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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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on China policy – personal telephone contact
with the president of Taiwan only days after the
November election, Defence Secretary Mattis’s
remarks regarding China’s actions in the South
China Sea and Mattis’s trip to South Korea and
Japan in February – may be considered tactical
manoeuvres meant to establish negotiating po-
sitions.
For the EU, all these plans for grand bilateral
agreements that do not take the Union into ac-
count supposes the weakening of its position in
international affairs and a possible loss of au-
tonomy. Any such accord between the US and
Russia is bound to deepen the existing rift be-
tween its Eastern European members (the Baltic
states and Poland) and others on Russian policy.
Belligerence on the part of Washington towards
China could also translate into unnecessary eco-
nomic and political tensions between Brussels
and the governments of member states and
Beijing.
Security: the linchpin of the Atlantic Alliance
During his campaign, Donald Trump described
NATO as “obsolete” and threatened to break
the United States’ ties with the organisation if
he were elected president. NATO fell short of
the candidate’s standards: it had been ineffec-
tive in the fight against terrorism and cost-wise
constituted a bad deal for the US, which ac-
counted for less than half of the aggregated
GDP of alliance members but footed the bill for
approximately 75 % of NATO military expendi-
ture. The fifty-third Munich Security Conference
held on 17-18 February 2017 provided an op-
portunity for Europeans to size up the position
Trump was likely to take on the alliance as pres-
ident of the United States. Contrary to expecta-
tions, Vice-president Mike Pence and Secretary
of Defence James Mattis maintained a reassur-
ing tone during their presentations at this event.
Both reiterated the importance of transatlantic
cooperation to the US while underscoring the
need for members of the alliance to comply
with the 2 %military expenditure targets estab-
lished at the Wales Summit in 2014. In her ca-
pacity as German Chancellor, Angel Merkel un-
derscored the importance of multilateral organ-
isations such as NATO, Germany’s intention to
comply with its expenditure commitment and
the synergies between NATO and European de-
fence. It is in the context of this tug-of-war be-
tween Washington and Brussels that Great
Britain must define its future role within the al-
liance. I was made clear in Munich that unlike
the Baltic states, the Trump administration views
NATO more as a vehicle for combating transna-
tional terrorism than a means of Russian con-
tainment. Upcoming meetings between Trump
and Xi Jin Ping and Vladimir Putin may provide
clearer indications during the run-up to the next
NATO summit scheduled for 25 May.
Policy outlook for the Middle East
It is very difficult to piece together a compre-
hensive picture of the new US administration’s
forthcoming Middle East policy on the basis
Trump’s remarks as presidential candidate or
subsequent statements made by Secretary of
State Tillerson and Secretary of Defence Mattis.
Although nothing to date indicates the develop-
ment of so much as a general plan for the re-
gion, it does appear that Trump might consider
steering certain points of US Middle East policy
in new directions that could lead to new fissures
in the transatlantic alliance. The first involves
Syria, where Trump must pursue the dual objec-
tives of defeating ISIS and other jihadist factions