 They went back where live at a given, I'm Jay Fidel, this is Think Tech, this is Global Connections and we are connected with Carlos Juarez, who is our International Relations host in Puebla, Mexico. He runs the International Relations Department at the University of the Americas there. Welcome back to your show, Carlos. Welcome Jay, great to connect and look forward to you updating on what's happening in the world. We're living a few times as we connect everything often and perhaps the most recent thing playing out is the visit that President Trump just made to London for the NATO summit once again and we will read some other developments but most recently that has been on the same year and usually the president is especially now facing a domestic crisis at home with the impeachment. It would be a welcome break to get out and see the world but this trip has been a bit awkward and undergoing both a delicate situation with the allies over there, the crisis over NATO, but even just some of the personal dynamics of what is out there. Dynamics may be a euphemism in this circumstance. Anyway, I just want to say that we're going to call this show, we are calling this show President Trump in Europe, new wine and old bottles and we're going to talk about President Trump's recent travel to the NATO summit in London, P.S., there was an article in the New York Times I think this morning itemizing all of Trump's travels to Europe and how in each case he has stumbled and bumbled and had gaffes, political and diplomatic gaffes with the leaders of Europe, trip after trip. So this trip would be no exception, eh? Yeah, that's right, yeah, that's right and yet of course a couple of awkward moments on one hand there was some video release of several of the world leaders, Trudeau and Macron and Boris Johnson and what appears to be laughing and maybe mocking the president because of the late arrival to an earlier meeting. I'm going to end the press conference with the French president and I'm just going to do some of the awkwardness and we have to also emphasize though that Trump's behavior while we criticize it and mock it and it does get rid of, I mean there are those the French supporters there who, well he's taking things up, he doesn't live by the same rules and so nothing to be alarmed about, no big surprise but at the end of the day we've now had, as you mentioned, several, you know, a number of visits now and in almost every case something is awkward or goes wrong, issues of basic protocol, issues of, you know, just very complex issues that he seems to not fully understand in the irony is that for, you know, for a presidential candidate and then in his early days he spoke about not wanting to be laughed at and he's going to make that go away, well the reality is today in fact he has been ridiculed and laughed at and, you know, just clearly he's not in his element when he's going to be popular on forums, he prefers the one-on-one and even when he's there he beats the leader of Turkey, you know, Erdogan, while the rest of them are turning him more, so it is a tough time and, you know, the leader goes there, the U.S. and is not, you know, I guess I want to say is not taken as seriously maybe by some, and yet they have to because he's coming and making some serious threats and otherwise, you know, I'm just storing, I mean, the U.S. in the big power and whether it acts or doesn't act or how it acts has a profound impact on... Well, let's try to unpack it a little bit in terms of what his motivations are and his weaknesses are that leads him to do this. You know, the first thing, and we talked about this before the show, is Marquis de Lafayette back when was an important factor in our American revolution and he worked with Ben Franklin to finance the revolution with French money and so they were there at the very outset and they were supporting us and, you know, we have a debt of gratitude for that. They also remember they were also part of the Louisiana Purchase in, I want to say, 1819 and it just shows you they were a large player in the world in those days and we went and bought the Louisiana Purchase for them. Our country would not be the same if we had not been able to do that. I don't know how... I don't think that they've stayed as prominent on our radar as they were, but they certainly have been a friend of the United States in World War I, World War II and now here we are and in NATO all these years, but now we have the president going over there. He doesn't know not to call the leader of France, the premier of France, two-faced, which is what he called Macron a day or two ago. What do you attribute that? It can't be because he understands diplomatic relations. It must be something having to do with his own, you know, what do you want to call it? Attitudinal weakness. What makes him so oblivious to foreign relations with an ally of 200 some odd years? Yeah. Well, it's a tough one to wrap around. I mean there are many aspects. On one hand, you know, there are basic elements of diplomatic protocol that are, you know, pretty widespread norms over the years and the French have a particular negotiating style themselves, which really draws on understanding