 We're very fortunate indeed given our current timing to have Constanza with us today to talk about the meaning of the Trump era for Europe in Germany particularly this week when we know that the American president will be in Brussels next week is I think particularly important and nobody is better equipped to talk about it than she is. She's an expert on German-European and transatlantic foreign and security policy and strategy and she's the inaugural Robert Bosch senior fellow on the Center for the United States in Europe at the Brookings Institute. So she'll talk for about 25 minutes and then we'll open the floor because I think particularly in a group like that it's good to have as much discussion as we can. When I joined Brookings two and a half years ago they recruited me as a Germany explainer which I'm not really I'm a foreign and security policy generalist I'm interested in strategy and all sorts of things and I said at the time you have to understand that I cannot explain Germany to you if I don't go to the rest of Europe very regularly there is no way of appropriately explaining the conditions and limitations on what Germany thinks it might be doing or can't do without going to the rest of Europe and Ireland is I just didn't manage to get here so I'm profoundly grateful and I hope it won't be the last time at least I will endeavor to perform in such a way that it won't be perhaps a word about myself of my background I'm a German but I grew up as a foreign service brat so across Europe and the world including America so I've got I've lived there as a child went to graduate school there and I'm now living there again and worked for an American think tank the German Martial Fund before I joined Brookings and between that I studied law and became a journalist and I was a defense and security expert or an editor for Deedside if that brings about any of your wiki paper in in handbook so I tend to have less of a sort of academic take on things and more of a sort of practical observers but with that let me let me let me try and outline where I think we are on Trump and his consequences for Europe and Germany and of course the the caveat that I immediately have to apply is that whatever I say now may be overwhelmed by events within the next 30 minutes actually and so you know you might as well you know go out and have coffee but I will I will endeavor to give you sort of what I think is is is the is the bottom line and and then maybe we can discuss some some details and I think my my I will endeavor to sort of cut through the daily scandals tweets and revelations and look at the fundamentals of what's going on here and how and how those inform our own situation and I'm going to ruthlessly crib from Edloos of the Financial Times with whom I was on a panel yesterday in another European town who described Trump as a three phase phenomenon so far the first 30 or 40 days which was all America first and America first that was introduced to us and or a theory a doctrine that was introduced to us in one of the most unusual if not the most unusual of presidential inaugural speeches a speech which has become known as the American carnage speech and which painted a picture of an America that is miserable a dystopian that is over committed abroad and taken advantage of by its allies that is not to put to find a point upon its crude by its trading partners that is losers out from the international liberal order it has worked so long to protect and that is is better off having a friendly relationship with strong men around the world the other thing for which the speech and indeed other pronouncements of the new president were notable was their anger anger is making an hostility of making a comeback an American discourse in a way that I find quite concerning I suppose you can say that certain degree of political correctness needed to be corrected but frankly this is an over correction after this very disturbing first phase came what you could call the normalising phase where adults were hired to run the defense department the foreign ministry the national security council at least certain certain dossiers of national security and ambassadors around washington were heard to be breathing big size of relief and then we've had the the hundredth day and the events around that and it seems like a roller coaster ever since then really there has been an extraordinary acceleration of revelations and events culminating of course in yesterday's appointment of a special council in the form of Robert Miller former FBI chief and these these events have I think revealed that it's the same trump despite the normalising tendencies and I think the more important point is that it's this is trump isn't just trump he is the symptom I think of larger more fundamental divisions in American politics things that are a more entrenched polarization structural changes in American politics that I think would require more than an election or or much less a midterm to overcome now let me talk about European reactions and I think the best way to do that is by by perhaps quickly referencing the transatlantic status quo ante and I've been in this business of watching the transatlantic relationship for the last 20 years as a journalist then as a think tanker at the German Marshall Fund and now at Brookings so I can if necessary give you chapter and verse but I'm going to editorialise and I'm going to refer to my notes here just to to make sure I don't get this I don't miss this up because I got up at four o'clock in the morning in Zurich and I'm mildly jet lagged but we'll see how this goes so the transatlantic status quo ante was one in which particularly in the Obama administration I think we had every reason to think