Europeans are no longer angry at Trump’s irrational incompetence. They’re exhausted

by · EUobserver

Far more serious is the message to all allies from Poland’s humiliation: whatever you do, nothing protects you from random acts of careless malice from Donald Trump

Opinion

Europeans are no longer angry at Trump’s irrational incompetence. They’re exhausted

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By Edward Lucas,
London
,

If the US wanted to destroy its credibility in Europe deliberately, it could hardly have done it better.

The casual cancellation last week of the long-planned nine-month rotation of a brigade combat team (BCT) to Poland exemplified everything that European allies find baffling and repellent about the Trump administration.

No warning. No consultation. Not even a cursory explanation, from the Pentagon or from American officials in Europe.

At the Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn this weekend, a big security shindig, I watched an excruciating performance by a supposedly senior US official, Thomas DiNanno, who merely blathered when asked about the move.

I think he said that the presentation could have been better (note to the organisers: next year can we please have simultaneous translation from Trump-speak into English?).

Asked flatly by a senior Latvian politician, Artis Pabriks, whether the US would defend its Baltic allies if Russia attacked them, DiNanno declined to give a straight “yes”.

Even our poker-faced Estonian hosts looked dismayed. 

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Far more serious is the message to all allies from Poland’s humiliation: whatever you do, nothing protects you from random acts of careless malice from Donald Trump

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Author Bio

Edward Lucas is a former senior editor at The Economist, founder and director of the Baltic International Security Centre think-tank, and a regular writer on defence, security and espionage for The Times and Foreign Policy. He is the author of The New Cold War (2008) and Deception (2011).

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