Trump-induced Europe crisis of today is India’s crisis tomorrow

In its hour of deep crisis, India has an opportunity to have a closer conversation with Europe and establish greater trade, strategic cooperation as well as mutual trust.

The ongoing rupture in trans-Atlantic ties has animated a particular strain of thought in the Indian strategic community—hyper-realism. 

Resonating strongly with the Mearsheimer school of thought, this view can be summed in the following conclusions: 

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1. US President Donald Trump is bringing in some much-needed realism and discipline in the West’s approach toward Ukraine and Russia. 
2. Trump is justified in urging Europe to do more, instead of relying on the US to pull its chestnuts out of the fire.
3. Europe had it coming, given its strategic naivete, over-dependence on the US, and moral chest-thumping – causing much annoyance to Indians particularly. 

However, this viewpoint is simplistic and underestimates the nature of the ongoing revolution in the US, based on a faulty understanding of post-war Europe. The recent fundamental shift in the US does not ‘prove’ the errors of Europe’s ways. In this context, it is important for India to adopt a broader and historical view of trans-Atlantic ties and thereby view Europe’s present crisis in the right framework. 

India’s crisis of tomorrow

The Indian strategic community has been following and will closely follow this evolving rupture through its many twists and turns. At the same time, Indians and Europeans will have heated conversations in the coming days; especially during the upcoming Raisina Dialogue. It is important that India doesn’t uncritically adopt one frame of reality over another while doing so. An uncaring ‘I told you so’ attitude from India may turn out to be counter-productive. Additionally, it is in India’s clear interest that a new world order, based on great power convergence between the US, Russia and China, does not take hold. Hence, Europe’s crisis of today is India’s crisis of tomorrow. 

Since the eruption of the Russia-Ukraine war, India had hoped that it would come to an agreeable end through diplomacy and mutual compromise. Hence, Trump’s re-election was welcome to that degree. It came with the hope that such a ‘deal’ could be worked out. This would have, after all, eased the pressure on India from the West while also allowing both Washington and Moscow to pay greater attention to the rising challenger in the East – China. However, Trump 2.0 has gone much beyond this and appears to be willing to sacrifice both Ukrainian as well as European interests to re-establish ties with Russia, while remaining ambivalent to the prospect of balancing China. 

This has resulted in Europe’s worst strategic nightmare since 1945, with perceptions of the US ‘switching sides’ and its wavering security commitments. Meanwhile, India has also increasingly embraced a hard-nosed power-based geopolitical view. In this view, smart powers build strong military capability, rely on themselves and exploit geopolitical contradictions to drive the best bargain for themselves despite all the turbulence and chaos. Arguably, the European way of strategy is the opposite of this. 

Also read: Amid churn by Trump, Macron offers France nuclear umbrella to Europe citing Russian threat

Deep European anxiety

As we have come of age—so to speak—we’ve grown impatient (if not contemptuous) of the European way of security. As Trump reaches out to Putin over Europe and Ukraine’s heads, the Indian view does appear somewhat vindicated. After all, India has long argued that there is no purely military solution and that force must be paired with diplomacy. Indian analysts were right to point out that if Europe needed more support from emerging economies, it needed to do more to support Ukraine militarily in the first place. Power does beget power, after all. In the fallout of Trump’s salvos, what appears to be left of Europe is mostly protests and a weary scramble to provide military assistance to Ukraine. Its moral nudges and lectures to India over the last three years now echo in light of recent events. The sentiment in New Delhi goes, “Thank God that we did not listen to you. And besides, what were you thinking? Didn’t we tell you so?” 

However, in this new era of deep European anxiety, India (and Indians) may choose to exercise greater restraint and even adopt a more empathetic view. First, Trump’s recent reversals on trans-Atlantic ties were not anticipated by Indian analysts; or in fact, anyone else. While many expected Trump to be more positively inclined toward Russia than Kamala Harris, few saw him switching sides and undermining trans-Atlantic relations (the bedrock of the international order) in so cavalier a manner. 

Hence, rather than a clear-cut vindication of the Indian view – recent developments are rather a strategic surprise than a moment of validation. If Europe’s crisis stems from a black swan event in US politics and Trump’s long-standing preference for a fundamentally different world order, then lecturing Europeans will simply be erroneous as well as a potentially costly distraction. 