that we were America's partners of first choice we were part of an extended tribe on both sides of the Atlantic we had very genuine disagreements but there was always the safety net of extended political economic trade and social ties there was always a more special relationship than others that was the relationship of the UK but increasingly my own country Germany slid into that role as the Brexit campaign took up speed in Britain and as Obama's relationship with Merkel turned from frosty to friendly and of course Washington had changed its mind about the EU fairly early on people I think sometimes think that this happened only under Obama I can assure you that it happened in the second term of Bush when Washington started taking the EU seriously as an actor that needed to be recognised in his own right invested a great deal in the American embassy at the at the EU etc so the message was generally we expect you to bear a greater share of the burden we will we want you to provide more support in guarding the international liberal order and in return we are willing to cut you more slack on certain things where we will give you greater autonomy say on certain aspects of European defense and security and we'll even let you take the lead on something such the the minst process being being the best example of this so what you had was a transatlantic relationship that had become perhaps a little cooler a little more transactional but at the same time extremely broad and I think the moment when we realised that it had changed in a rather profound way it was something that you probably are not going to expect me to say now and that was the transatlantic sorry the global financial crisis it was the global financial crisis more than any security or political crisis or the NSA affair with Germany that proved to policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic how deeply integrated their economic space is well they introduced us to the phenomenon of contagion and forced us to understand that events in our own economic spaces could have a massive impact on the other side of the Atlantic and so that we were joined at the hip not just in the security sense not just in the NATO framework but in terms of economic integration as well I think that was when it really hit home on many policy makers that we are that the relationship had changed in a profound way and and I say this for two reasons one because this has obvious security implications and secondly because I think that one of the one of the ways in which Obama and Merkel I think understood each other was in their assumption that globalization and integration were both a source of opportunity and of tremendous risk in the transatlantic relationship opportunity because they add new layers of you know connectivity potential innovation gross risk because they increase mutual exposure and vulnerable vulnerability in the way I've just described and and again this is something in which Obama and Merkel particularly understood each other and where they were separate from say Putin or or Cameron or or others is is the understanding that globalization and integration change the nature of power and of sovereignty because they reduce the ability of states to control data people territory and that that has consequences for the way that international relations and politics are conducted and I think the the insight that that Obama and Merkel both shared was that this requires a sort of less decisionated decisionist and less control fixated kinds of politics and instead a politics that is more flexible and more focused on risk management the reason that I'm painting you this broad picture is that I want to want to give you a backdrop for what's happening now and why what's happening now is both so seems retrogressive and and in some ways you know divorced from the reality that that I think one sees on the continent and I'd be very surprised if you didn't actually see things quite similarly here in Ireland now the one thing that also was that also happened in this time was of course that all the politicians all the policymakers in the in the transatlantic relationship in the west were forced by a succession of crises to be in permanent crisis mode and I think they overlooked the fundamental sort of tectonic changes and the politics and the economics and the societies of their own nation states I think they failed to see the things that were happening there in particular they failed they failed to see that there were people who felt that they were excluded from the benefits of globalization and who were developing their own very insular very walled off political subculture and a great deal of anger which then exploded in this populist wave and made them very vulnerable to exploitation by external actors whether it's Russian propaganda or is terrorism now let me come to to European reactions to what's happening now after having described this backdrop now I think there is almost no European in Europe or European in Washington who was accurately predicted the outcome of the November 8 elections in Washington I think all of us are guilty of not having to want to want to see it or as they say in German was nicht sein daft is nicht sein kann in other words that which is not allowed to be can't be um and arguably we're still scrambling now to understand the full implications of these events I mean we're still only you know a little more than 100 days into this um the exception being of course those in Europe um who themselves sort of share sympathies with Trump's voters and who see themselves as disruptors and as opponents of what they think of as a globalist establishment so what are we how do we how do we read what's going on as I mentioned