I understand Europe’s shock. They haven’t forgotten Trump’s policies during his first term.
US world leadership can be traced back to the The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) and the creation of NATO.
How do you feel about the US losing its position as a World Leader? The US will still be a World Power. But may have little voice in how future events with Russia and China emerge. A power vacuum will eventually be filled. Maybe the EU or by China.
How do you feel about the loss of our leadership? US Isolationism helped contribute to two World Wars. .
Short-term: difficult for the EU to assume effective leadership while there’s such uncertainty and instability in French and German politics, and both governments are facing pressures from their pseudo-Trumpian right, with elections not far off. Without a solid Franco-German position, there’s not much to be relied on. It comes to something when Giorgia Meloni looks the more solid and reliable.
And the medium to long term prospects aren’t much better.
I’m still puzzled by Europe’s relatively placid response to the Russian annexation of Crimea, which seems obviously to have been a prelude to their invasion of Ukraine. To me, at least, it’s reminiscent of the annexation of the Sudetenland. If the EU intends to assume leadership, more leading is going to be required.
I think it depends on what the EU, China, and Russia do during the leadership void. Are other countries that border Russia safe? Is Taiwan facing an existential risk? Will Israel now be given carte blanche to do whatever they want with regard to the Palestinians?
Unless the EU steps up in a big way, I think Ukraine is in deep trouble, and Putin will make sure they pay a heavy price for standing up against them. I think China will be more cautious in what they do since they still rely on the US to keep their economy growing, even if we apply more or bigger tariffs against them.
My guess is that four years from now may look very much like things look today. Trump can’t simply ignore what’s going on in the rest of the world, especially if it becomes a threat to the US economy or our closest allies. I don’t think the Republican Party will let Trump fiddle while Rome burns.
The size of the US economy and military has put our country in a position of leadership.
The European countries have never been able to band together. Ukraine is an example. France and England seemed the most willing to help. They didn’t have enough resources to support Ukraine.
It was only after the US stepped forward that the other European countries like Germany, Turkey,and Spain were willing to help.
There’s a lot going on. China wants to dominate Taiwan. Russia wants to rebuild and become a major power again. North Korea is getting tech assistance from Russia and may get strong enough to attack South Korea.
It’s a dangerous time for the US to step back from leadership.
Frankly, it’s good, and long overdue, that Europe is going to have to take a more proactive stance about defense and things.
Trump was correct when he complained that Europe was spending too little on defense and still counting on the USA to shoulder the lion’s burden of NATO, etc. (a broken clock is right twice a day.) Even when previous presidents like Obama had complained, it didn’t make Europe budge. It’s too bad that it had to be done the hard way rather than the easy way, but at least it’s (hopefully) happening now.
China doesn’t want to just dominate Taiwan; they want to absorb it. And their ambitions are far greater. As the US pulls back from international leadership under Donald Trump, they’re looking forward to taking the mantle of world leader. They’ve been using soft and hard power in Africa, Asia and elsewhere.
One big stumbling block with the prospect of any kind of leadership of this kind emerging from the EU as contemplated in the thread is that the EU is pretty much foundationally constituted to do everything by committee and by consensus. Whenever any one member starts getting out too far ahead of the bloc on an issue, the other members start getting uncomfortable and restive, even if the point being emphasized makes logical sense. In the wake of so much destructive conflict, the EU is sort of designed to provoke allergic reactions to any one state becoming too clearly assertive. It’s okay if a couple of states are more dominant, because in theory they tend to balance one another (cf. France and Germany), even though some small states may complain about financial and economic policies favoring big-state interests (cf. Greece constantly cursing French and German bankers).
So it’s easy to say the EU should step up, but how that actually would work and what it would look like is a much dicier matter.
The EU is doing the right and necessary thing. To the extent that the Orange Buffoon can be said to have any kind of coherent foreign policy at all, it can be described as isolationism. He basically neither understands nor cares what happens in the rest of the world outside the USA. It’s practically the opposite of the Bush-Cheney policies that were guided by PNAC – the Project for a New American Century – which advocated an active role for the US in, effectively, global policing, though it wasn’t for altruistic reasons but to advance its own economic and military interests. Neither extreme is good, but the typical American dumbass Republican voter has no concept whatsoever that they’ve inadvertently jumped from extreme to the other.
They should definitely assume more of a position of leadership, and prepare themselves for at best a Cold War with a fascist US. Build up their military and nuclear arsenal. They might even want to consider allying with China as the less dangerous and irrational option.
How or why would China ally this way? I assume you mean some sort of Europe + China alliance against Russia. Xi and Putin are much more natural allies and partners than either of them with a Western bloc.
And China’s military is much worse at deploying to the north Atlantic/Europe to help out than the USA’s military.
They are the wrong race; exterminating the Asian population has long been a goal of the white nationalists. The future is one of “America versus everyone”.
I don’t share your optimism.
The Republican party no longer exists; there is only the Trump party.
The OP asks if the US is “getting left behind”, as if it is accidental and involuntary. But Trump will move behind actively, intentionally,and proudly.
The EU is not capable of organizing and controlling its own defense.
Removing America as a world leader will be disasterous for everybody.
Ukraine will cease to exist within a year or two (annexed to Russia).Several other European countries will surrender to Russia 5 years from now.
And after seeing that America is weak and unwilling to react, China will take Taiwan by 2035.