European leaders have dealt with President Trump’s return to office by trying to keep him cooperating on Ukraine while pushing to ramp up their own defense spending so they are less reliant on an increasingly fickle America.
But Friday’s meeting in the Oval Office, in which Mr. Trump berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, underscored for European leaders that while they still need to try to keep the United States at the table, they also might need to come up with more concrete plans of their own — and fast.
To shed me light ob the issue, we reached out to Larry Cata Backer Professor of Law and International Affairs at Penn State University, USA. He is also a member of the American Law Institute and the European Corporate Governance Institute.
Here is the full text of the interview with him:
Zelenskyy visit to White House was very controversial. Regardless of this fact, it seems that Europe has lost its strategic importance for the US. What do you think of this?
(BACKER) This is a quite interesting question with many facets. Please allow me to consider some of what may be the more important elements for the insights they bring to the fundamental issue—the issue of the extent to which the essential relationship between Europe and the U.S largely set after 1945, is changing, and if so, in what ways.
First, President Zelenskyy’s visit to the United States serves as an important visualization of the issue, and offers clues as to both the dynamic nature of the situation, the extent of lingering uncertainty, and the likely reshaping of the old transatlantic relationship. But that illustration is itself clouded in mystery. That mystery revolves around issues of premeditation, staging, clumsiness, surprise, or orchestration. None of that is of actual long term interest. It was allowed to happen, and it was allowed to happen in real time and in virtual space to be projected globally. That reality, more than its psychology, theatrics, or serendipity, might be a better starting point for analysis.
The performance, of course, can be analyzed to suit the preconceptions of the viewer—and that is its brilliance as a piece of propaganda and of signaling to internal audiences, to the global masses, and to other State. U.S. rivals might be encouraged to interpret the performance as a sign of disarray or weakness. Domestic and foreign enemies of the present administration might be encouraged to mock the entire event as emblematic of a government that can’t even manage a deal when they hold all the cards. For example, it might be understood that President Zelenskyy was invited to leave before he was invited to execute the contract. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the deal is not otherwise locked up. And the U.S.’s allies in Europe might be persuaded to view the performance as an indication that they are to be set adrift. That, certainly might be evidenced by the meetings of European leaders with President Zelenskyy and among themselves in the immediate aftermath of the Presidents Zelenskyy-Trump meeting. European leaders might have cause for worry in a continent that had effectively traded the cost of security (heavily subsidized by the US) for economic prosperity and autonomy, including a toleration for sometimes wide divergences in approach. That was a good deal during the long arc of the history of global convergence under the leadership of the United States through perhaps 2020. But that vision has been crumbling since at least the early 2010s and one might be tempted to argue that only a sometimes useful façade remains.
Yet there is another way to approach that performance and the message it was meant to convey. One alternative is to think of it as a serendipitous and advantageous moment in which to drive home the way that post-global relationships between apex powers and their dependencies are now to be undertaken. The object here is to underscore the nature of relations where the apex power assumes the prerogatives of a superior authority which now requires a certain set of behaviors in public certainly, and perhaps as well in private. Misbehaving leaders of dependencies require a public rebuke. That is a lesson that is meant to extend far beyond the Ukrainian context, and one with an analog within Marxist-Leninist leadership-guidance pathways.
That gets us to the heart of the question: the performance might be read by European allies of the U.S. as a reminder that although they are not dependent in the style of Ukraine, they are inferior powers to which the apex power might delegate certain obligations. They have been reminded over the last several decades that the relationship between the apex and even European powers is unsustainable and must be reformed to accord with the times. And, as well, the apex power has made it clear that it is turning its attention East; and so will insist on their allies in Europe taking a greater role in their own protection.
There is a danger here for the U.S. as apex power, of course. Unless they follow the Ukrainian model throughout Europe (that is, extracting compensation while retaining a strong and commanding role in military operations), the apex can invite its now empowered dependencies to detach and become either competitors or rivals. History is full of examples of imperial disintegration along these and similar lines.
