Military efforts from Donald Trump’s administration could move away from Europe, according to a new document released by the White House.
A National Security Strategy document released last week suggests the US could withdraw from conflicts in the Western hemisphere and instead turn their focus to China. Analysis from Georg Riekeles and Varg Folkman in The Guardian warned that, despite “tensions” in Europe intensifying, the Trump administration could shift their troops and military focus to new frontiers.
Riekeles and Folkman wrote, “China, they argue, is the decisive theatre, not Europe, and US attention and assets must shift accordingly. Washington has signalled some version of this pivot for more than a decade. Yet European governments have found the idea that the US might actually deprioritise the continent’s security remarkably abstruse.”
“The war in Ukraine has intensified this tension: Europe’s thinking is that a US withdrawal or an imposed, unequal peace would produce chaos in Ukraine and instability across Europe.”
Despite this possible shift, Trump’s administration is still playing its part in brokering peace between Ukraine and Russia.
Riekeles and Folkman believe this is part of a larger plan from the US government to shape European politics in a Trump-friendly system. They wrote, “Because it is clear that as Washington draws back militarily, it will pull even harder on its other levers: financial power, diplomatic pressure, export controls, trade measures and secondary sanctions. These instruments will increasingly be used to steer Europe in the political direction the US wants.”
“Lenient enforcement, or the scrapping of digital and green rules altogether will be demanded of the EU – as US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick did last month. All this is happening as the security umbrella above Europe becomes ever thinner. The result is a dangerous asymmetry: less protection and more pressure.”
The pair also believe Europe as a whole could be “collateral damage” in a US and China confrontation, with the continent put in a “brutal, lose-lose position.”
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