Measuring Transatlantic Relations

Brookings’s Center on the United States and Europe is out with the second edition of its quarterly Trans-Atlantic Scorecard. I’ve been involved in managing this project from concept to publication and promotion, and I’m looking forward to the picture that an increasing number of these snapshots of the troubled relationship between the United States and Europe will paint over time. That said, I’m not terribly optimistic for the near-term future of transatlantic relations. As my colleague Tom Wright argues, two years into the Trump administration, “observers can identify a unified, if still incomplete, Trump foreign policy in which the administration accommodates the president’s impulses and seeks to act on them.” That doesn’t bode well for NATO in the year the alliance turns 70 years old given Trump’s skepticism of alliances and demands for the Europeans to pay the United States more for their defense. The 70th anniversary summit will be held in Washington in April at the foreign ministers’ level in order to keep President Trump away and I fear he may show up at Secretary Pompeo’s show like the masque of the orange death. Wess Mitchell, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and a committed Atlanticist who particularly treasures ties with Central and Eastern European countries like the Czech Republic, Poland, and the Baltics, has resigned effective mid-February. If there was a policy reason for that (I’m not sure there is), I would assume it has to do with problems coming down the line for NATO.

Anyway, the second survey of Brookings experts, conducted at the beginning of January, shows a decline in the health of the transatlantic relationship compared to the low starting point of our September poll. That’s a rating of 3.5 on a scale from 1 (poor) to 10 (excellent), down from 3.6. Security relations are down from 4.7 to 4.4. U.S. relations with France are down from 5.1 (the best score yet recorded in the survey in any category) to 4.3 as the Trump-Macron relationship has cooled off considerably. On the other hand, relations with Turkey have improved. In September, they scored at 2.5, the same as U.S. relations with Russia then and now. But they are now rated at 3.3. Trump also spoke on the phone with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan more than with all the other European leaders combined in the last four months (we track that). They had a few things to talk about (the Trump administration’s ultimately successful efforts to get Ankara to release pastor Andrew Brunson from custody; the Saudi government’s murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate; Syria).

The Scorecard also includes topical questions (a plurality expected that Britain and the EU would manage to avoid a “no deal” Brexit, a majority saw Jim Mattis’s exit as secretary of defense as weakening the Trump administration’s commitment to NATO), a timeline of relevant developments including notable speeches, figures charting information relevant to transatlantic relations (ie. America and Europe’s respective trade with Iran and U.S. LNG exports to Europe), and Tom Wright’s take on what to watch going forward. I hope you find it an interesting read and a useful resource.