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Don’t exhale just yet.
Europeans breathing a sigh of relief after a possible Republican wave landed as a mere ripple in Tuesday’s U.S. elections may not have long to rest.
For many in Europe, the importance of Tuesday’s midterm elections in the United States was not so much about the elections themselves — even though they dictate control of the U.S. Congress — it was about their status as a bellwether for the 2024 presidential race.
Few in Europe want a Donald Trump comeback, given the dire state of transatlantic relations during the first Trump presidency. And on first blush, Tuesday offered signals the former president’s influence was not all-consuming. Many of Trump’s most favored candidates — a TV doctor in Pennsylvania, an election-denying former TV anchor in Arizona — crashed out. And overall, Democrats exceeded expectations.
“It is good that the election deniers supported by Trump were less successful in this election than expected,” said Michael Link, Germany’s transatlantic coordinator and a lawmaker from the pro-business Free Democratic Party. “This is good for the U.S. itself but also good for transatlantic relations.”
The moment belies a Trumpy reality ahead, though. The former president has strongly hinted he may announce a run for the White House early next week as the U.S. quickly slides into the endless presidential election cycle. And Republicans are also slated to control at least half of Congress after Tuesday, an augur of more gridlock and division ahead.
“What that means for Europe is dysfunction,” said Brett Bruen, a former U.S. State Department and Obama White House official. “It’s going to force the Biden administration to spend much more time on domestic issues so that foreign policy will get even less attention and that should worry Europe.”
If not Trump, then DeSantis?
Even if the Trump comeback fizzles, another right-wing figure, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, appears ascendant. DeSantis has ridden a crusade against COVID restrictions and an unyielding culture wars agenda to Fox News fame and is now emerging as a serious contender for the 2024 Republican nomination.
After his landslide reelection Tuesday, the few European officials who favor the hardening Republican right were quick to advertise their connections to the rising star.
Balázs Orbán, an advisor to MAGA-approved Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán, was quick to congratulate DeSantis on Twitter, posting a picture of the two smiling side-by-side, punctuated by the hashtag #KeepFloridaFree.
Orbán, as Hungarian prime minister, has long cultivated ties to America’s hard right, appearing at — and even hosting — the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a highpoint of the U.S. conservative political calendar. He recently gained another potential Republican-friendly European ally in Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has also made a CPAC stop. Meloni, however, didn’t play Twitter pundit on Wednesday.
We’ll deal with that later
For now, the overall response in Brussels and European capitals has been one of quiet relief at the fact that Democrats had performed better than expected.
After all, despite simmering tensions between the EU and the Biden administration over trade and policy positions on China, Biden and his team are committed transatlanticists — a contrast to Trump, who branded the European Union a “foe” ahead of a meeting with Vladimir Putin in 2018, launched a trade war against Brussels, and repeatedly railed against NATO.
“I’m reassured that Joe Biden has not been destabilized as we had feared he would be,” said Sabine Thillaye, a French lawmaker with President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party.
“We need stability in the context of the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis, we don’t need any more worries,” added Thillaye, a member of the French National Assembly’s foreign affairs committee.
Thillaye ticked off a number of potential trouble spots where — at least for now — the U.S. involvement is likely to remain relatively stable after the midterms. There’s the energy crisis, which involves leaning on America for extra liquid natural gas supplies, and the movement to ramp up Europe’s military capacity, which involves buying American arms.
“Our industrial defense strategy and our strategic autonomy philosophy is anchored on a close partnership with the U.S.,” she said. “Germany has been buying American F35 [fighter jets], several EU countries have set up an anti-missile shield. … All these things would have been impacted by a red wave.”
Similar sentiments could be heard in Germany.
“Even if the result is not finally clear yet, it can already be said that this time there were more voters who reject the dangerous polarization caused by Trump’s course,” said Link, the German lawmaker.
But Link conceded the “issues of trade and trade agreements are not and will not be easy — neither with the Biden administration nor with the very protectionist Trump Republicans.”
The same goes for China, Ukraine and military policy.
“Regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats have the majority, the United States will increasingly ask us in the future: What do you think about China?” he said. “This will be linked to the demand that the EU and Germany get more involved in the issues of security, Ukraine, etc.”
OK, now let’s look to the future
Link’s awareness of the challenges ahead points to a grim reality.
The U.S. is most likely facing a period of legislative uncertainty in the coming two years, with Republicans poised to take back the House of Representatives, even if their majority looks set to be much tighter than expected. The Senate, meanwhile, remains a tossup, with several tight races yet to be called.
Among the chief concerns in Brussels is the impact a change in House leadership may have on Ukraine policy.
Top House Republican Kevin McCarthy — widely tipped to replace Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House — sparked alarm bells in European capitals and Kyiv last month when he hinted that continued financial support to Ukraine was not guaranteed. Any backtracking by the U.S. would put more pressure on Europe to rustle up more cash and military help for Ukraine.
“That should be a worry in Brussels,” said Bruen, the Obama-era White House official.
The Biden administration, however, played down the possibility of a policy shift.
“Under any scenario, you are going to see that President Biden is committed to continuing to work in a bipartisan fashion as he has done to date to support Ukraine,” Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Karen Donfried told reporters on the eve of the elections.
She noted that Biden’s requests for military and financial aid to Ukraine have moved through Congress with bipartisan backing.
“Republicans and Democrats have been clear about their, about our, enduring support for Ukraine,” she said, describing the U.S. support for Ukraine as “iron-clad.”
Indeed, with a small majority in the House — and, at best, a razor-thin Senate advantage — Republican leaders will have little room to maneuver given the party is far from united on the issue.
Nonetheless, as the results continue to trickle in from the United States over the next few days and possibly weeks, the changing political winds in Washington are a sign of things to come.
2024, it seems, is only around the corner.
