lThe electroshock acts and things happen very quickly. A week after the election of Donald Trump for a second term as president of the United States, a new position is emerging in Europe in the face of the threat of management of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis from which Europeans would be excluded. In the maneuver, Poland tries to form a pro-Ukrainian front with the most motivated countries.
France resumes its search for a European strategic awakening. Deep down, consumed by its own crisis and early elections, Germany is trying to imagine life without the United States, on which it has always relied.
The other Donald, Tusk, the Polish prime minister, wasted no time. In Budapest, on the sidelines of two summits held on November 7 and 8, he met with President Emmanuel Macron for almost an hour. He also spoke with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Scandinavian leaders. Their conversations, he later explained to the press, focused on “What a possible withdrawal of the United States from an active policy in Ukraine would mean for us”.
” Us ” : Europeans. No one really knows, at this point, how 47my The President of the United States intends to resolve the Ukraine issue, as he has promised to do. But what European leaders suspect is that Donald Trump has no intention of involving them in this regulation, which nevertheless primarily concerns them.
They know that beyond the fate of Ukraine, what is at stake is the security of Europe and no one knows this better than the Poles, taught by history. It will be, warns its Prime Minister, a “A serious challenge for each of us”. “I want to be clearMacron added on Tuesday when receiving the Secretary General of NATO, the Dutchman Mark Rutte: Nothing should be decided in Ukraine without the Ukrainians nor in Europe without the Europeans. »
For Donald Tusk, the return of a relegitimized and more unilateralist Trump than ever heralds a “new political landscape”. The contours are already perceptible. The first to appear is Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, the only European to speak with Vladimir Putin; He presents himself as a leader of the peace camp, called according to him to expand, and as a privileged interlocutor for Donald Trump, whose victory he celebrated with vodka.
chain pulls
Orban, in fact, is the only one who openly brags about Trump. The others are surprised, on guard, or at best, cautious. Germany is one of the most scared: after the loss of energy comfort with the end of Russian gas from 2022, after the loss of economic security with the difficulties of the Chinese market, now it is the pillar of its foreign security that is faltering. with an American protector who will negotiate for his protection. As if these chains of clashes were not enough, Germany is entering a political phase that leaves it out of the game, with the breakup of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition and the elections of February 23, 2025.
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