and doing your homework, having a pretty clear and detailed understanding of it. So my point there is that they would know and understand that history and any president should or should have a creeper that explains them, hey, we have a long time ally, et cetera, et cetera. And the American negotiator, I mean, in many ways, Trump does reveal rates that are typical of American negotiators. Part of it is a business-like negotiator. He comes from the business world. So those elements, for him, it's all about a transaction, you know. And he's been harping, particularly on NATO, about the percentage of, you know, budgets that are being allocated by different countries. And, you know, he would argue, and then maybe those who defend and support him would say he's been pushing European countries to contribute more. But, okay, that's fair enough. But to then say that we've been getting ripped off or that somehow you can just, you can't see it as something that you just put a monetary value on, because the United States helped establish the world order after World War II and helped to establish the NATO alliance in 1949, et cetera, et cetera. But somehow, his style is to have no, no awareness of what happened before, like it's all here and now, and it's all a transaction. You know, there's a certain moralistic negotiator that comes out of you at that time. We don't see that in Trump. But sometimes, you know, promoting democracy or representing ideals, you know, we don't see that. There's a legalistic negotiator that's typical of the U.S. Maybe there's aspects of that, but here again, you know, that's almost a required nuance. It requires, you know, working to find common interest. In the end, a final trait that's typical of Americans that we see as very clearly interrupts is the superpower as a bully. The U.S. has always been powerful and at times, you know, at symmetrical power. But under Bush, I'm sorry, under Trump, he's taken it to a little level in terms of the bullying, because, you know, calling people names that are simply not appropriate or, you know, even previous visit he may be when the U.K. where he said that the NHS, their National Health Service, was basically on the table. Everything's on the table. Well, that didn't go so well there. And now he's tracking and, you know, saying, no, that that's not really an issue. I don't know. I mean, here's a president whose stuff has told us he doesn't go a lot of preparation. He wins it, he, you know, goes to visit with the summit of Kim Jong-un and just looks him in the eye, likes him. The reality is, what he doesn't like is these forums where he is not the one in charge or he's the one that is higher than everyone else's. And for the Europeans and the NATO allies, it's all about multilateralism. It's all about, you know, coming together for a common interest and having differences but working it out. That's not his expertise. Obviously, he's uncomfortable in those settings and we see it again with his most recent visit. Yeah. Well, you know, it strikes me, too, that France is where modern diplomacy was invented. I say modern, I mean, over the past 500 years. I mean, French is a diplomatic language used universally for diplomacy. And French culture is a milieu. See, even there, a French word, a milieu for diplomatic relations. And so when you have a confrontation with the Premier of France and you call them names and you call them two-faced, which is really sort of a universal insult, you're really a bull in a china shop. And, you know, my reaction, and I want to ask you about this, is the French people understand what I've just said. They understand that France is universal language and culture for diplomatic relations. So how do they feel about this? And that's a loaded question in the sense that immediately after Trump did that, there were protests all over France about unrelated issues, about economics. But this seems to me an aggravating point about the relationship of Macron and the French people. And for that reason, as Trump does so often, he disrupts things. He's the great disruptor. And he disrupted, here in this case, he disrupted, A, U.S. relations with France, and also the relations of the Premier of France with the people of France. What's your comment on that, Carlos? Yeah, I mean, you know, it is hard to somehow connect and link everything, but somehow we together approach it. We're already in place and moving forward. And then Macron has lost popularity. But again, maybe just going back to your initial point, that is, what we see in the style of almost the same Trump represents a, obviously, a very sharp, sharp contrast to the entries of tradition, that's been protocol that the French have. The French, if anything, they have developed over the years this aisle of negotiating, particularly diplomatic work. It's very logical. It's very clearly thought out. And there's a very clear understanding, what is their interest? What is France's interest? And maybe what I want to get at from the U.S., we often have an agenda or a strategy, but what Trump, what we see instead is just more this ad hoc impulsiveness. And, you know, even as you're right there, I think I was hearing reports he