There is another side to this as well. It assumes a certain cold bloodedness that rejects sentimentality and shared history, or at least reframes both. Assume, as we must, that the world as it existed between 1945 and 2010 is irretrievably changed. Assume further that as the U.S. considers its interests, especially among dependent powers, it comes to the determination that it is more in the U.S. interest to substitute Russia for the European conglomerate as a principle dependency (substituting itself for China). Assume further that this insight might be enhanced by close observation of Russian-Chinese interaction, grounded in the historical assumption that Chinese and Russian interests inevitably clash. If one might indulge these presumptions, it is then possible to consider that a Russo-U.S. relationship might, in the middle 21st century, be more advantageous than a U.S.-Europe relationship. One might think there are good reasons for this: (1) it leverages the traditional rivalries between China and Russia; (2) it makes a closer relationship with India possible; (3) it provides a double source of leverage to manage the Shia-Sunni divide in the Middle East; (4) it opens up access to Russian natural resources currently directed elsewhere; and (5) it enhances the possibilities of more efficient trade routes.
There is one potential consequence of significance to Europe: the idea that such a re-alignment will make more likely a carving up of Europe between the U.S. and Russia, and perhaps others as well. Nonetheless this is not a means of time traveling back to the U.S.-Soviet era (much as that might appeal to Mr. Putin). Instead one might see in recent events a determination to move into something more post-global. Again the hint is the emphasis of the U.S. on the minerals deal rather than on the territorial integrity of Ukraine, despite whatever promises were made in the 1990s. Instead, in the manner of the Chinese Silk Roads, and as already made quite clear in its analog, the Americas First Initiative, the critical “territory” of interest to apex powers is production, life cycle, supply and demand chains. Russia still has to learn this lesson according to this way of thinking.
So there is the answer: gathering the hints that are available to us at the moment, these might indeed suggest that the United States may be transforming the way it conceptualizes the strategic importance of Europe. That realignment appears to diminish the presumption that the very existence of Europe as it is currently constituted is, in itself, of strategic importance to the United States. And that, more than anything else, will change everything if indeed that is the view embraced. It would follow that Europe (and European states) will be no different than Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico in terms of any “special relationship” that by its terms suggests unequal value (as it may be calculated by the United States). Under this approach and compared to the supposed advantages of shifting alignment to Russia, Europe’s “costs” far exceed its strategic value, especially if the U.S. and Russia find a way of working in mutually advantageous ways to lock up value pathways for themselves—however they might divide them. The profundity of the consequences of such an approach ought not to be underestimated. But this leads us directly to a closer consideration of the points raised in the second question.
Recent US approach towards Europe indicates that Washington is siding with Russia in face of the EU, because in the new world order based on Great Power Competitions the Russia and the China cooperations is more important for the US and the US is trying to weaken the two countries cooperation by increasing its engagement with Moscow. What is your assessment?
With much of the answer to Question 1 as a background, it is possible to consider more closely the consequences of a potential transformative realignment of U.S. strategic partnerships in and around Europe. Again, assuming the basic starting points suggested in the answer to Question 1, one would have to reject the idea that the United States is siding with Russia. Instead, what may be occurring is a more comprehensive and profound realignment of strategic relationships with respect to which Europe plays a consequential, and certainly a secondary, role. In that respect, one might instead consider that the shift on Ukraine is merely the tip of a much larger iceberg. Taken to its limit, that possibility of a more robust realignment might also suggest the following:
First, at its core is a sense that the U.S. gains more from closer ties with Russia than with Europe, which is viewed in some power circles, as a burden, one still stuck in that vision of a converging world order built around core unalterable principles and managed through deeply interlocking public and private techno-bureaucracies. Of course, that is quite a conceptual starting point. It requires a substantial re-evaluation of the strong social, cultural, communicative, and economic ties that bind the U.S. to Europe. These are ties that took a century or more to build and cannot be undone quickly. However, these ties can be subordinated to a different political hierarchy. That subordination also diminishes all sorts of other things—for example, the principle that human rights as developed through the U.N .Geneva apparatus ought to be the driving normative element of socio-political and cultural management, and for another, the once core notion that civil and political rights as developed through the constitutionalist principles of OECD states since the 1940s is the necessary driving force for economic, social, and cultural rights. This is not necessarily a reactionary and political project, but rather the outlook of merchants eager to reclaim operational spaces globally unhindered by other things and to their own greater glory.
