The leader
of the European Union put longtime ally the United States in a “threat”
category on Tuesday, insisting that President Donald Trump is contributing to
the “highly unpredictable” outlook for the bloc.
In a letter
to 27 EU leaders before Friday’s summit in Malta, Tusk mentioned the Trump
administration as part of an external “threat” together with China, Russia,
radical Islam, war and terror.
Echoing
statements from many European capitals, he said that those global challenges,
“as well as worrying declarations by the new American administration, all make
our future highly unpredictable.”
He said that
“particularly the change in Washington puts the European Union in a difficult
situation; with the new administration seeming to put into question the last 70
years of American foreign policy.”
This year
marks the centennial of the U.S. entry in World War I, and it marked the
beginning of the American century as well as the enduring trans-Atlantic bond
with Europe. Tensions have risen though since Trump was elected U.S. president.
Trump has
questioned the NATO alliance linking North America and Europe, and hopes for a
major trans-Atlantic trade deal have already taken a deep dive amid worries of
U.S. protectionism.
“We should
remind our American friends of their own motto: United we stand, divided we
fall,” Tusk said in the letter and also told a news conference in Tallinn,
Estonia, after meeting with the three Baltic prime ministers before the Malta
summit.
Britain
wasn’t part of the letter since it is poised to leave the EU and is only
scheduled to attend part of the leaders’ meeting in La Valletta. The decision
to leave was the biggest setback for the EU in decades, and Trump didn’t endear
himself with many EU leaders by saying that Brexit “will be a tremendous asset
and not a tremendous liability.”
Tusk wrote
to the leaders that “in politics, the argument of dignity must not be
overused,” before adding that “today we must stand up very clearly for our
dignity, the dignity of a united Europe — regardless of whether we are talking
to Russia, China, the U.S. or Turkey.”
And Tusk
further insisted that any disintegration wouldn’t be beneficial to the restored
nation states, but instead lead to “their real and factual dependence on the
great superpowers: the United States, Russia and China.
(AP)
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