said about an hour plus in these sort of open-ended press conferences, but rambling as he has done often coherently about different things without any clear, clear understanding. And I think from the French, it's certainly from the French elite as European elite in general, I mean, he is simply an embarrassment. He doesn't know, his homework doesn't know how to handle himself. And it just reinforces an anti-Americanism, which is very pervasive, very strong in France. It is some other places in Latin America we often talked about. But this doesn't help, you know, it reinforces that. Beyond that, I'm a hard press to think of, I mean, because the summit took place in London, so he wasn't on the ground in France in any way that might have been more pronounced. But, you know, the staff that he had with Macron, I think also reveals Macron himself is shifting his approach the first year or so in office, he was pretty low key. And now he seems to be getting more aggressive, even pushing back on the U.S. But I'm not sure, you know, he's facing a lot of his own defense against France. And, yeah, I don't know that this, I don't know that we can say that this really affected those dynamics much, because, you know, there's a lot of protest movement, as I was saying, the latest one in France, it has to do with a variety of different things, the pension reforms in particular, and, you know, France, again, a nation famous for its protest movement, since the Revolutionary days, but that's just more of the same. Although this one is very serious, transportation has come to a halt, and many are looking at it as probably the worst since at least the mid-90s when they also had a pretty massive strike. But back to Trump, I mean, again, it's just underscored that he, on one hand, he's not comfortably setting that normally when you've got the prices like back home, you know, this would be a chance to get away from it all, but it's that he had to come racing back only to arrive and have, you know, the speaker of the House announcing, you know, the impeachment, some articles will be forward, and, you know, it can't be a good or easy time for him at all. Yeah, look, well, looking at it from Macron's side, you know, there's really a couple of issues here. One is NATO. France has been a loyal participant in not only the EU, but in NATO. The EU is, in some ways, unraveling these days, and Trump has not been helpful in that regard. And NATO is weakened these days. And it was just a day or two before he made his unfortunate remarks about Macron, where he announced that he was cutting his contribution to NATO at the same time telling NATO that the countries of NATO they weren't providing enough. So he's putting, he's on that track about putting pressure on NATO. This is not good for NATO. And ultimately, I think it weakens NATO. So Macron may have it in his mind that Trump is no friend of France right now. He must be, he must be concerned about Trump and NATO and the continuation of NATO. After all, it's a mutual security pact. And to the extent that NATO is weakened, to the extent the EU is weakened, and Trump has hurt them in both departments, you know, that affects France's security. So, you know, my sense of it, like to know your thoughts, my sense of it is that Macron and maybe a lot of French think that Trump is not their friend as a country, that Trump is weakening them, weakening EU, and weakening NATO. And that is against their national interests. Yeah, I would agree all around. I mean, in general, there's nothing that you can find that is going to be positive from their side, but now, again, from the strictly American perspective, so what? The French in the US have always had this awkward tense love-hate relationship that's always been a challenging one, you know, when Americans often think of France and in this very stereotype, what is it that, what are they known for? Well, hostature and perfumes and French food. And by contrast, the Germans, which are, you know, another of our major allies in the US, you know, what do we associate them with? Obviously, you know, machines and strong. And yet, you know, France has been there, as you noted, from the beginning of the nation as an important supporter in the Revolutionary War. And then in the following, you know, the expansion with the purchase of the Louis Vuitton, etc. But again, and again, you would see this. And part of it is a clash of two, some ways, two big powers or two big national interests. The French are one of the few countries, perhaps outside of the UK, who can say that they can project sort of a universal, I don't know, values or they can check power beyond their borders, you know, as a major civilization, as a key part of the European, you know, story, and founders of the EU and all that. And so they have a vision, or a view that's pretty clear of themselves. And it's, you know, it's one that they don't hesitate to articulate. But it often comes in class of the US. And we often use the term in the American literature, mechanist exceptionalism, right? The US has something special over the years. That I think is coming under a lot of criticism now, given the way the US has played out under the Trump