Griping by the European elite about a second Trump presidency has reached a fever pitch that is so bad that it borders on attempts to influence the 2024 presidential election.
The UK’s Economist magazine is in full panic mode about the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House, calling Trump “the biggest danger to the world in 2024” and lamenting that Democrats do not have a “plan B” to stop Trump.
London’s Guardian newspaper has called Trump “a clear and present danger to the UK’s vital interests in a way no previous US president has ever been.”
France’s LeMonde newspaper has called Trump’s comeback “as embarrassing as it is worrying for American democracy.”
Other Europeans have called for “Trump-proofing” European foreign policy before Mr. Trump possibly takes office next January.
European elitists despised Donald Trump as president because he was a populist who bucked conventional wisdom and challenged Europe. He pressured European states for fair trade with the U.S. and to meet their NATO treaty obligations on defense spending. He justifiably ridiculed European states—especially Germany—for becoming dependent on Russian energy and withdrew from the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline. European states were irate with Trump for withdrawing from bad agreements and treaties, such as the deeply flawed 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (the JCPOA) and the Paris Climate Accord.
European leaders have always hated brash American presidents who act unilaterally without the consent of Europe and the United Nations. This was especially true concerning Donald Trump, whose strong leadership and America First foreign policies drove them crazy.
Europe was therefore greatly relieved when Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election because he shared their liberal ideologies and establishment views on foreign policy. Biden would work through the UN and defer to Europe. There would be no foreign policy surprises. Europe knew it could control Biden.
The European elite was initially ecstatic with the Biden presidency. Biden immediately rejoined the Paris Climate Accord and designated climate change as the primary threat to U.S. national security. The Biden Administration aggressively promoted the far-left “diversity, equity, and inclusion” ideology and forced it on the U.S. military. Biden initiated talks to revive the JCPOA. European leaders were delighted by Biden’s sophomoric declarations in 2021 that “America is back” under his presidency. French President Macron happily welcomed Biden to the “European Club.”
But since the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021—ordered by Biden over the objections of top U.S. military officials and coalition leaders—European elites have been in denial about the Biden Administration’s extreme foreign policy incompetence.
They said nothing about how the Afghanistan withdrawal seriously undermined America’s credibility as a strong and reliable great power.
Europe didn’t object to Biden’s mishandling of U.S. relations with Russia and NATO membership for Ukraine, which led Russian President Putin to launch the largest attack on a European nation since World War II. They supported Biden’s position of restricting weapons sent to Ukraine before and during the early months of the war—arms that probably would have enabled the Ukrainian army to expel Russia from its country before the war became a stalemate in late 2022.
European elites don’t want to talk about how a sharp decline in American deterrence due to President Biden’s foreign policy incompetence emboldened China, North Korea, Iran, and Iran’s proxies to stage attacks and provocations that they would not have attempted if America had a strong and decisive Commander-in-Chief.
You will never read an article in The Economist suggesting that the deadly October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack against Israel and the recent surge in missile and drone attacks against Red Sea shipping by Yemen’s Houthi rebels were likely caused by a sharp drop in American deterrence during the Biden presidency. You will never see a LeMonde editorial posit that Putin might not have invaded Ukraine if President Biden had agreed to take NATO membership for Ukraine off the table for 25 years.
Like their American counterparts, the horror that European elites are expressing over the prospect of a second Trump presidency puts politics and ideology ahead of their national interests. America and Europe were far safer and more prosperous under the Trump presidency. Global stability was significantly better. But none of this matters for U.S. and European liberal elites or the Western mainstream media. They refuse to admit that Trump’s foreign policies worked and that Biden’s have been dangerous failures.
Two European elitists recently told the truth about the Trump and Biden foreign policy records: former UK Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Johnson said in February that a return of Trump to the White House “could be a big win for the world” and that there is “little doubt that the world felt safer and calmer and more stable” when Trump was in office.
Truss told a UK newspaper in February, “The United States under Biden has projected weakness.”
Johnson and Truss were exactly right. Europe was far better off under the Trump presidency than it is today, and a second Trump term likely will reverse the global instability caused by the weakness and incompetence of the Biden administration. It is time for European elitists to admit this and prepare for a possible second Trump term rather than trying to prevent it with fanatical criticism of Mr. Trump and predictions of doom if Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.
Europe’s elites should also admit that the biggest danger to the world in 2024 is not the election of Donald Trump but the continuation of the Biden presidency.
Fred Fleitz previously served as National Security Council chief of staff, CIA analyst, and a House Intelligence Committee staff member.