Donald Trump’s visit next year is already prompting a frenzy of self-righteous indignation. Politicians are competing to explain how much they dislike the American president and how firmly they will boycott him. Mr Trump epitomises everything the British chatterati dislike. He is foul-mouthed, incompetent, lecherous, reckless, thin-skinned and doltishly ignorant to boot. In every imaginable respect, in fact, he compares deplorably with his articulate, cosmopolitan and scrupulous predecessor.
That approach is based on abundant evidence. It echoes in Paris, Brussels, Berlin and many other capitals of liberal-minded conventional wisdom. But as you head further east, another picture emerges. Startlingly for those who believe that Mr Trump is a Russian puppet, his administration is actually rather popular in the countries that live in the Kremlin’s shadow. Barack Obama’s administration is remembered there as aloof, preachy and inconsistent.
For the authorities in places such as Budapest and Warsaw, Mr Trump’s election was excellent news. Hostility towards migrants, economic protectionism and a disrespectful approach to political convention are no longer taboo. Headstrong politicians such as Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, or Jarosław Kaczynski, the ruling party’s chief in Poland, can now argue that they are merely taking the same line as the leader of the free world.
Mr Trump’s rapturously received speech in Warsaw this year vehemently defended national sovereignty and freedom but barely mentioned democracy. Responding to what conservative Poles see as the European Union’s bossy secularism, he decried the (unnamed) forces that sought to “erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition”.
Even those who dislike Mr Trump’s politics are happy with his administration’s help in defending them against the Kremlin. America is selling Patriot missiles to Poland and has deployed a deterrent force there. US special forces are in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, working with local reservists and others to prepare resistance in the event of a Russian invasion. American military ties with non-Nato Sweden and Finland have never been stronger.
In Washington, Congress showers money on European defence, not just in bolstering the military deterrent but also for counter-propaganda and other softer forms of security.
“Worries about America have forced Europe to take defence seriously
The shambles of the past is no guide to the present. Wess Mitchell, the State Department official in charge of Europe, is a hawkish heavyweight who has devoted his career to the security of central and eastern Europe. Fiona Hill, the Russia director at the National Security Council, is a widely respected expert and co-author of a sizzlingly critical biography of Mr Putin. (Disclosure: both are friends of mine.) At a more senior level, Mike Pence, the vice president, is pitch-perfect in his commitment to containing Russia and defending allies. So is Jim Mattis, the defence secretary, and HR McMaster, the national security adviser.
That contrasts sharply with the Obama-era White House, where America’s European allies frequently struggled to get a hearing and senior officials all too often pooh-poohed their concerns. Mr Obama’s disastrous “reset” of relations with Russia in 2009 sacrificed allies’ interests in the illusory hope of a rapprochement with the Kremlin. His administration abruptly cancelled a hard-fought missile-defence base in Poland, and did so on September 17, the anniversary of the Soviet invasion in 1939. As that woeful timing suggests, the State Department was in a mess then too. John Kerry, the former secretary of state, preferred personal diplomatic crusades to reforming the dysfunctional bureaucracy he bequeathed to Rex Tillerson. The Obama administration also fiercely resisted congressional efforts to impose sanctions on Russia.
Big problems remain. Mr Trump is declining to sign the latest sanctions bill, passed overwhelmingly by Congress. He is dragging his feet on selling defensive military equipment to Ukraine. He dislikes multilateral institutions and agreements on principle and has difficulty grasping the importance of America’s decades-long investment in European security. Worse, he is no ally in the battle for hearts and minds. Even a flimsy American presence on the moral high ground was better than nothing. Mr Trump makes it harder to argue that the West is a force for good in the world, rather than a rich-country cartel self-interestedly trying to keep its place at the top of the heap. If he feels cornered by the investigation into his Russian connections he may yet end up trying to bust the constitution, or toppling the world into war.
Yet these worries about America have brought another benefit, forcing European countries to take defence more seriously. Mr Trump’s crude threats to withdraw security guarantees from countries that do not spend 2 per cent of GDP on defence breached the rhetorical rules. However they spurred more spending. European countries have finally started defence planning and coordination — albeit pragmatically; grandiose dreams of a European army remain just that.
The biggest result of the increased focus on defence is the bleak realisation that dangers are growing and that European countries, regardless of whether they are in or out of the EU and Nato, have no chance of defending themselves without American help.
We may find Mr Trump aesthetically and morally reprehensible. But in many respects that directly concern us and our allies, his administration is still markedly better than its predecessor.
