If Trump is elected US president, the Americans will significantly reduce their military support in Europe and take care to repair their relationship with the Russians. This means that the war in Ukraine will be an exclusively European affair.
Therefore, the Europe-Russia relationship will remain in crisis – unless something changes by then. The same will happen with Europe’s relations with the Middle East, while Greece-Turkey’s relations with the USA will be re-examined and perhaps the balance will change.
Europe is crucially dependent on the US militarily and energy-wise, while its commercial and economic dependence is also significant. It is possible that Trump will not do everything that he is now advertising that he will do, it is possible that other more convenient solutions for Europe will be found, but it is also possible that we will see a very harsh scenario.
In any case, Europe must stand on its own two feet without counting the US.
And unfortunately at the moment it is far from being able to cope with the geopolitical developments on its own. It has neither the military power, nor the economic size, nor the structures, nor even a unified perception and attitude towards international issues.
In addition to the military sector, which requires a special type of treatment, Europe should immediately proceed with economic and political integration to cope with the challenges.
Its banking system is not unified – deposits are not guaranteed European -, the power of its banks is much smaller than that of the US and while the European ones are shrinking the American ones are growing, its capital markets maintain different rules from country to country and it has no the firepower to draw capital from the rest of the world that the US has.
In Europe’s stock markets its 100 largest companies combined do not even reach the capitalization of Microsoft, the European industry is forced to compete with the industries of the rest of the world with huge disadvantages due to the strict environmental policy of the EU, the cost of of all forms of energy is much higher than in the rest of the world, Europe does not have Silicon Valley, nor the technology that other countries such as China and India have, its agricultural sector is very expensive and there is not enough food.
In short, the European edifice cannot survive on its own without significant support from the US, especially when it is in a bad relationship with other major powers and coalitions of states.
What does Europe have? A huge bureaucracy which constantly sets rules and limits everything on the altar of a theoretical political correctness. For example, America produces technology that China copies, and the European bureaucracy writes laws that restrict the free use of that technology – e.g. in the case of Artificial Intelligence. But the big tech companies don’t seem willing to accept the European rules at the moment. Where will it go? We’ll see soon.
For Europe to stand and survive competitively it will have to unite immediately, something it has not done for decades. And this is very difficult because it requires member states to agree on issues that not only have not been agreed upon for decades, but are also “red lines” for many peoples.
But even if it overcomes this inconsistency, Europe will need funds that it does not have and will have great difficulty in finding, so the European Central Bank will have to issue a lot of money to finance these increased needs in all sectors without exception .
Things will not be easy for the Europeans – and this will begin to show before the US elections. A sample that should worry us a lot is if we will see the European stock markets moving in the opposite direction to the American ones.
Until now, for decades, they have followed parallel paths. Now the spread of their fluctuations has increased significantly and the American capital market is growing much faster than the European one. If the trend changes and turns from parallel to opposite, it will be a clear example of the great difficulties that the European Union will face.
So far the rhythms of the European leaders remain very “relaxed”. With the victory of Trump for the anointing, it seems that they understood that we may not escape it, but they have not managed to get out of the phase of inactivity and proceed to very brave decisions immediately. Unfortunately, time is running out against us.