Second, a realignment with Russia is not merely directly commercial; it is also political in key respects. In the first place it derives its value from its negative benefits—principally detaching Russia from China. That, in turns, produces a “double happiness”—more lucrative access to resources, and an advancement of a policy of checking Chinese power. In the second place it provides a larger opening to India. In that case the U.S.-Russian realignment would eliminate the sensitivities about having to choose between them—although the re-imagining of the exact nature of the relationships between the U.S. on the one hand and Russia and India, on the other would have to be worked out—again according to this thinking. In the third place it provides an opening for the realignment of relations in the Middle East. The winner would likely be Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Israel; the losers perhaps Turkey, especially if, and ironically so, they are lumped into Europe by those who hold these views.
Third, taken together, this revisioning might produce a state of affairs in which Russia/India/Europe, etc. are assigned or permitted control over the stability of territory with ample margins of appreciation of whatever normative systems they bring with them. This would effectively constitute a territorial and policing element of post-global relations. With that in order, what is left to an apex power is the paramount authority to guide and lead. The primary benefit of this division ensures the apex power with a position at the hub of access to markets, production, investment, and wealth creation traveling up from peripheries to the metropolis. This realignment also potentially re-opens central Asia. Again, all of this is possible if there is a re-imagined win-win division of labor. The U.S. reserves its core military capacity to its first order dependencies (whoever they might be) and the Russian (or those other dependencies then serving as military front line states for their regions). That, perhaps, was what the Trump Administration might (or ought to) have had in mind with its vision of Europe as the front line states for the protection of the borders of a liberal democratic empire. The system, though, can be globalized, of course. In a way, the model could be satisfying to Russia, Japan, India and the like. Less so for other States. But it does seem to be a model inherent in the aggregation of the discursive forays of the current U.S. administration.
Fourth, all of this transformation opens again the question of the nature of the structuring of U.S. military alliance frameworks. That will not necessarily cause NATO to disappear, but it will change both its focus, nature and operations. There was an instant in the late 1990s when the possibility of Russian alignment with NATO was considered. That may well be back on the table (at least in some quarters), or perhaps, the termination of NATO in favor of another system of military alliance. Certainly influential circles in the United States may be debating this; and there will be substantial opposition to all of this. That is what makes prediction so difficult at the moment. Nonetheless, if this system is matched by a parallel one centered within the apex domains of Marxist-Leninist States, then it might be possible to re-establish a sort of stability in global affairs. But it is one in which the great drivers of the last century—in terms of the vision of a normative convergence around the political economic model of the Atlantic States, will disappear. .
Will Russia accept the European peacekeepers presence in Ukraine in case of reaching a peace agreement?
Until the start of this year the answer might have been maybe. That “maybe,” in turn, would have been a function of meeting Russia’s other demands for territorial acquisition and effectively a free hand in controlling shipping in the Black Sea and intervening, as it saw fit, in Ukrainian internal politics. In any case, before 2025, the public position of the U.S. and E.U. was that both NATO and EU membership were essentially inevitable for Ukraine. The only question was how long the processes would take. This also assumes that the Russian narrative justification for war could somehow be neutralized.
Now the answer might have to be framed differently. If Ukraine is effectively partitioned (drawing on the model of Polish partitioning through the early 19th century) the effect would be to redraw the borders between a more or less united Europe and Russia. One would, under this scenario, transport oneself back to the impulses and world views of 19th century Europe in which stability required that borders be set between empires with nothing (that is, no subaltern ethno-state) to cause problems. To some, for example, that system has appeal, drawing what might for them be the lesson of the partition of Austria-Hungary (a century ago) and of Yugoslavia (decades ago). In the contemporary world what appears to some may be the notion that stability requires good ordering within well managed blocs. What globalization permits is a substantial degree of autonomy within these blocs for dependencies and even the appearance of territorial independence. If that is the way the normative line is developed, then there would technically be no foreign peace keeping presence in Ukraine, but rather the deployment, in ordinary course, of a European police power controlling a common border—with Russia.
