Brussels, 12 June 2024
With less than five months until the US elections, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) today published six scary policy scenarios for a Trump 2.0 administration to help Europeans think through various challenges.
All the scenarios derive from ideas in the Republican foreign policy ecosystem. None of the scenarios are inevitable, but they all are plausible during the first one or two years of a new Trump.
Individually, they present a serious challenge for a Europe that remains heavily dependent on the US; collectively they are a virtual Trumpageddon:
- Scenario 1 | Ukraine: Minsk 3.0 – Trump announces his intention to find a deal to end the war in Ukraine. He wants to arrange meetings between Putin and Zelensky and wants to tie future military aids to Ukraine on Zelensky’s willingness to negotiate with Moscow.
- Scenario 2 | China: Crisis in the South China Sea – The Chinese sink a Philippine naval ship and impose a blockade around Second Thomas Shoal. This puts the Trump administration under pressure to uphold US obligations under the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty and to support a key ally. But Trump is not keen to engage militarily in the South China Sea so starts a trade war with China.
- Scenario 3 | Strategic industrial policy: Total energy dominance – Trump announces the idea of “total energy dominance”. He seeks to unleash US fossil fuel production and link cheap energy to an American economic and manufacturing renaissance, while simultaneously using US control of energy resources to secure US foreign policy goals.
- Scenario 4 | European security: NATO’s slumber – Trump puts NATO to sleep, not by withdrawing from NATO but drastically reducing US support to it and demanding that Europeans fill the gaps.
- Scenario 5 | The Middle East and North Africa: Making Israel great again –Trump revives the Abraham Accords, announces plan to turn Gaza into Dubai on the Mediterranean, and pulls US troops out of Iraq and Syria to clear the way for Israeli action against Iran.
- Scenario 6 | Ideology: The global alliance of peoples and nations – Trump forms an international collation around conservative issues such as protecting national borders, opposing LGBT rights, and supporting traditional families. He seeks cooperation with fellow conservative leaders like Hungary’s Orbán and the Netherlands’ Wilders to launch a new global ideological movement.
All in all, the scenarios show how dependent the EU is on the US, a tendency that has only grown over the past years. To overcome the dangers of these scenarios, the authors provide a range of policy recommendations for Europeans:
- European policy-makers should invest some work to achieve greater capability and self-sufficiency in the long-term while managing their current dependence on the United States.
- Europeans should recognise that US action might further divide the EU. Pro-Trump leaders like Hungary’s Orbán or NATO partner Turkey tend to be more open-minded towards ideas like peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. EU leaders have to be aware of this possibility and strengthen their political stance.
- Smaller groups could achieve bigger goals. Coalitions like the Weimar Triangle, consisting of Germany, Poland, and France, supported by a new or renewed Commission president, could show partial unity and drive change.
You can find the scenarios publication here.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS :
Célia Belin is a senior policy fellow and head of the Paris office at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Between 2017 and 2022, she was a visiting fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. You can view her profile here.
Majda Ruge is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Before joining ECFR, she spent three years as a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute/SAIS at the Johns Hopkins University. You can view her profile here.
Jeremy Shapiro is the director of the US programme, head of the Washington office, and research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. His areas of focus include US foreign policy and transatlantic relations. You can view his profile here.