administration. It hasn't won any new supporters except for those kind of authoritarian leaders, whether it's the Hungarian president or a Turkey leader, or Kim Jong-un, you know, the dictators that he likes. Unfortunately, for the rest of Western Europe, he is an embarrassment and remains, you know, the laughing stock. Absolutely. I think they see it that way. And one way that they seem to be pushing back is this group of six, six countries within the EU have organized a special exchange to buy Iranian oil in violation of Trump's oil sanctions against Iran. They haven't yet, actually bought the oil, but they've organized and they plan to buy the oil. And one of those six countries is France, as you would expect, because they're really uncomfortable with Trump's action in ripping up the contract with Iran. We'll pick up the agreement. And then in telling them they shouldn't buy any Iranian oil, which certainly affects their oil market. Don't you think that's part of this? Well, it's all fueled into that, of course. And that, you know, it's not only that, but removing the US from the Paris Climate Accord, the Paris Climate Accord, and then the kind of partnership in the Asia-Pacific region, overall a rejection of the US of this notion of multilateralism and maybe of globalism more generally, but a sense that, you know, the European allies cannot count on the US anymore. So there's been an erosion of that, an application of American leadership. And much of it has to do more with the individual style as a president, not so much that he's got a vision that's clearly defined. I mean, he's got a sort of a version of nationalism, but, you know, he says one thing in the morning and then contradicts himself by midday. There's just a sense that he doesn't know the basic rules and norms of governance. And also that, you know, something like this fight against terrorism with ISIS. I mean, look at the contradictions there, basically selling out the Kurdish allies, then rambling with, you know, incoherency. Well, they didn't help us in World War II. They weren't there at normally a second, nothing to do. And so it's just a total lack of basic, basic knowledge that any, you know, reasonably educated person would just know, and he just demonstrates a total lack of that. So, again, it is a laughing stock and there's no other way to put it, just shaking their heads. And yet they're, you know, here again, there's going to be some minority of the sort of hyper-nationalists who see the US standing up for itself and not, you know, somehow, you know, coutowing to these other pressures. Because in parts of Europe too, there's a lot of criticism of the EU, criticism of any and every government, of course. But nevertheless, I think it's a sad day for the US because here we were, you know, the last 75 years, you know, major, you know, players in global politics and while doing something sad for some, you've really just seen a total erosion of American leadership under the current administration. And, you know, will the damage be so hard that it won't be possible to come back? Well, that's a really big question, really, really big question. Because, you know, the damage seems to be increasing. The damage is like, having a more profound effect. And it's not just a leadership in France and other, the other countries in the EU and NATO. It's the people, you know, this sort of thing, this kind of entity has a way of filtering down the man on the street. And all of a sudden you find that the hell country is now having, you know, having a negative experience with the US, they don't feel the same way about Americans and all that. So my question to you, Carlos, and you've spent many years on Fulbright's and the like in Europe. Is this, is this repairable? In other words, if Trump doesn't win the election here in 2020 or if he's impeached, or if he serves longer than, you know, another four years, how can we come back? Can we come back? Can we restore, repair our long-term relationship with France and some of these other countries in Europe? Yeah. Well, you know, again, so the answer to that, I think, you know, on one hand there is a, one could say, you know, an enduring wall in your part of the US that is going to be there well after he's gone. And maybe another way to put it is that I think some, you know, say responsible and involved people have the ability to separate the different presidents that they're leading now and maybe the American people. Or even for that matter, let's say a professional bureaucrat or diplomat, as we even saw in those recent official hearings. I mean, it came away with anything, but there are a group of dedicated civil servants who are there regardless of the president who, for example, by the best of the US, and we saw many of those who can be testified. And what I want to say is that, you know, let's say foreign ministry official in France, they know that there are some people in US State Department and government that they deal with who are knowledgeable, know their history, know their protocol, all that, and that instead they can distinguish that leader. But now, and the damage we're referring to, I mean, it's hard to say because on some level