The Europeans and the Next US President
Dependency or the Road to Independence?
It is probably safe to publish a commentary on the US Presidential Election today without being accused of ‘foreign interference’. The Election is a matter for Americans but it is one that affects the whole world because the US is undoubted, if weakening, global hegemon. We outsiders can have an opinion but it is going to have to be reactive. What do we do when the American people have decided? For Europeans this is complicated by the fact that there is no single Europe but only a multiplicity of European states with different ‘angles’ of which one of the most important (the United Kingdom) is outside the European Union.
What we can say is that, with important exceptions such as Orban in Hungary or Fico in Slovakia, the ruling elites across the continent (and in the UK) are broadly committed to an ideological position and an interest that aligns with Harris rather than Trump and that some of them actively fear the consequences of the election of the latter. This is not to make the mistake that these elites fully represent their own peoples in this. There are substantial minorities in most European States that are sceptical of elite preferences – that is, sceptical about the idea of the liberal West, NATO, the Green Transition and even, in some cases, the European Union itself. Whoever becomes US President will indicate whether the incumbent elites have a substantially easier or more difficult time in holding on to power against challengers to their own national and continental hegemony.
This is nowhere more starkly presented than in Germany where it is clear that the liberal establishment and the wider European Atlanticist community are becoming increasingly worried about Sarah Wagenknecht’s BSW. Her left-populism has not so far been falling into line with the usual pattern of elite control of left-wing aspirations. Since time immemorial the Western democracies have contained the Left by pointing out the risk of the Far Right (or even the moderate Right) gaining advantage from left wing challenges. They appropriate ‘soft’ Left leaderships into office and neuter their radical demands in a form of soft corporatism that grants ‘progressive’ policy change but no fundamental shift in the distribution of power and resources between classes or major changes in foreign or cultural policy.
We can see this (notably in Germany and France) in the absorption of the political Greens into the centre-left political process or (as in the UK) the Green Transition becoming a very costly non-negotiable for a centre-left Government to ward off a Green threat. Similar processes in the Anglo-Saxon world have seen the private sector adopt ‘progressive’ or ‘woke’ ideology through their human resources and marketing departments in order to ensure a hands-off approach towards neo-liberal market-driven economic and regulatory policies. One weird outcome is that Greens, LGBTQ+ activists and middle-class feminists are becoming the most aggressive ‘war hawks’ in defence of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism – not a result that could have been predicted at the end of the last century.
The challenge of the BSW is that it remains unclear whether Wagenknecht will follow the same pattern and seek appropriation on her terms (in which case the system reluctantly adjusts) or stands by core principles that are actually far closer to those of the Far Right AfD – in particular, resistance to the costly engagement in the Ukraine War, opposition to Atlanticism and NATO and scepticism about a neo-liberal European Union and even the sacred cow of Net Zero. The theoretical unthinkable is that a Red-Brown alliance emerges in Germany, then in Europe, that mirrors the alliance of Donald Trump with radicals like RFK and Tulsi Gabbard where the driver is resistance to war and opposition to the emergence of a militarist or ‘imperialist’ bloc run (apparently) by a ‘deep state’. We do not know what her Party will do but the different ideologies of a Trump or Harris Presidency directly affect the room for manoeuvre of European elites in relation to it.
What Little We Know Today
We may not know the result for many days as counts and results are disputed. The risk of violence (at least in the short term) is probably heavily over-stated but, given the extremely close popular vote and with so much at stake in the swing states, it is unlikely that the next few days will be without drama. It is idle to speculate on the outcome. We should instead be concerned with the meaning of one of three scenarios; a) that Trump wins clearly, b) that Harris wins clearly and c) that there is some reasonable cause for doubts about the declared result on either side so that the drama extends for weeks or, under a worst case scenario, splits the country to the point of violent resistance from the losing side or excessively oppressive actions by the winning side. There is a mirror here even for Germany since some hard-line Atlanticists are calling for the AfD to be banned as ‘Neo-Nazi’ which is a decision that depends a great deal on what that means for relations with the US.
