Anyone who observes the diplomatic role played by Europe, an ally of the United States, in resolving global conflicts and easing tension notes that there has been an unprecedented decline and even weakness over the past decades, until Europe has become an obstacle to solving outstanding problems in the hotbeds of conflicts, whether in the Ukrainian problem or the Middle East problem, including the Gaza war, Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missiles.
اضافة اعلان
The European diplomatic weakness was shown when Trump took office at the beginning of this year, it became diplomatically unable to obtain its most basic rights from its ally the United States through two main scenes:
The first scene: its defense partnership with the United States in NATO, which Trump was able to impose on European countries an increase in military spending through the budgets of Europeans who are suffering from high indebtedness when he forced them to raise the defense budget from 1.5% to about 5%.
The second scene: Trump imposed tariffs on Europeans at a minimum of 15%.
Let’s return to the European roles in the hotbeds of global conflicts, the first of which is the Russian-Ukrainian war, in which the European role in trying to solve this problem was marginalized by the United States, where it contacted the parties to the conflict without fully briefing the Europeans in solving the problem, and the United States imposed the solution on Europe, prompting it to set conditions that hinder peacemaking between Russia and Ukraine by withdrawing any flexibility that could lead to resolving the dispute between the two warring states, although Europe is the only loser in the world from this war after losing Russian gas to be replaced by US gas at prices estimated at four times what it was buying from Russia, adding European military support for Ukraine. For the Ukrainian economy, all trade exchanges with Russia were disrupted, as well as Ukrainian and Russian agricultural crops, which were a cheap food source for Europe.
As for the Middle East, both sides of the war on Gaza and the Iranian nuclear disarmament and ballistic program, it is noteworthy that during the Gaza war, European diplomacy became a condemnation and denunciation of the state of starvation and the deliberate killing of the people of Gaza by Israel without the ability to provide any initiative to stop this war at any cost, not even after the Gaza war to resolve the Palestinian issue on the basis of a two-state solution. Europe became the financier of this war to be at the disposal of the United States military intervention when needed, regardless of its principles enriched by not using its weapons to kill unarmed civilians, children and women.
As for Iranian nuclear disarmament, there is a great confusion in European diplomacy, and it is far from coordination with the United States. Europe provoked Iran with a step that does not aim at reaching a result based on a solid basis by threatening Iran with snapback, which was part of the 2015 agreement according to UN Resolution No. 2231, which the United States withdrew from during Trump’s first term as president, because this Iranian problem needs deep coordination with the United States, China and Russia to provide guarantees to Iran to abandon its nuclear program or convert it to a peaceful program, with all sanctions lifted.
From the above, Europe has become far removed from any global diplomatic role and has lost a lot of its political weight, especially among its allies and friends, and its decisions have become floundering coming out of individual European countries. Is this a sign of the end of the European Union and NATO? Or is it an alarm bell for a European launch to correct all the gaps and search for highways that return the European train to its main track to stand up to US and Israeli encroachment?
GM of Jobkins Center for Strategic Studies.
Expert, strategic and economic analyst.
Engineer Mohannad Abbas Haddadin.