any change is going to be better. It's a transition to a presidency that has nothing, but I think with Trump, we've just seen the worst of everything in terms of the insulting and then the sort of total lack of the United States to have a leader who just doesn't understand, you know, the most basic and whether it's the history, whether it's just, you know, that either complex issues or more complex issues, the world faces a lot of global problems that cannot be solved without operation and coordination, including terrorism and the decisions that the US makes in the believe or, you know, actions trying to build support or coalition or some other activity. If there's not a trust in Mr. President, he won't be able to get any support. If you cannot go in alone on everything, you know, if we're facing external threats, we need cooperation from other governments. And increasingly, I think there is a real distance of either not to be trusted or understood and, you know, if anything, they've learned how to deal with it because now what he says or does is not a total surprise, but here we go again. Every single time he's come to one of these multilateral meetings, we see the same story again where he's kind of like the odd man out, awkward, and, you know, if there is damage done, it will be hard to somehow, you know. Well, one thing is that some people have come to the view that he's doing all of this without really caring about Europe. What he really cares about is playing to his base, assuming that his base supports isolationism, which is really so inappropriate in our time, but he's playing to his base. And what this is is a reaction to the impeachment, lest we forget the impeachment is going on full throttle in Washington. And he wants a split screen on this, as was put in that article in The Times. He wants to counterbalance and distract people from all the news about the, you know, the impeachment. And so, you know, my question to you is this, you know, do the people in Europe? I mean, and I think most people that I know understand that. They understand that he's distracting. This is, again, just as he's narcissistic, he's also a distractor. And so he's trying to distract everyone from what's going on in Washington, and put himself at the top of the agenda as usual again. But do the people in Europe understand this? Do they understand well enough that this is a distraction for the benefit of his political base in the United States? Yeah, and here again, we say to the people, I mean, I want to say the average person probably does not. And they just see him what he is, an obnoxious, fully, more of the same, you know, the worst of the American, you know, nothing new, but just a deeper level. But I will say, I mean, I think for many elites, and maybe other, more important, I mean, there's, there remains a lot of confusion and uncertainty about the fact that, you know, impeachment, which is a potential removal of office. Now, there's a punditry here, and most of us are anticipating the House will pass articles, but the Senate will probably not convict. But what I want to say is I don't think it's that clear to others outside of the U.S., both in this continuing process. And so, because it's not clear, there's a lot of uncertainty, there's a lot of, maybe legitimacy or credibility crisis, where it's hard to take it seriously when, at the same time, you see that he's facing such a pressure back home, and there's the puzzle that in the parliamentary system of Europe, someone like him would more easily be removed by, you know, legislative maneuvers that can support some of the confidence that he would not see in most of the European places, the leader like, no, that's not to say there are not authoritarian, the Victor Orvans or others, the even better Estonian many years in Italy, who have managed to capture the system, kind of, you know, put it behind them. But at least for a major power, you know, in Europe, they're baffled with how, how could this person still be in office, how could he be even back into the office? And now that he's there, I mean, how can we take it seriously if there's so much of this pressure going on at all? But yet, having said all that, there's also, well, guess what, he is the president, we've got to deal with him. So he had to come up with their own sort of talking points for how do you manage it? There's a problem for them. But I think at the bottom, Carlos, and we'll have to close on this, but at the bottom, if I were living in Europe, I would European leader, I would have much less confidence that the US will come to my aid, that the US will understand and support me, help me in my national security, my regional security. I would be very concerned, I would be confused, and I would have this kind of anxiety about the disappearance of my old buddy, the United States, and the confusion as to whether it will ever come back. You know, you're on your own, boys, and that's not a good place to be. Anyway, Carlos, we have to follow this. I so enjoy our conversations. Thank you so much, Jay, and we'll keep you posted and look forward to the next chance to keep our conversation going. Thank you, Carlos. Carlos, where is he? Take care.