What matters are the swing states. We all know this by now. The general view seems to be that, despite a lot of mainstream media attempts on both sides to massage data to support their own side, Harris has had difficulty in these last days in creating the necessary gap between herself and Trump. Alleged leads by either side in the important swing states are generally within the margin of polling error. Party propagandists make sure that no poll is easy to accept at face value and the devil is often in the detail of the analyses. If no candidate has an obvious lead with a very slight bias in the popular vote to Harris, Trump appears to be doing better in many swing states than his popular vote suggests. The mainstream media might give the edge to Harris but this may be the same wishful thinking that you see on the other side from Trump’s social media allies.
Less Change Than Fundamental Continuity
So what are the consequences for Europeans of scenarios a) through c). The first thing to say is that there is no fundamental change to be expected in the general direction of the American imperium. The candidates simply represent different ways of governing it for the benefit of the US so the question is really how each side defines the national interest. One difference is merely rhetorical – the Democrats are prepared to continue to ‘cloak’ the American national interest (which is fundamentally economic and one of strategic defence) in ‘values’ which are looking increasingly threadbare in the light of the Gaza War and of increasing evidence of American practices in defiance of those values. The Republicans are prepared to throw the cloak aside to reveal the armour beneath and to adopt an openly neo-nationalist position that demands that allies accept (in effect) their relatively subordinate position by starting to pay their own way as far as strategic defence is concerned, committing to maintain full support for US policy decisions regardless.
In practice, there is very little difference in policies of containment towards rising rival powers (China) or stubborn old powers (Russia). On the Harris side, it is just a case of trying to maintain or re-establish the pre-2022 order and pretend the last two years had not happened or at least create an opportunity to re-build client elites into an ideology of the ‘West’ along liberal lines. On the Trump side, it seems to be a matter of adapting to a new order in which American military superiority and economic power is used to negotiate and cut deals to create a new more adaptive and ‘realist’ world order in which the US is still the global hegemon but less the policeman. It would be more the primus inter minores in a global system of spheres of influence and ‘healthy’ competition than the cloak of a rather fake primus inter pares. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to suppose that Biden’s last burst of old Cold War thinking ends with Harris if only because the latter is much closer to the strategic focus of Obama (who remains influential). This was always orientated far more towards containing China strategically (whereas Trump is more interested in containing it economically which is just a matter of emphasis).
The two most significant common denominators in both Harris and Trump’s policy priorities are likely to be continued support for Israel (and so maintenance of the fiction of Iran being ‘evil’) and the attempt to contain and weaken China as competitor. Harris has to unravel the strategic blunders of her predecessor, that is, if she understands that they are strategic blunders (such as driving Russia, China, North Korea and Iran into a single strategic bloc) but has very limited political space to do so. The easy picking should have been to detach Iran from the bloc with a new Iranian reformist President in place but this still requires settlement of the Israel-Palestine situation. Not so secretly, this is why the US gives the necessary armament to Israel despite its obvious crimes – to take Hamas and Hezbollah off the board is to discredit the IRGC and shift the balance of power inside Iran towards accommodation to meet domestic economic needs. But the Middle East has beaten every preceding President – even Reagan had to scuttle from Lebanon. Anything that pushed Israel too far in terms of necessary compromise would face the strongest possible resistance from the Republicans and pro-Israel lobby, at least until Netanyahu saw some writing on his wall and was able to dispose of his own Radical Right. Meanwhile, US and Israeli behaviours have weakened elites within major allied States whose hold on domestic acceptance (though not yet power) is becoming more tenuous by the month, although more in the UK than much of Europe with its wartime guilt trip.
The Rationality of the European Preference for Harris
For Europeans and the UK, we have indicated that it is a no-brainer that Harris is the approved candidate. Trump’s policy platform presents real challenges to European elites as does local European dissident interpretation of his values. Both the avowed intent to oblige European states to spend more on their own defence and the risk of protectionism as well as the expected surge of investment in innovation that libertarian capitalist economics offer a three-fold threat to European economic viability. The EU is struggling to define itself, fragmented over foreign and defence policy and about to go (alongside the UK) into a cycle of austerity in its two motor states. The constant threat of populist interpretations of the world becoming more vigorous and looking to Trump for endorsement adds to the mix. In addition, any success for Trumpian libertarian economics poses a threat to a European economic system based fundamentally on regulated capitalism and a soft form of vaguely progressive corporatism. Ideologically there are five pressures on liberal/centrist European elites:
a possible end to the demonisation of Russia which is important in driving funding for military-industrial development and the accession of Ukraine to the West;
the disdain of Trump for Net Zero and an already troubled Green Transition;
the fact that the US and China (in different ways) represent economies that are powering ahead over the long term just as the BRICS are emerging and as Europe looks to be set for possible relative economic decline and some selective de-industrialisation;
Trump’s attitude to immigration undercuts the desperate attempt to maintain a liberal and humanitarian position (the ‘cloak’) on what is actually a problem out of control and beginning to create major social and political conflict;
the weakness of European foreign policy and defence capacity once the EU ceases to be positioned as a respected part of a strong and united Festung West.
