President Trump Using "Fracking" To Disrupt And Dismantle EU, WTO, NATO, World Court

President Trump Using “Fracking” To Disrupt EU, WTO, World Court, NATO
If President Trump Re-Elected, He Will Continue Journey To Dismantle EU
Embracing Divisiveness Rather Than Cohesiveness
Key Leaders: Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Turkey, United Kingdom
Great White Shark Need Swim To Survive; Must EU Need Expand To Survive?

Since inception in 1999, but increasing profoundly during the last five years, the twenty-eight (soon twenty-seven) member Brussels, Belgium-based European Union (EU) has wrestled to balance a political and social policy-driven amalgamation of disparate interests representing the EU member criteria “principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law” with an integrated economic and commercial relationship among its members. 

The Honorable Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, prefers bilaterally-driven commercial, economic and political relationships rather than multilateral entity-driven relationships which may be less receptive to coercion- gently or with force.   

The Trump Administration has through the 1,094 days of its first four-year term and will continue through a second four-year term systematically deconstruct the EU by encouraging member country leadership and those seeking leadership within those countries to adopt commercial, economic, social and political policies aligned with the United States and independent of the EU, contravening regulations of the EU.  The Trump Administration gambit:  Will the EU remove a member after having lost the United Kingdom (UK) and carelessly pushed away Turkey?   

With the UK officially departing the EU on 31 January 2020, President Trump may have a new partner (and competitive colleague) in Prime Minister Boris Johnson in seeking to establish robust bilateral commercial, economic and political agreements and treaties with the EU and separately with EU members.  

President Trump will further weaponize rhetoric as a means of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) relationships among EU members.   

His high-pressure injections are verbal assaults (usually delivered by the application Twitter rather than into a wellbore).  Those injections create cracks in the deep rock (multilateral organizational relationship structures) through which disruption will flow rather than natural gas, petroleum or brine.  

Admirers within the EU of all or selections of President Trump’s Strategy of Disruption/Destruction have included leadership in Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia among others.   

Of importance to the integrity of the EU remains President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey (an EU candidate since 1987)- who can be a commercial attraction and agent of disruption.  He has leverage primarily due to hosting 4.1 million refugees about which Turkey has repeatedly reminded the EU has not allocated agreed-upon financial support.  Turkey could easily set them en masse throughout the EU- and politicians in some countries have already paid a price for permitting substantial numbers of refugees.  Turkey’s population of 84 million represents 18% of the EU’s post-UK population of 446 million.  Countries bordering Turkey: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, Georgia, Bulgaria and Greece.  In 1949, Turkey was the eleventh country to become a member of the Council of Europe.  Turkey is a member of NATO and is its second-largest standing military force after the United States.  

Some leaders chafe at the EU being more than a commercial and economic union; they do not want interference in managing social issues that are unique to their countries- and some have discovered political capital from supporting individuality rather than commonality.  Nationalism and populism are testing the strength of multilateralism.   

Presently, issues relating to migration, immigration, social media usage, religion, justice, and role of the media have been inflection points for debate among EU members.  For example: 

14 January 2020: “The European Commission will discuss on Tuesday whether to ask the European Court of Justice, the EU’s top court, for an injunction against a Polish law that would allow the ruling party to discipline judges questioning government reforms.  The European Union has previously argued that the draft legislation would imperil the rule of law and has launched a legal action in defense of Polish courts’ independence.  “We will discuss the topic today within the ongoing infringement procedure,” Commission head Ursula von der Leyen told a news conference before discussions among all EU commissioners in Strasbourg. “It is a question of intermediate measures to be taken by the European Court of Justice that will be the essence of the debate.””  

There will be efforts by some countries to alter the EU decision-making process from those matters requiring consensus by all members to majority rules or minority does what it wants to do.    

With the departure of the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) from the EU (Scotland will seek independence and be in the EU; Northern Ireland will remain in the EU and eventually will reunify with Ireland), the European Commission (EC) which manages EU membership will need focus further on the fragility of the collective.   

Threats to EU members that their adventurous behavior will be punished, but then not punished or punishment is ignored will weaken the EU as an institution.   

If the EU expands its membership, losing a member may be less onerous, but expanding membership might also make easier for countries defend their departure- one less may not mean as much.  The EU might need to expel a member to maintain credibility- and exclusivity. 

According to the United Nations, the continent of Europe includes forty-four countries with a combined population of 747 million- so there should be additional opportunities for the EU to expand its membership.  For comparison, the earth has a population of 7.8 billion. 

There will be an increasing number of EU-member countries who will seek latitude so they may pursue commercial, economic and political bilateral agreements and treaties with non-EU-member countries, particularly the United States, China, Russia, Turkey, India and United Kingdom. 

The recalcitrant governments will view EU threats in the same vein as some might view a business transaction: A owes X to B; A says to B, here is 70% of X- accept it or sue.  That’s precisely what President Trump encourages members of EU to do- view membership in the EU as a weight-based buffet from which everything offered does not have to be consumed and only pay for what is consumed.  The result is a weakened EU infrastructure.   

There are occasions when President Trump benefits as a team player- when seeking from the twenty-eight member Brussels, Belgium-based North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) increased expenditures or an expansion of mission into other regions of the globe; but he publicly excoriates members, and threatens to leave the alliance when his demands go unmet. 

Same support/reject dynamic for decisions of The Hague, Netherlands-based International Court of Justice (“World Court”) to which the United States submits when a decision is viewed as in the interests of the United States, but objects when the decision is deemed to be an infringement upon the sovereignty of the United States.  

When the Geneva, Switzerland-based World Trade Organization (WTO) rules in favor of the United States, President Trump will embrace the result.  When decisions are against the United States, the President excoriates the WTO as biased towards the United States and reaffirms an interest for the United States to withdraw from the entity.  The Trump Administration has already disrupted WTO mechanisms by refusing to confirm judicial appointments, somewhat spaying the organization’s multilateral and bilateral impact. 

On 8 January 2020, the Trump Administration reportedly requested EU-members United Kingdom, France and Germany, known as the E3, to further pressure Iran through dispute resolution mechanisms in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA); the request reportedly included a threat by the United States to impose 25% tariffs on automobile exports from the EU to the United States.   

With the United Kingdom exiting the EU on 31 January 2020- but continuing to negotiate post-exit trade agreements throughout 2020, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson in need of a bilateral trade agreement with the United States, the interests of the United Kingdom will diverge from those of France and Germany and other EU members; and domestic considerations within France and Germany and other EU members will continue to imbalance their EU-centric obligations.   

Meaning the EU will need continue mitigate the natural centrifugal force of members seeking at minimum to expand organizational flexibility and at maximum dismemberment of the twenty-one-year-old experiment.   

President Trump will be actively pinging for opportunities to engage every EU-member by focusing upon nationalist and populist constituencies and presenting that bilateral agreements with the United States will be far superior to anything obtainable as a member of a group.