Rather than hope for the good opinion of Europeans, voters should regard the prospect of disappointing their friends as a reason to support Trump. Despite the claims made in publications like The New York Times, Washington Post and Politico that Trump has destabilized the post-Second World War consensus and single-handedly endangered world peace, the president has actually strengthened Western interests in the face of the European venality and short-sightedness that has made the world less safe. A return to pre-Trump “normalcy” under former vice president Joe Biden would weaken NATO and undermine the progress Trump has made in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe, advancing the interests of rogue states like Iran and even Russia.
The Washington establishment and liberal Americans are not the only ones who have spent the last four years trying to make the bad dream of 2016 go away. Surveys of Western Europeans, as well as on- and off-the-record comments of most of their leaders, indicate that they hold the United States in low regard, and that their scorn for Trump is the principal reason for it.
Many Americans point to this disdain as a reason to long for Trump’s exit from the White House. They express nostalgia for a time before Trump when the United States was not regarded as the laughingstock of international forums and European elite opinion. But this golden age—supposedly destroyed by Trump’s bombastic self-regard, coarse discourse, politically incorrect opinions and open disdain for the European and American governing and educated classes—is a myth.
There has never really been a sustained period when the smart set in London, Paris and the European Union headquarters in Brussels didn’t look down their noses at Americans, whom they characterize as bumptious, vulgar, unsophisticated and materialistic dolts—i.e. exactly how they think of Trump. As the confession of the British traitor at the center of John Le Carre’s great Cold War spy novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy made clear, even those sophisticated Europeans who didn’t serve or sympathize with the Soviet Union instinctively share the character’s motivation when he says that he “hated America very deeply.”
Other than brief moments of pro-American euphoria—such as when Americans liberated Western Europe from Nazi Germany, the 1969 moon landing, the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall or the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks—there has been very little that united enlightened European opinion like detestation of America and all it represents. The United States has been hated more for its enormous successes as the most prosperous, the freest and the greatest force, if an imperfect one, for good in the world, than for its failures.
The Old World didn’t need Trump to come along to vent its contempt for the upstart country that spent the last hundred years coming to Europe’s rescue and becoming the senior and indispensable partner in a Western alliance that would otherwise have collapsed. Liberal intellectuals in the United States who flaunt their contempt for their fellow citizens in “flyover country” long for the good opinion of those across the pond who will never reciprocate their affection.
Trump’s embrace of the “America First” slogan, with its unfortunate associations with pre-Second World War isolationism and appeasement of Nazi Germany, was troubling. So, too, were his rumblings about NATO’s continued purpose and seeming soft spot for Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin.
But Trump’s often ill-considered off-hand remarks and tweets should not be mistaken for the policies the administration pursued. Far from an isolationist, Trump pursued sensible American self-interest to strengthen alliances that were good for American security, avoided unnecessary conflicts and stood up to actual threats that Europeans refused to face.
With respect to NATO, Trump has refused to engage in the sort of rhetoric that Europeans love to hear in which their virtues and importance to the alliance are extolled. But rather than destroying NATO, Trump has strengthened it by insisting that Europeans stop leeching off of American largesse and start paying for their own defense. He is not the first American president to call for such changes but he is the first to be taken seriously on the subject—specifically because his view of alliances is transactional rather than sentimental. As a result, he has achieved more in this regard than any of his predecessors.
Nor, despite his remarks about Putin, have Trump’s policies served Russian interests. Unlike Barack Obama, who refused to arm Ukraine and stood by when Moscow committed aggression, Trump shipped arms to Kiev, likely preventing further escalations and preserving its independence. That this fact contradicts the narrative Democrats promoted during their partisan attempt to impeach the president doesn’t make it any less true.
Veterans of past administrations as well as Europeans routinely deprecate Trump’s desire to avoid no-win foreign military adventures. But the president’s willingness to act decisively against foreign threats like ISIS, against whom Obama failed to act decisively, should shoot down the idea that he is withdrawing from the world.
Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal is presented as proof that he lacks understanding of the sensibilities and interests of Europe. But in this case, it is Trump—not the Europeans—who is defending Western interests. His attempt to renegotiate a disastrously weak deal that will eventually bring about a nuclear Iran, unless the pact’s sunset clauses and its ignoring of Tehran’s status as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism are eliminated, is necessary. He has dragged the Europeans along kicking and screaming into renewed economic isolation of Iran—a testimony to their continued dependence on the United States, their self-defeating venality and American common sense.
Europeans also see Trump’s support for Israel as a terrible failing. But, as with Iran, Trump’s contempt for the so-called experts in the foreign policy establishment, who have been consistently wrong in pushing for pressure on Israel and ignoring Palestinian rejectionism and terrorism, served him well. Europeans regard Trump’s reversal of longstanding U.S. policy on issues like Jerusalem as a disaster. But his critics have no explanation for his historic successes, such as the peace deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan with the promise of more to come. Trump’s rejection of European antagonism for Israel brought results that had eluded a generation of would-be peace processors.
The same is true of the ultimate anti-internationalist heresy committed by the administration: withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. Many revile Trump’s sympathy for those who are skeptical about the fantastic doomsday predictions of global warming extremists like Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg. But even if one accepts the premise of the need for such an accord, the notion that a pact that punishes developed countries like those of Western Europe and the United States—while ignoring that most of the problems are being caused by China and the developing world—is in the interests of the alliance is absurd. Trump’s stand is sensible, not detrimental to the West.
Even those domestic positions taken by Trump that are viewed as troubling by Europeans, such as his rejection of the Black Lives Matter movement’s claim that America is an irredeemably racist nation, actually bolsters America’s standing in the world. An America that rejects its own exceptionalism—the lynchpin of a century of foreign policy moves that have saved the world from the threats of Nazism, communism and Islamism—would be impossible if the United States were to recant its core beliefs in the name of critical race theory myths. Trump’s unsentimental view of immigration also seems less of an embarrassment when weighed against the problems Europeans are having with Islamists, as recent events in France illustrate.
Rather than crave the good opinion of Western Europeans, Americans should regard dismay at Trump’s policies with pride. Americans will make up their own minds about whether they want four more years of Trump. But worries about European opinion of the president should work in his favor, not against his reelection.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org, a columnist for The New York Post and a senior contributor for The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
