Does the EU want to turn Trump's election into an opportunity?

Since Trump's election, a state of unrest has prevailed around the world. Even the protests staged by various segments in the US against Trump's election occupy the agenda of the world media. Trump, who said he would build a wall on the Mexican border and built his election campaign on Islamophobic messages, was not taken very seriously politically at first, because he appeared to want to fill his sails with the rising xenophobia in the US.

However, after eliminating his rivals within the Republican Party from the race, he began making remarks that concern very closely US foreign policy and, consequently, the foreign policies of countries with alliance relations. For this reason Trump's winning the election created a shock effect in certain circles. There are reactions indicating that a similar shock effect exists in the EU.

The most important reason for the concern Trump's election has created in the EU was that the future president opened NATO to debate. In the presidential election campaign, Trump voiced quite loudly a reservation that is occasionally expressed in the US. Referring to the famous Article 5 of NATO, Trump spoke of the existence of members that do not spend enough on common defense and argued that this situation should be reviewed. According to Trump, the US's spending to protect NATO member countries amounts to a fortune, while some countries within NATO were doing nothing in the name of the defense alliance.

Trump's statements first disturbed the Baltic countries, since in his statement he harshly criticized NATO members like the Baltic countries and said that they could benefit from NATO's defense umbrella only as long as they continued to meet their obligations to the US. In countries like the Baltic states, which historically perceive a threat from Russia, which meet most of their physical security needs through NATO's defense umbrella, and which have developed economies but are militarily almost nothing, Trump's statement brought deep concern, and a reaction across the EU as a whole.

After Trump's election, harsh statements came one after another from EU leaders. European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker said that Trump did not know Europe like the average American, and claimed that for a US president to take office and begin getting to know the parts of the world he does not know is equivalent to a two-year loss. Juncker also said that Trump's opening NATO to debate could lead to quite dangerous consequences, and in a way set out the essence of the matter.

EU Foreign Ministers met in Brussels to discuss what course relations between the US and the EU would follow after Trump. The French Foreign Minister and the British Foreign Minister did not attend this meeting. It was announced that the French Foreign Minister did not attend because he had an appointment with the UN Secretary-General, while the EU High Representative for Security and Foreign Policy Mogherini linked the British Foreign Minister's absence to Brexit.

The message of cooperation from the Foreign Minister of Slovenia, the EU's presidency-in-office, Miroslav Lajcak, regarding the meeting was nevertheless an indication of the hope that the strategic, economic and social relations between the EU and the US would be prevented from deteriorating. Perhaps the impression that such a hope exists was created so as not to alarm the US.

Interestingly, similar things to what Trump said about NATO had been voiced, in a softer tone, in Bill Clinton's election campaign. Demands such as a fair sharing of costs in NATO, sharing the US burden, and the EU taking more responsibility had been voiced. The harshest reactions to Clinton's policies, which were regarded as a new isolationism, had come from Republicans, especially from the group that would later be called neo-cons.

Taking into account the decisions taken at the NATO Summits, after the end of the Cold War the EU, under the influence of its own internal deepening and geographical enlargement, carried out work on an autonomous defense and security policy. At Maastricht, the EU's founding treaty, it was accepted that the EU rose on three main pillars. These pillars were the European Communities, the European Foreign and Security Policy, and cooperation in the field of Security Forces and Justice.

Immediately after the end of the Cold War the EU had begun working on a military system that would balance NATO in the military sense or at least fill the areas NATO might leave incomplete. In particular, the US intervention in Yugoslavia in spite of the EU had shown EU officials that the US could take certain defense and security decisions against the EU's interests. In this respect the Petersberg Tasks that the EU defined for itself were a very important turning point.

However, while the EU was trying to develop its own autonomous military / security policy, they constantly claimed that the developments had no aim such as weakening NATO or taking the EU outside NATO. The security policies that took shape in the following period also remained dependent on NATO, especially in the military sense. The criticisms of the Bush administration that the EU was trying to hollow out NATO and undermine it had played a particular role in this development. Because the US did not want an EU that had moved outside NATO's sphere of influence, it made efforts to ensure that the ESDP became moderate. Nevertheless, the EU's search for an autonomous security policy did not end. Because with Bush the US demanded bandwagoning from its allies, the EU could not resist this US demand, but the EU Security Policy continued, albeit with slow steps.

In this sense Brexit appears to have opened a door of opportunity for the EU that nobody has noticed. Britain, which within the EU acted as the spokesman and representative of the US and resisted on matters the US did not want, will leave the EU within 2 years if everything goes well. With the artificial tension between the US and the EU growing steadily because of Trump's election, we may now read news about EU Security Policy more often.