Last but no means least, Trump’s protectionism appears to be a serious policy platform. He has recently indicated that he would be specifically targeting European export industries: this means that his neo-nationalism is not just China-focused but offers an economic threat to a continental system which has eco-constraints on its relatively few natural resources and is very dependent on global manufacturing exports. If we add that Europeans have been tending to mirror American Sinophobic language in relation to China, possibly the most important potential market for European exporters, then the Atlanticists, having seriously damaged European competitiveness by cutting the continent off from Eurasian natural resources, now seem to have put all their eggs into one basket, the maintenance of free trade with North America and the extended ‘West’.
If Trump follows through on his implicit threats, Europeans may have to re-consider their position on Eurasian natural resources and on China. This implies a major and disruptive political revolution within the continent. Europe’s relations with China may become the most contentious issue within Europe causing a ’split within the ruling order’, specifically between those who want to negotiate a mutually beneficial eco-protectionist order with the US that attempts to contain China (and which might work for Harris) and those who see a productive mutual investment relationship with China as a ‘hedge’ against American dominance, as a gateway into the BRICS and as an opportunity to moderate strategic tensions and restore some form of Eurasian economic co-prosperity zone regardless of the Anglo-Saxons. The arrival of Trump would bring this tension out into the open within populism as much as it would in reluctant elite debate.
In this context, Harris is always the ‘best bet’ for European elites and business (although not necessarily for wider European populations). She will maintain some form of pro-Ukraine commitment which will help the EU to ‘acquire’ the territory eventually. She will maintain NATO in an apparently collaborative way although increased costs for Europeans are inevitable. Her value structure will maintain the ‘cloak’ of liberal values and the commitment to dealing with climate change which are central to core elite European values and which bind the centrist vote against the populist threat. She will not make life difficult for European elites with rhetoric about immigration threats or give comfort and inspiration to European populists. She will treat the Europeans ‘as if’ they were partners and equals as part of the ‘cloak’ for US strategic hegemony and will engage in reasonable discussion over global economic strategies designed to restore the globalisation structures on which European exporters depend.
More Fundamental Issues for Europeans
Whichever candidate wins, however, the pressure on European elites is not likely to lessen because of fundamentals. The cost of maintaining a forward military stance against Russia is potentially considerable. Taking responsibility for the unprofitable aspects of Ukrainian reconstruction will mirror the experience of Germany in incorporating East Germany. The weak handling of this led directly to the emergence of the current populist AfD and BSW as threats to the prevailing order. Given neo-nationalism in the Baltics and Poland and the emergence of opposing national populisms in central Europe and the Balkans, Western Europe is potentially faced with serious internal political tensions in the future with political activists in Western Europe preferring one side or the other and linking their preference to interpretations of higher level geo-political conflict.
The European Union is also trapped between powers economically when it comes to the Green Transition. This requires massive investment that should be paid for in good part by green exports. Yet Bidenomics kick-started more advanced US innovation in the sector while China has used its competitive advantages to out-compete European producers in key areas. Europe has no Musk and it is being forced to put up tariffs on Chinese EVs not only because they are cheaper but because they are better than European product. In other words, whichever candidate becomes President next year, that candidate simply makes life more difficult or less difficult for European elites or gives advantage to one position or another within those elites but it does not change fundamentals that are internal to both the UK and the European Union. In essence, four of the seven members of the G7 (the motor of the ‘West’) are European and to varying degrees still dependent strategically and affected economically by the hegemon. Three are in the top seven by GDP. Of the top ten by GDP, China is now greater in economic power than any of these four individually and Brazil and India have emerged in the top 10 with Russia broadly at #11 and swapping places with Brazil by some definitions. In other words, the Europeans are defending a strong historic position which depends on not letting things fall apart internally.
