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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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The transition between the Obama and
Trump presidencies has supposed an unprece-
dented and radical shift. The political principles
and agenda of the present administration will
give form to a new Trump Doctrine that will un-
doubtedly entail a 180-degree change of tack
on the country’s longstanding alliances with
Europe (NATO) and Asia (Japan and South
Korea), relationships with Russia and China and
positions on global governance in areas such as
trade, terrorism, migration and climate change.
Trump’s plans do not appear to involve the im-
plementation of a policy of isolationist retrench-
ment but rather a presidential display of his
much-vaunted talent for striking deals, first with
Russia and China, but eventually with European
countries, other regional powers and emerging
economies as well, in what could amount to a
new division of the world. His professed inten-
tion is to strike a “better deal” for the United
States based on burden sharing that will reduce
the need for US interventionism going forward.
Part and parcel of this convulsive start has
been Trump’s lack of prior political experience,
which has hindered his ability to piece together
a coherent policy, much less a strategy for its
implementation. Senate confirmation hearings
exposed differences of opinion between the
new president and various members of his cab-
inet such as Michael Flynn (forced to step down
from his position as national security advisor al-
most immediately due to his links to the Russian
government) as well as Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson and Defence Secretary James Mattis
(neither of whom completely shares Trump’s
outlook on NATO, Russia, China, Iran and the
Middle East). The first steps taken by the new
administration signal a curtailment of the free
trade policies and active support for Western
democracy that have served as the paradigm for
US foreign and security policy for the last seven
decades. As presently articulated, Trump’s
“American First” stance is poised to rupture a
bipartisan consensus that has guided world af-
fairs since the end of the Second World War.
The new president vaunted an impressive array
of (albeit mostly regressive) actions and initia-
tives during his first state of the union address
on 28 February that included an executive order
clearing the way for the construction of the
Keystone XL and Dakota pipelines, the US with-
drawal from the TTP, a stop entry order blocking
travel from seven predominantly Muslim coun-
tries to the US, the negotiation of pledges from
companies such as Ford and General Motors to
invest in US-based installations, the presenta-
tion of plans for a wall along the US-Mexican
border, the imminent renegotiation of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), an
upcoming major cut in corporate tax rates and
a proposal for legislation to fund a trillion-dollar
national infrastructure programme.
A divided Europe under the shadow of
Brexit
For the EU, 2016 was a year of relative stability
during which it managed to contain the worst
effects of the economic and refugee crises it
had been mired in for some time. The general
sense of calm was nevertheless marred by dis-
turbing developments on a number of fronts
that threatened European well-being and cohe-
sion. The first was a wave of concern for public
security provoked by a series of terrorist attacks
perpetrated in Paris in November 2015 and
heightened by another attack in Brussels in
March 2016, both of which put security forces
throughout the EU on high alert. Another was a
deteriorating social and economic climate marked
by a festering rise in inequality that fuelled the