Donald Trump’s win makes it all the more important for us to stay close to our European allies. We should rethink Brexit, not suck up to America.
It is therefore a shame that Boris Johnson is boycotting a special meeting today with other EU foreign ministers to discuss Trump’s victory. He told his EU counterparts to end the “whinge-o-rama” over the result of the presidential race.
It is never good to suck up to a bully. Quite apart from the fact that our pride will suffer from putting ourselves in a subservient position – hardly taking back control – making ourselves depending on the whims of a man who is prone to wild emotional swings could be risky.
We need good relations with America. But we will be more able to stand tall in the world if we deepen our strategic relations with Europe. After all, we could be first among equals in EU foreign and security policy if we weren’t planning to quit.
Trump’s election could destabilise our already dangerous neighbourhood. The president-elect is fond of Vladimir Putin – telling the WSJ the Russian president had sent him a “beautiful letter”. He also signalled he would abandon any attempt to oust Bashar al-Assad – saying if the US attacks the Syrian president, “we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria.” Putin and Assad will be popping the champagne corks.
Trump’s scepticism about NATO is a further worry. On Remembrance Sunday, we must not take our security for granted, as NATO’s secretary general wrote today in the Observer.
The response to Trump’s victory must not be to turn our back on America. We need it as an ally. We must hope the president-elect changes his tune about NATO’s importance.
But we must also recognise that Europe’s nations will need to work more closely to secure our vital interests in the coming years and decades, as we may no longer be able to rely on big brother America to protect us. We must therefore push our European allies to step up their investment in defence in line with their commitment to spend 2% of GDP.
We don’t need a European army. But we do need to craft a European foreign policy. When European nations and America can rally behind a common position – as they did on sanctions against Iran and Russia – they can have a positive impact. When they are divided – as they were over Iraq, Libya and Syria – the result is chaos.
All these are things that the EU’s foreign ministers will be discussing today. What a shame that Johnson won’t be there. If we quit the EU, we won’t even be invited to these meetings.
Johnson told EU foreign ministers at his first meeting with them in July that: “We are not going to be in any way abandoning our leading role in European cooperation and participation of all kinds.”
It always seemed pie in the sky that we could maintain our influence in Europe post-Brexit. Trump’s election makes it all the more important for us to stay close to Europe. It’s yet another reason to question whether Brexit makes sense.
Hugo Dixon is co-founder of CommonGround as well as editor-in-chief of InFacts. You can sign up as a supporter here.