In short, the European Union could be the unified second global strategic power if it was truly united in one economic enterprise under competent politicians. Achieving such unification is a long game that currently looks hopeless because of the fragmentation of the Continent worsened by the own goal that is conflict with Russia. If it survives the next few years, it will still be a generation before it has its own viable security apparat comparable to that of the ‘Five Eyes’ and it will then have to decide (and impose) either inclusion into that network as a US-dominated ‘Six Eyes’ or it will have to maintain a costly apparat that will reproduce all the problems inherent in the Anglo-Saxon system.
Under this overall interpretation, Harris means business as usual and the time to resolve current difficulties and restore liberal order whereas Trump means increased disruption and costs without a framework in place to resolve the emergent difficulties in a timely manner. The question then becomes whether the shock of Trump might actually be salutary in forcing Europeans (and the UK) to face their potential for relative decline and whether Harris might merely maintain an existing system that cannot face the speed of technological change. Alternatively, Trump as disruptor could unravel the European system as he brings out existing political tensions within the EU while Harris buys time for European elites to ‘reconsider their situation’ and come up with unifying or alternative solutions to continental economic and strategic survival. In other words, much of what happens next is down to European and national will and capacity rather than the decisions of American voters.
A Contested Result and an Unstable Future?
Finally, there is scenario c) where the result remains permanently contested and perhaps there is serious political violence. Our own view is that contestation of the result in the coming days is likely because of the nature of American politics but that the probability of serious as opposed to some performative violence is much less likely. ‘Incidents’ are not civil war despite media hysteria. What is more likely is that the legitimacy of the winner becomes a permanent point of tension that weakens American influence in the world. Conflicts in America then start being translated rhetorically into political conflicts elsewhere, increasing the longer term possibility of violence elsewhere as it becomes habitual (as in Georgia) for losers not to accept a vote. This may especially be so where (as may happen in the US and has happened in the UK) a democratic vote is at variance with a constitutionally-derived vote. Benignly this may result in pressure for democratic or constitutional reforms in some jurisdictions over time. Less benignly, it may create the conditions for radical solutions to democratic deficits that justify violence in polarised societies.
We may be faced with permanent psychological guerrilla war by the losing side against the winning side with both marking their boundaries and seeking to ‘deal with’ internal dissidents. The likelihood is of new coalitional formations across the West equivalent to RFK and Gabbard joining Trump on anti-war issues and Cheney joining Harris on a ‘war hawk’ positioning. It may be that, on defeat, Trump stands down as future candidate but this merely means that he becomes the ideological figurehead for a MAGA Republican movement that will have to contest conservative Republicans internally and find a less controversial but still mobilisatory populist candidate for 2028 - some sort of ‘civil war’ within the Republicans is possible. If Harris is defeated, that is her last chance personally. The Democrats will have to go through a process of re-evaluation of why they lost and what to do about it which we cannot predict. They would probably need to re-connect with working class males.
As to winning on dubious terms, Trump will not care. He will sweep through it and allow Democrats to be mentally unbalanced and angry for four years without turning a hair. Harris on the other hand faces more problems because her coalition is more fragile and depends on patronage. The experience of other liberal centrists who have won and then disappointed (Starmer, Scholz, Macron) is salutary since all three of the latter seem to be on borrowed time, albeit a long borrowed time. The issue for Harris is whether she or any other liberal centrist has the tools to deal with the massive complexity of twenty-first century power and whether any ideology that emerged organically from a very different past can cope with change. So far, she does not strike this observer as having the dynamism or imagination to deal with these challenges and so the reckoning may merely be delayed by four years … but, of course, she may prove to be capable and effective and that what she appears is not what she is.
Either way, we should perhaps not fall into the trap of projecting what is happening in the US on non-US conditions as a matter of ‘values’ for two reasons; first, the ‘cloak’ factor makes a lot of these ‘values’ rhetorical and performative in foreign policy and what really matters are the values that apply within non-US contexts that emerge from non-US political conditions; second, the fundamental question here is whether psychological and political dependence on the hegemon on either side of the political divide is not, at core, a sign of weakness and disorganisation in which difficult domestic concerns are not faced because it is assumed that Americans will pull liberal irons out of the fire. In this context, the rise of Trump is partly a frustration amongst Americans that allies are like children in their twenties who refuse to leave home yet are making money. The nuclear protection is there and the Bank of Mum and Dad in a crisis but, really, shouldn’t they go out and get an apartment of their own?