the ambassadors who briefed a sigh of relief at the signs of normalisation and I think that that is one of the theories of what is happening in Washington the adults have taken over important beats important dossiers they are containing the president's impulsive tendencies they're hedging him around with sanity um and I think we've actually seen in the last seven days or so that that only goes so far and and I think it's accurate to say that people in Washington are kind of dreading the big trip the trip to which is going to take the president I think at the end of within a week no yeah yeah yeah weekend is going exactly on the weekend he's going to let me see it's Israel the Vatican Saudi Arabia and Brussels you know just one of those could be could could be interesting but the combination of the four of them I think is is is possible that that could be quite exciting but the I mean even in this sort of best best case analysis you know there are there are elements of sanity and they will hold the system together there was always the recognition in in European capitals and among European analysts and diplomats in washington that even in this best case scenario you were going to have an enormous increase of volatility of unpredictability of what you you know of of the risk of the opportunity for strategic miscalculation just erroneous interpretation of actions sayings press releases or tweets by other actors that's the first school the second school is what I would call the normal is over school and the normal is over school very simply says um look you have to look at the fact that this administration is composed of very different sets of people and you are going to be fooling yourselves if you don't look very hard and very clearly at the ideologs in this administration and if you don't read what they've written and if you don't listen to what they say and they would argue that while in the first hundred hundred days the institutions of the in other words the checks and balances of the system have worked the courts have done what they're supposed to do the executive has done what it's supposed to do and to some degree congress has done what it's done supposed to do and civil society has been demonstrating but they but the advocates of the normal is over school to which you will have guessed by now I will along as well would also argue that institutions and civil society can be co-opted bullied and exhausted and I think we're seeing signs of that already the passing of the healthcare law is an instance of that um and I think I can I could probably name a name a name a couple more it's also I think worth noting that the republicans so far have shown very little inclination to to look at what is a unique in fact a an opportunity that has not come to them in nearly 100 years to be precise not since 1928 in other words they have not since 1928 had the white house congress the senate and the opportunity not just to place at least one if not two or three judges in the supreme court and perhaps ten or more in the federal courts and so far that and the prospect of healthcare reform tax reform infrastructure bills I think has stopped them from assessing the full damage that this presidency might do to the party itself or at least to its reputation and so um and I don't think that that assessment is in any way mitigated by the fact that the special council has now been appointed he was appointed by the department of justice he is a former head of the fbi and he's known to be um very a stickler for process very thorough I mean the in the good and the and the and the best and the best in the worst way this is likely to take years and I don't see any incentive for the republicans to change anything about this situation before the midterms so I think this is something that we're dealing with for quite a while and it won't have escaped anyone's notice here that the democrats themselves are not particularly organised they've in fact I think not managed to resolve the to enter the post hillary era there is a obviously a bit of tragedy attached to that but there is no visible leadership in the democratic party right now as far as I can see so that is a somewhat darker scenario than the first one the normal is over school also of course emphasizes the tectonic shifts that I was alluding to earlier the changes in our politics the changes in our societies the um the worsening of the situation of the american middle class the polarization of american politics the dramatic impending changes to the labour market because of technical change technological chains particularly automation that have not been factored into trade and um an economic policy at all so far and of course also and I think most worryingly a growing questioning of the norms and institutions of representative democracy in liberal order and of america's guardianship of the international order itself all of that has these are shifts that are I think profound and that I mean there's always been elements of american thinking in you know that went in that direction but it's never been quite this out in the open and not not shared this broadly the other thing that concerns europeans and that concerns me about these the ideologs that I just mentioned is that they are while they're not strong on strategy it's and certainly not strong on policy and in fact they have chosen to not point on to not fill the positions the policy making and writing positions in many of the apart departments that are supposed to do that whether it's the defence department um the the state department or the nsc itself they have very clearly defined attitudes and I think if those of us who are policy wants tend to look for papers we tend to look for strategies