The shock has been felt, and things are moving fast. One week after Donald Trump’s election to a second term as president of the United States, a new alignment is emerging in Europe under the threat of a Russian-Ukrainian settlement from which Europe would be excluded. Poland is maneuvering to form a pro-Ukrainian front, along with the more motivated countries. France has resumed its quest for a European strategic awakening. In the background, preoccupied with its own political crisis and early elections, Germany is trying to imagine a life without the US, on which it has always relied.
The other Donald, Polish Prime Minister Tusk, wasted no time. In Budapest, on the sidelines of two summits held on November 7 and 8, he spent almost an hour with French President Emmanuel Macron. He also spoke to the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, and Scandinavian leaders. Their conversations, he later told the press, focused on “what a potential withdrawal of the US from an active policy in Ukraine would mean for us.”
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“Us”: the Europeans. Nobody really knows, at this stage, how the 47th president of the US plans to settle the Ukrainian question, as he has pledged to do. But what European leaders suspect is that Trump has no intention of involving them in this settlement, even though it concerns them first and foremost. They are aware that beyond the fate of Ukraine, the security of Europe is at stake. And nobody knows this better than the Poles, educated by history. It will be, warns their prime minister, “a serious challenge for all of us”. “I want to be clear,” echoed Macron on Tuesday, as he met with NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, “nothing must be decided on Ukraine without the Ukrainians, nor in Europe without the Europeans.”
For Tusk, the return of Trump, more unilateralist than ever, heralds a “new political landscape”. The contours are already discernible. The first to pop up is Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister and the only European to speak to Vladimir Putin. He presents himself as the leader of the peace camp, which he believes will expand, and as the privileged interlocutor of Trump, whose victory he celebrated with vodka.
Chain reactions
Orban, in fact, is the only one openly celebrating. Others are either appalled, on guard, or, at best, cautious. Germany is among the aghast: after the loss of energy security with the end of Russian gas in 2022, after the loss of economic security with the difficulties of the Chinese market, it is now the pillar of its external security that is being shaken, by an American protector who will haggle over its protection. As if these were not enough, Germany is now entering a political phase that will effectively put it out of the game, with the break-up of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition and elections scheduled for February 23, 2025.
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