Trump isn’t just at war with Iran

Trump didn’t really need a pretext to start withdrawing US troops from Germany. But he still took advantage of one helpfully provided by the German chancellor Friedrich Metz.

The latter spoke out of turn when declaring that Iran was “humiliating” America, and Trump didn’t seem to have a “clear strategy” to end the war. Poor Metz forgot that no one gets away with telling the morbidly sensitive US president he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

It’s Metz who doesn’t “know what he’s talking about”, retorted Trump and threw his toys out of the pram, or rather 5,000 US troops out of Germany. That was just the beginning, he said. “We are going to cut way down, and we’re cutting a lot further than 5,000,” and this is one promise Trump is likely to keep.

Essentially, Metz’s unfortunate turn of phrase forced Trump to do what he wanted to do anyway – leave Europe to her own defensive devices. This has been Trump’s obsession since his first visit to Moscow in 1987.

Displaying the kind of consistency that Ralph Waldo Emerson called “the hobgoblin of little minds”, Trump stated that theme then and has been recapitulating it regularly ever since. All those wily Europeans rip America off by making her fund their defence while they themselves get fat on all that loose cash.

That European countries have been neglecting their own defence is beyond doubt, and Trump was right to point that out. When he became president, he was also right to insist European NATO members increase their defence spending – or else.

Or else what? Or else America will leave NATO, threatened Trump, putting paid to the alliance that secured peace in Europe for several post-war decades. That’s like introducing the death penalty for traffic violations.

When communicating such messages, Trump takes little trouble to conceal how much he, justifiably, despises both European leaders and, despicably, their countries. This includes Britain, no matter how enthusiastically Trump applauds the performance of the Ye Olde England travelling royal show.

Most European countries responded to Trump’s admonishments by increasing their defence spending, with four of them, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, going beyond the GDP proportion the US herself spends. Germany, too, increased her spend by a quarter to 2.3 per cent of GDP – still not enough, but a step in the right direction.

Just to make sure the next step will be more painful, Trump has announced he was raising tariffs on cars imported from the EU to 25 per cent. Now the motor trade is the centrepiece of the German economy, similar to financial services in Britain and agriculture in France.

There too Trump has shown the same hobgoblin consistency: he has been moaning for decades about the unbearably high presence of German cars on American roads. What do those Mercs and Beemers have that our Caddies and Lincolns don’t? he kept asking.

The short answer is that they are better cars, as I can testify after switching from GM, Ford and AMC products to Audis and BMWs 40 years ago. The time-honoured method of competing with superior imports is to make the domestic equivalents as good. The stupid, vindictive method is to protect inferior domestic industries with extortionist tariffs.

Trump’s protectionism isn’t just vindictive but also stupid because it ends up punishing American consumers, who are already suffering from the skyrocketing fuel costs and general price increases. But it’s not just Europe’s car manufacturers who will bear the brunt of Trump’s anti-European policies. It’s also Europe’s defences.

These are being hit with the double whammy of US troop withdrawals and new tariffs on the vital European, especially German, industry. This has caused a predictable reaction in the EU – and perhaps a less predictable one within Trump’s own party.

That is, to the extent to which he considers the Republican Party his own. Trump’s core support comes not from the Party at large, but from the MAGA section within it. And it increasingly appears that this section is shrinking.

Senator Roger Wicker and Representative Mike Rogers, Republican chairmen of the armed services committee in their respective Houses, warned that the current salvo in Trump’s war on Europe risks “sending the wrong signal to Vladimir Putin”.

European allies are heeding Trump’s demand to increase their defence spending, they added, but “translating that investment into the military capability needed to assume primary responsibility for conventional deterrence will take time.”

The second statement is unassailable, but the first one is open to debate, starting with the definition of “the wrong signal”. Trump’s signal to Putin may be wrong as far as Messrs Wicker and Rogers are concerned, but it again shows that consistency Emerson disparaged so scathingly.

Everything that Trump has so far said to and about Putin shows he holds the Kremlin ghoul in much higher esteem than any European leader. It hasn’t been just words either.

While Biden’s administration increased US military presence in Europe, adding 7,000 more troops, Trump is winding it down. The same goes for America’s support for the Ukraine: Biden was doing the bare minimum, but he was indeed doing it. Trump isn’t: over the past year US assistance for the Ukraine has petered out to almost nothing.

The signal Trump is sending to Putin is clear: if you can, take the Ukraine, Vlad. Hell, take all of Europe, see if I care. Serves those hoity-toity Europeans right for ripping America off all these years.

As far as Trump’s overall geopolitical thinking can be inferred from his exceedingly erratic foreign policy and self-contradicting statements thereon, he is an imperialist par excellence. He seems to have nothing but contempt for smaller sovereign nations not packing a sufficient military punch.

The ideal map of the world he seems to see with his mind’s eye is zones of influence divided among three global empires: America, China and Russia. Essentially, two of these, America and China, are the super-empires vying for supremacy, with Russia and her potential European vassals holding the balance of power.

Admittedly, the Donald hasn’t vouchsafed to me his ideal of the world. But this kind of view is the only one that makes sense of his actions and pronouncements.

Looking beyond his erratic meandering, one can discern either such an overarching geopolitical concept – or none. Neither possibility can be discounted, but do remember: underneath it all Trump is nothing if not consistent. In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s sense of the word.