and policies we tend to discount attitudes because they seem to be so intangible but I would suggest that with this group of people it is essential that we look at them and essential that we understand that in the narratives in their narratives which I would describe as a triple war narrative the culture war narrative trade war narrative and a war narrative and all of them war is necessary good and cleansing in ways that frankly for a german are somewhat reminiscent of pre-world war one political literature of a certain kind Oswald Spengler and others and in all of these narratives the EU is seen as a hostile actor that is inimical to american interest I can point you to the actual texts um and even more worryingly for a german particularly a pro european you're a file german like me uh germany is seen as the the sort of the spider in the web that is using a is using the EU as a front for its own nefarious machinations on currency trade refugees and other things is trying to get its own way through the EU now we all know and I would be the first to admit this that there are elements to these criticisms that are valid and I'm happy to go into great into detail on them in q&a but the problem with this with the with the the worldview espoused by the ideologs in the trump administration is that their critique goes far far beyond what is reasonable and in fact in the way that it's elaborated in the writings of some of them or the interviews stuff they've said it's frankly useless both as a theory or as a critique of state practice it's just I mean it describes a world that I don't recognize and um of course in politics you can always argue but in economics you actually can't economics is about facts and germany does not control the ECB in fact germany tried to get the ECB not to do quantitative easing and to suggest that we're behind that policy is factually wrong that's not going to stop Mr Navarro from asserting the country but that is where we are that is that is then genuinely we are then genuinely dealing with alternative facts now the let me let me address sort of one sort of fundamental point about this as I think is important to not to not miss um and it's why I I harped so much earlier on uh the importance of a certain understanding of the benefits and risks of globalization in the sort of pre-trump dispensation and particularly in the thinking of both Obama and Merkel and that is this administration's attitude to globalization which tellingly it calls globalism as though this were an ideology yeah or um you know an an attitude that could be changed a worldview that could be if you decided to not be in denial or to correct your views to not have what the germans call culture's bewust zone those are the marxists wrong consciousness false consciousness I think is the English translation um that you could correct interestingly this kind of idea of false consciousness is also very popular in the kremlin the leaders of the kremlin also think that we just don't understand the world as it is we're not willing to understand that great powers are what they are and great powers are destined to rule small powers in fact that small powers ought to fall in line and that I think is I think that that is fundamentally the deepest divide that there is between the ideologs in the white house and most continental europeans this attitude to mutual integration social economic legal and political the rejection by the steve vannons and millers and michael anthons and the rejection of as something that is fundamentally inimical to american views that I think really pits us against each other because that's the open against the closed society that's the connected world against the world which draws up its drawbridge which pulls up its drawbridges and that is what I'm most concerned about because I think that genuinely is it that that is a divide so profound that I I find it hard to overcome now where do I think we are in reactions um I think that it's because as I said because diplomats and policymakers tend to look for strategies and policymakers and for policy papers I think we're still in a itad atant in a state of waiting we have papers written by people before they joined the white house we have tweets we have course corrections reversals and then re-reversals um I don't know where the news this morning there was a writer's story about a white house official unnamed who said that America might leave NATO if it didn't correct far far far far more quickly than it is doing now I mean that's obviously said ahead of the summit the NATO summit the end of the month but um that's that if that's not a reversal of a reversal I don't know what is and so the the sense I think in the capitals the way I've I've seen it is that European diplomats are trying to combine hugging and hedging in other words trying to engage the Trump administration where they can for the Germans that has meant meeting not just with the father but with the daughter and inviting her to Berlin for a panel with madame lagarde and the chancellor and the queen of the Netherlands um that has meant you know trying to make a better case for why Germany is for what kind of defense spending we're doing how we're doing it how we're changing the armed forces but at the same time I am quite certain that people are thinking about how they would have to hedge should the need arise now to some degree I think it's important to understand on it and to those of you who study these things it's um this I'm not going to say anything new is that some of the things that we might be engaging or that we might be hedging on have already begun and that's particularly that that's rethinking European integration rethinking European integration as a way