For Europe and the Ukrainians, of course, all of this is unacceptable. But what is also telling is that they appear to remain largely out of the discussion. That was another significant aspect not just of the performance at the meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy, but also of the so-called peace talk meetings between the U.S. and Russia. It also leaves Europe and Ukraine very little room for maneuvering. Europe can “make facts “ of course that would complicate and perhaps reshape the calculus of all of these moving parts. But the sort of bold (and expensive) actions required are likely far beyond the capacity of a Europe mired in its own bureaucracies, internal squabbling, and financial difficulties. That said, the moves, at least initially, are quite simple and straightforward—NATO and EU Membership, even if the former requires substantial arm twisting and the latter the risk of blowing up NATO and then reshaping it as a European military unification without the United States, or thinking big and understanding NATO as the basis of a global alliance including India, Japan and other States. In this way it could counter the military or security potential of Chinese Belt & Road Initiative relationships. That brings us to a deeper consideration of the issues raised in Question 4.
It seems that now even NATO has to maintain its missions based on US interests like opening its office in Japan. Do you think that NATO has to maintain its missions in line with US Indo-Pacific strategy?
In a sense, NATO has always had to keep U.S. interests in the foreground. The only difference between the past and the present is that U.S. interests have shifted in a way that makes changes to NATO’s goals and structures necessary. That was the case in the 1990s after the fall of the “Great Enemy” (the Soviet Union), which produced NATO enlargement and a change of mission, including domestic stability within Europe. It is the case now as the U.S. shifts some focus to the Indo-Pacific as well. Part of the problem is generic to institutions—they tend to atrophy and as institutions, are constantly challenged to stay relevant to the times. They are also prone to bureaucratism and inertia, challenge that is as relevant to Marxist Leninist institutions as it is to liberal democratic and military organs. But entrenched bureaucracies, and even more entrenched ways of viewing the world and the institutional role in it are quite difficult to change. . . .absent crisis. Crisis can either pounce on an institution from outside, or it can be deployed as a strategic instrument from inside. The latter seems to be the case now. Not that there wasn’t warning—President Trump has not been shy about the vision of his administration since 2016. But it is one thing to hear, and assume, this time incorrectly, that the challenge is a passing aberration, and quite another to feel its effects under circumstances in which change is impossible to avoid. And still there is resistance against an administration with the sensibilities of merchants with respect to which opposition of the sort proffered just may not compute.
Generally, which parts of Europe are still important for the US?
The short answer is that all parts of Europe are still important for the U.S., but that the calculus of importance has changed significantly.
The longer answer is that the nature of U.S. interests in Europe now appears to emerge from the way in which a merchant—one armed to the teeth—might look at the world and understand its value to him. Europe is valuable for what it can provide the apex power: culture, ideas systems, education—but mostly goods and services. The great value of the United States to Europe (again according to this way of thinking) is its security umbrella and the opening up of its markets for goods, services, capital, investment, and to some extent, migration. Currently, the United States (as expressed by its officials) believes that (following the cognitive habits of merchants) it is not getting full value for its investment. It used to think it did when Europe was a front line aggregation of states and the buffer between the U.S. and the “Great Soviet Imperial realms.” But if the “Great Enemy” (competitor), according to this way of thinking, has moved substantially East and is now identified with China, then the calculus of cost and benefit changes substantially. Merchants are less interested in ideology than in product; merchants are indifferent to territory and absolutely driven by access to markets and resources, on advantageous terms; merchants are indifferent to gains by others as long as they do not hinder personal objectives (the equivalent of the Chinese win-win strategy of unequal value transactions); merchants are not just fully capable of protecting their interests militarily, they have developed their military capabilities as a business from which both protection and profit are derived, neither of which merchants will give up; and merchants are usually not hampered by the nature and depth of historical relations, past dealing, or other connections--they can be as fickle as advantage dictates. That is as true in its liberal democratic expression as it is in its Marxist-Leninist forms. For both systems, Europe, but also Russia, remain critically important. But it is what Europe can offer rather than what Europe is or represents that is the source of importance and that appears to drive action by both apex powers.
Interview by Payman Yazdani
