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By Stepan Gauvreau

The last four years of President Donald Trump’s machinations, at home and abroad, have drastically altered America’s standing in the eyes of the international community. Close allies and bitter foes alike have been forced to reposition in America’s stark absence, which has been felt sorely by democratic partners around the world. European bloc leaders like Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, and Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, have been left to deal with international affairs largely on their own. Saber rattling and fiery tweets from the president and his cohort have caused European partners to doubt the stability and leadership once promised by American hegemony.

In the last four years, the Trump administration has not remained wholly mum, but vapid calls for the guarantee of the right to peaceful assembly, condemnations of fraudulent elections, and censures of corruption in foreign countries have rung increasingly hollow as American democratic norms have been shivered. American leadership was noticeably absent when Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime in Belarus stole an election in August. The U.S.-brokered ceasefire in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia brokered in late October frayed instantly, while Russian-led talks produced a peace treaty. Ethiopia has nearly plunged into civil war, while the U.S. government and electorate remain all-consumed by the results and fallout of the 2020 election. 

In response to this vacuum, Europeans, whose defense and cooperation has largely been in the hands of American leadership since the end of World War II, are forced to recalculate their collective security posture and long-term geostrategic trajectory. Trump, however, was not the first to bristle at shouldering the burden of multilateral agreements. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both previously voiced genuine grievances of the diminutive contributions to NATO by allies. Since then, Trump has certainly added a particular isolationist flair to the ongoing debate. 

Trump, not one for nuanced critique, has brashly pushed the American foreign policy apparatus toward a coercive, realpolitik brand of great power politics. His illiberal tendencies could have, in the best of cases, ushered in a steady retreat from some of the most untenable positions held by the American hegemon. Measured dialogue over the status of and American participation in multilateral agreements ranging from economic policy, collective security, and nuclear nonproliferation could have resulted in a transfer of power and responsibility to our European allies. Instead, Trump has led a chaotic route from these carefully concocted agreements. Such aberrations have made European partners leery of the recommitment of President-elect Joe Biden–and the U.S. as a whole — to the post-WWII world order. 

And Europeans are right to be suspicious of America’s rapprochement with its tattered norms and with the promotion and protection of democracy and human rights, whose boisterous abandonment started on Jan 21, 2016. Europeans cannot trust that the U.S. will hold true to its word after, or even during, the Biden administration. The electorate is polarized, with one faction comprised of full-throated advocates of America First–which has clearly resulted in America alone. Squabbles in the Senate could hamstring the confirmations of hypercompetent, internationally facing cabinet appointees. Worse yet, 2024 could see the resurrection of Trump, or perhaps the rise of another, more competent despot who might recommence a more enduring unilateralist dissent. 

A storied propensity for cooperation from European partners developed over decades has, in the course of the previous four years, morphed into an institutional reflex to act without, or even against, the U.S. The security umbrella once offered in the face of the advances of Communism — and blustered since the fall of the Soviet Union — has been blown away by Trump-force gales. Regardless of the rhetoric of Biden, Europe’s faith in the ability of the U.S. to hold course has shriveled, and rightly so. 

Yet if the U.S. adopts and maintains a reinvigorated commitment to human rights and collective defense, it may find a partner in a strengthened European Union. Europe — far from monolithic — is facing its own identity crises, which will invariably affect its relationship with the U.S. In addition to a deluge of right-wing nationalism, Europe is grappling with the rise of China and the subsequent question of whether to pursue containment or engagement. Despite this uncertainty, however, a shift away from American military and political leadership does not mean that the U.S. cannot work with the bloc to achieve shared geopolitical goals. America has, after all, long relied on the force multiplier of its alliances and friendships to achieve its goals, and it may yet rely on European institutional muscle memory. 

If Europe bolsters its security capabilities, and if the U.S. recommits to assuaging–or at least acknowledging — European safety concerns, then there is a chance that our allies will be able to exert greater influence abroad, thereby adding weight to the force multiplier. This is a risky bet, however. A rejuvenated Europe, wary of American leadership, might narrow the scope and number of shared interests. Any subsequent unilateralist leader would chafe at the prospect of kowtowing to European demands or concerns in exchange for cooperation. Alternatively, and less likely, the European mass could drift into the orbit of another power–China being the likely candidate. 

The latter scenario is highly unlikely, but not it is not as far-fetched as might be conceived. The tides of nationalism, in Europe and elsewhere, have yet to subside; perhaps the wave has yet to crest. Illiberal regimes and leaders tend to stick together, and a Europe that is friendlier with — or economically fettered to — China is less likely or able to denounce and sanction unjust regimes for human rights abuses, economic misdeeds, and political perversions. Right-wing nationalist leaders in Europe, such as Viktor Orbán of Hungary, Marie Le Pen of France, Nigel Farage of the U.K., and others, have cozied up to the anti-democratic Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Even Macron’s government has recently shown a willingness to indulge creeping authoritarianism, replete with increased surveillance, decreased police accountability, and compulsory attendance for students of state schools wherein they “are [to be] educated in the values of the French Republic.” Macron may be well impelled to turn away from liberalism by a desire to peel far-right voters away from Le Pen. Thus, a precipitous turn toward hypernationalism and autocracy is not inconceivable, even in stable democracies with less partisan divide and institutional rot than in the U.S. Though European opinions of Beijing are increasingly low, especially after the covid-19 pandemic, China could leverage its economic power to lead and participate in multilateral organizations to curry favor and hawk autocratic rule as a viable alternative to liberal democracy. 

The lure of authoritarianism has mostly been stayed by the evident prosperity and peace wrought by the tempered fires of liberal democracies. Economic populism and ethnonationalism could conceivably push democracies into the autocratic conflagration, however. At home, a non-negligible number of adherents of the Republican Party are willing to embrace anti-democratic measures to shore up control. This shift has been catalyzed by demographic and cultural change and a sense of loss, as it has in many European countries. 

In order to maintain multilateral ties, especially with Europe, and to stymie malignant nationalist undertows, the U.S. must safeguard its promise to the international order — and our partners — by undergirding democracy and human rights around the world, even if it finds consensus in a strategic withdrawal from that very order. Since WWII, European allies have proven to be some of the most steadfast friends, and the collapse of the alliance of liberal democracies, which has been buttressed by the Euro-American union, is tantamount to losing the force multiplier that has allowed the U.S. to promote liberalism. 

Stepan is a political writer for La Tonique.