s at stake in Europe’s free trade agreement with South America? Should Europe accept its geopolitical decline?
The publication of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy has forced Europe to confront its potential geopolitical isolation. That effort came to a crossroad this week. The European Union had to decide how to keep Ukraine financially afloat for the next two years. It also needed to decide whether to commit to a new free trade agreement with South America.
Does supporting Europe’s far right advance U.S. interests? What’s at stake in Europe’s free trade agreement with South America? Should Europe accept its geopolitical decline?
Those are just a few of the questions that came up in my recent conversation with FP economics columnist Adam Tooze on the podcast we co-host, Ones and Tooze. What follows is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity. For the full conversation, look for Ones and Tooze wherever you get your podcasts. And check out Adam’s Substack newsletter.
Cameron Abadi: The U.S. National Security Strategy suggests that Washington, in the future, will support Europe’s nationalist far right rather than the traditional parties it has supported in the post-World War II period. In realpolitik terms, how does this advance U.S. interests?
Adam Tooze: This is always one of the paradoxes in right-wing internationalism, that it’s a sort of contradictory formation. The more nationalist they are, the harder you find it to collaborate with other people. The administration may be losing the bedrock pro-Americanism that has traditionally shored up support for Washington. The real question one must ask about the Trump administration is whether they’re pro-American. Not in the naive sense that........