Why does Trump and collaborators require the destruction of the EU?

The Trump administration not only dislikes the European Union but seeks its destruction. The trip made by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Europe last week was the third episode of an attack designed to deepen the east-west division within the EU. The first episode was the speech of 2017 from Trump in Warsaw, filled with nativistic nationalism. The second episode was the decision of 2018 by Trump for tariffs, and the collapse of key agreements, such as the nuclear one with Iran and the treaty for the intermediate nuclear forces. [ INF]. This should be added to the open encouragement for the [Brexiters: campaigners for Britain to exit the EU], and the decision to withdraw from Syria. All of these mentioned above affect European interests [including Britain] in very concrete ways.

Europe is trying to make its resistance. Angela Merkel, the political goal favoured by Trump to be hit in the EU, received a fierce applause Saturday at the annual security conference in Munich for her speech on multilaterism virtues. But maybe we still haven't fully understood what the EU is taking away in this new era of Trump. The man who is already whispering in Trump's ears is named John Bolton, his national security adviser. His ideological brand anti - The EU was on full display during Pompeii's tour in Budapest, Bratislava and Warsaw.

Pompeii has done two significant things. The first, he effectively took over the 30th celebration of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe by legalising on the US's closeness with nations who fought for their freedom all this while giving permission to the populist right-wing governments for which the EU has warned they are taking steps back into their democracy. Second, through his decision on the destinations for the visit, Pompeo amplified the division between countries that were once behind the iron curtain and those that were not. This sharpness plays on people's sensitivity, manipulated by demagogues, who have undermined the EU's capacity to unite in recent years.

This reminded you of 2003 when, in an attempt to invasion Iraq, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used the term “Old Europe” [for the worse] and “Europe the new” [for the better]. But a big difference is that today the European project is hard to circulate; earlier the optimists believed it would be “leading the 21” century. An article that Bolton wrote in 2000 helps to focus more attention on Trump's strategy. Dubbed “Should we take global governance seriously? ” today can be read as a guide in the Trump administration's intentions to destroy the EU. In it, Bolton was shown “globalists” who tried to connect nations to a network of norms and agreements that limited sovereignty. He said a truly democratic mandate could exist only within the national level. It also spoke to NGOs and civil society [“that you see yourself beyond national policies” and “inefficiency” of multi-or supra-nationalist institutions. The EU, he says, “is the leading source of globalist politics”.

Bolton goes further: he identifies the EU as a threat to US interests [Last year Trump called “controversial”]. European “Elites” are “not only unhappy with transferring their national sovereignty to Brussels, they have also decided, to transfer the world institutions and norms, making the EU an predecessor of global governance”. And he describes the EU as “colored with anti-Americanism”.

Trump has done more than any other American leader to feed the anti-American Senate in Europe. What this reveals is that conventional explanations of violence for Trump's attacks on the EU are only part of the overall picture. Trump's fury to the EU as a trade block, its tactics to postpone arms exports to the continent, as well as its personal version of Merkel, are simply translating a broader ideological war around global governance.

Do not think that the scriptures Bolton made in 2000. You can only look like that if you believe the Trump administration has no ideology behind it, and only commercial interests. It is true that it is hard to think of today's Europe as capable of challenging the United States on the global stage: there are weak armies compared to the weak, and it has endured a decade of crises. Yet, it embodys something Trump and Bolton despise. And some of the larger member states are now trying to stand the roads that clearly tire the Trump team as with new mechanisms to ignore sanctions against Iran.

Meanwhile, although liberal Europeans in the centre can hope for a positive US engagement in the region as could be seen as Pompeii's promise to support the independent “media, and for NATO that would face Russia does not matter from what I would call the main news of last week's visit.

Words like “lir” and “Independence” came out of Pompeii's mouth while praising those who broke Communist dictatorships. But nowhere did the EU help establish democracies in these countries. The EU's value in this direction is higher than that of NATO an alliance that for years was also part of authoritarian [like Salazar's regime in Portugal, and of Greek colonels in the 1960s], and is again making it with Turkey and Erdogan.

Pompeii's words about freedom, above all, showed Bolton's opinion. All Americans celebrate their individual freedom, and at least want others in the world to have the same freedoms,” he wrote in 2000. However, by attacking the EU, he added that “human rights” were extended to many different dimensions to become important components of globalist efforts to impose and shame the independent duty of legal and political authority by national states”. Today, that kind of thinking fits very well with the right-wing populists in Warsaw and Budapest complaining of EU reactions to the oppression they make to the media and judges.

With less than 100 days until the European Parliament's elections, Pompeii dregged Hungary with Prime Minister Victor Orban, seeking to revis Europe's political map to adapt his vision of “liberal democracy”. They may not have agreed to Russia, and it is true that Pompeii also met representatives of NGOs in Budapest, but there were few signs of dyvergence with Orban about values. It is also true that Pompeii visited Slovakia, whose government thinks of itself as a constructive member of the EU, and not as a divisive one. But this probably aims to get Slovakia deeper into the liberals, not the opposite.

Pompeii's visit was a justification of enemies on EU values, and another attack on the very existence of the latter. Postwar Europe was able to build itself as a collective project thanks to US protection and even financial assistance. Today, the EU is targeted at the attacks of multifaceted politicians from Washington and Moscow, not only for what it does, but also for what it is. The sooner Europeans understand that, the better.

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