Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential elections opens up a series of scenarios on the front of defense policies for Europe that, given the slowness of the countries of the Old Continent on the issue, cannot be considered optimal.
Regardless of political assessments of Trump and the MAGA-led Republican Party, Europe will necessarily have to deal, if not with a sort of US military "disengagement" on the other side of the Atlantic, at least with Washington's claim that the main European continental powers - France, Germany, Italy - and the United Kingdom take on more responsibility in the Common Defence Mechanism.
Much of the intellectual substratum that supported Trump, from the new national conservatives to the libertarians, passing through the paleocon, looks skeptically at military interventions, aims to reduce US defense spending and presence abroad, as well as limit commitments outside vital strategic areas. Trumpism has condensed all the criticisms - except those from the radical left - of liberal internationalism and neoconservatism. And if in his first presidential term Trump showed that he was not an isolationist "tout court", at least he can be counted among the "limitationists" and is supported by them.
However, compared to the years of the Obama "reflux" and Trump's first term, two crises, the war in Ukraine and the latent one in the South China Sea, have brought back into fashion what Marco Mostarda has well defined as "strategic whiggism", aimed at strengthening traditional alliances in Europe and Asia, but also at a renewed international role for the United States.
A trend consolidated during Biden's presidential mandate, which was characterized precisely by the need to address the crisis of the international system based on the (contested) hegemony of Washington and its Western allies. Revisionism, in the armed version of Russia and in the mercantile version of China, is a clear challenge for the Western bloc.
The failure of the "Great War on Terror" promoted by Bush had resulted in the emergence of a limitationist thrust that had clear examples not only in Trump's "America First" motto, but also in Obama's refusal to intervene militarily in Syria against Assad and, even, in dramatic post-Gaddafi Libyan scenario, where the failure to manage the "after" has led to the transformation of the old Italian colony into a Failed state. Not to mention that a good part of the theory has defined Obama's double mandate and the "Pivot to Asia" as a "lost decade" for American foreign policy as an integral part of the limitationist and disengagement projects even before an attempt at strategic rebalancing.
NATO's "quiescence" with respect to Moscow's annexation of Crimea and its compliance with China's expansionist economic policy (which is also the result of mild sanctions from Washington) have paved the way for both the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Beijing's open provocations against the Philippines, Japan and Taiwan..
Taiwan itself is the testing ground for Chinese revisionism, with Beijing testing, with its military exercises near the island and the threat of a naval blockade, the US's determination to guarantee Taipei's independence. Even without immediately arriving at an actual blockade of trade, which would be a harbinger of a probable war against the United States, China aims to inhibit the regularity of Taiwan's commercial traffic to push Washington to show its cards.
Faced with these kinds of challenges, it would be unrealistic to think that Trump could radically change the US posture on Ukraine, NATO and Taiwan, without considering the agendas of diplomats and the military.What can happen, instead, is, that Washington really demands that European countries contribute to collective defense mechanisms, determining, for the powers that are taking the path of - to quote Professor Fabrizio Coticchia - "reluctant militarization", Italy and Germany above all, an awareness of the closing of the "window of opportunity" guaranteed by the American security umbrella, and forcing them to seriously commit themselves, on the military, economic and industrial fronts, to their own defense.
In fact, Trump's return to the White House will mean greater attention to the US's European and Asian allies (the quadripartite discussion between the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan on Pillar II of the nuclear submarine agreement Aucus (demonstrates this) towards strengthening its Armed Forces and integrating its defence systems.
It should be remembered, however, that Trump's "limitationism" generated the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the Abraham Accords, the renegotiations with South Korea and Japan, as well as the beginning of the increase in military spending by NATO allies. The victory of the "limitationist" Trump imposes the adoption of non-limitationist policies by the US allies.
Photo: X