Present commentary in India– echoing Trump’s complaints to some degree – assumes that Europe is a coherent and unitary grouping (almost like a nation-state) that could take more military responsibilities to secure its own backyard (read Ukraine). Given that the stakes are so much higher for Europe than the distant US, it is high time that Europe expends its own blood and treasure and let the US focus elsewhere. Although it may sound like a big dose of common sense, in reality, it is deeply ahistorical. Europe as a political project, despite appearances, is held together by US hegemony (political and military). This is a very unique experiment and outcome that has been described by Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad as an “empire by invitation”. 

In other words, Europe invited the US to be the primary security player—both to contain the Soviet Union and to prevent European powers (mainly France and Germany) from descending back into power rivalries, arms races and wars. The US established a system (primarily through NATO) that would help keep the peace in Europe, and achieve security from the Soviet Union based on American leadership instead of European self-help mechanisms. In this system, Europe would essentially ‘rely’ on the US for security even as European states contribute to the pool of military resources. 

The US-led European order had to be ‘constructed’ – in the words of the historian Marc Trachtenberg. It was not an organic development based on a profound understanding of the tragedy of World War II. Understanding this aspect is key to appreciating the emotive and psychological impact of Trump’s recent moves on Europe. 

Hence, European foreign policy ‘idealism’ is more functional, a consequence of the grand bargain that evolved during the early Cold War. It is sheer realism and an awareness of power politics that required Europe to seek security and stability via the US. It was a trend that America had encouraged since 1945 despite its occasional complaints and threats to withdraw. Hence, even as the Soviet Union was winding down in 1990-91, the US continued its commitment to Europe—mainly to prevent the emergence of instability in the continent. 

In this context, it is worth recalling that in 1990, then-Senator Joe Biden argued that if Soviet withdrawal led Germany to say ‘Yankees go home’, his response would be, “Bring back the Russians. Bring back the Russians”. Echoing a somewhat related sentiment in 2019, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas criticised the prospect of a European army. “When Europe is one day able to defend its own security, we should still want NATO,” he said. 

Trump’s ongoing approach strikes at the heart of this long-standing security arrangement. Europe simply did not have a choice, and arguably it still does not, to ‘do it alone’ like a traditional great power, due to its unique historical and geographical constraints. The European project has been remarkably successful – keeping the peace, enhancing living standards and integrating newly independent East-European states into Europe since 1989. These are remarkable achievements. It’s just that defence self-reliance was never baked into the system and for understandable reasons. 

Nobody denies Europe has made significant mistakes in recent years. Ironically, an example is its unwillingness to heed US intelligence warnings about an impending Russian attack on Ukraine in late 2021. Its inability to provide greater military assistance to Ukraine certainly counts as another. However, its present crisis of abandonment has little to do with those mistakes.

Importance of trans-Atlantic ties

The real issue is that the new administration in the US appears to prefer a fundamentally different grand strategy than the one its predecessors built and maintained for eight decades. Rather than seeing Europe as a victim of its own moral posturing and strategic muddle-headedness, India should see it simply as the first and most tragic casualty of the strategic shift occurring in the White House. 

Despite the rhetoric of multipolarity and hard power, it will take a serious misreading of history to perceive Europe through our own biases, preferences as well as grievances. In its hour of deep crisis, India has an opportunity to have a closer conversation with Europe and establish greater trade, strategic cooperation as well as mutual trust. International relations provide opportunities for nations to strike strong emotional chords during times of crisis. China, notably, has seized such opportunities vis-à-vis both Russia as well as Arab states in the last three years – a choice that is likely to ensure long-term dividends. 

Europe’s hour of crisis provides India with a somewhat similar opportunity. Besides, it is in India’s interest that the trans-Atlantic ties remain strong in the emerging bipolar world.  The alternative is a dog-eat-dog world of imperial conquests and spheres of influence for which India is simply not ready yet. 

Sidharth Raimedhi is a Fellow at the Council for Strategic and Defense Research (CSDR), a New Delhi-based think tank. He tweets @SRaimedhi.