not to construct some sort of an alien or sort of counter structure to NATO or to the west but to reduce the vulnerabilities of Europe to to improve its resilience because we can't pull up the draw bridges that's just not that's just not possible in Europe and in particular by finding more ways of cooperating on security and defense and these impulses are much older than than Donald Trump I think they were they may have begun during the Iraq war but I think the real impulse was Russian aggression in Georgia Crimea Ukraine but in particular Russian meddling in the form of hybrid warfare furthering corruption funding right-wing political parties you name it the whole spectrum within the European project and in the Balkans that if you want to if you want to upset the Germans if you want to get the Germans very very worried then then you attack the European project itself and so in Berlin it has been at least two or three years now that Russia has stopped be seen as a strategic partner in fact that time is no longer used and I think it's seen more of more as more of a challenger a spoiler and perhaps in some ways even as an adversary now I mentioned the Iraq war Obama's pivot to Asia had also had some effect in galvanizing Europeans to think more about autonomous but not independent and not independent of NATO capabilities I flippantly described this as using NATO as the framework for European security and defense with a guest room for the Americans I think that is what it increasingly might look like at least for small and and medium sized operations I mean obviously in the case about right war which I don't expect we wouldn't be able to survive without the Americans but I do also think that the Americans have a perfectly legitimate case when they say you ought to be able to do more on your own and we expect you to do that because we will be needing our assets somewhere else or because our congress or a public feel that you ought to do this all of that I think is entirely legitimate and as far as I'm concerned we ought to have been doing that ages ago but what I'm describing now this atmosphere of volatility unpredictability and for the first time since the end of world war two hostility towards the European project in Germany in particular is reinforcing these tendencies so you might say from an American vantage point that a lot of this hedging might actually be good because it's in the American interest that we make ourselves more self-sufficient and less vulnerable and more resilient what I worry about is that this might drive a permanent wedge in the relationship which I would greatly regret I'm I've lived in America now for I'm living there for the first third time in my life I'm have a deep affection for the country and I have enormous admiration for its achievements not least for its constitution and I would like to see America prosper and I would like to see the transatlantic relationship prosper but I do think that we are at an inflection point where we are in sort of really at risk of of the relationship taking a very permanent downturn let me just to to to to end briefly say something about Germany um it's Germany's role in all this has been much discussed you will all remember the economist cover describing Germany as the reluctant hegemon I think that both those terms are wrong one because Germany is no longer reluctant um I think that for the past four or five years there has been a very intense and very constructive and very energetic debate in Germany about how to adopt a much more forward leaning foreign policy and security posture the reorganisation of the foreign ministry the defense ministry white book of last year are all part of that um you may have heard of the three speeches in Munich at the Munich security conference in 2014 where the German president and the foreign minister and the defense minister all said we need to exercise more responsibility because we have so much more power all of that is true but the what's what so I think the reluctance is is more or less gone and the Russians have certainly helped but what I think is is more problematic is the notion of the hegemonic power we may have power but it's not hegemony for the simple reason that it is very easy for other european countries to block it is also very easy for other european countries to to thwart or just to undermine whatever germany thinks it's doing um by by not playing along and I would I would say germany has brought this upon itself on a number of cases through its own either either the substance or the style of its foreign policy decisions but even leaving that aside I think it is simply not possible and that is where american assessments of german leadership in europe are often misguided it is not possible for any country to run europe in the way that the americans have for so many decades been the first among equals within nato where america's word counted for more than for far more than than than that of other nations I think if we do not manage among ourselves to to overcome the extra the deep divisions that now exist in europe on economics and on security between the south and the north and between the south and the east then we will I think see very little german effective leadership and in fact we will see a europe that is fundamentally diminished I do think that the elections in europe the dutch the french and possibly the way it looks now the the german elections may provide for a sort of new jumpstart for the european union because they will provide for more cohesion but I think that can only be the beginning of what needs to be a much larger and much more energetic conversation and one that I very much hope is not going to leave out the americans and I'll stop there