Interview: Trump appears more pragmatic than populist on Europe policy, says U.S. expert

Despite his disparaging remarks about European integration in the past, U.S. President Donald Trump's recent statements and policies in this regard showed he is more pragmatic than populist, a U.S. expert said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

"Trump seems to be moving from what you can call a more nationalistic and populist foreign policy to something more mainstream," said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"One perhaps reassuring attribute is that he does not appear to be a deeply committed ideologue," he added.

EXPLICIT ON NATO ALLIANCE

During and after the campaign, Trump openly questioned the value of NATO alliance, calling the 67-year-old bloc "obsolete" and once hinting that the United States may not defend its members unless they lived up to their financial obligations.

Though his relentless call for the NATO members to raise their defense spending has for now become a ritual of his interaction with every single leader of NATO nations, Trump proclaimed earlier this month that he no longer deemed the bloc obsolete.

"It's much easier to work with Europe when it acts together and when it aggregates its influence than when it is divided," Kupchan added.

"I'm actually reasonably confident that Trump is going to come around on Europe," he said. "That's because he in the end is more pragmatic than he is ideological. Now he is listening to people who are more seasoned, such as his key cabinet members and people who appear to be somewhat more in the political center."

AMBIGUITY ON EUROPEAN UNION

Unlike his now explicit stance on NATO, however, Trump's position on EU unity seems confusing.

In what appeared to be the first major break from U.S. bipartisan support for the European Union (EU) since World War II, Trump and his chief strategist Steve Bannon had made common cause with the populists and nationalists across the Europe that challenged the EU integration outright, said the analyst, once a senior director for European Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council in the Obama administration..

"Questioning European integration is also something that causes real strain," said Kupchan. "They (EU allies) don't know what to make of Trump. They think he represents a break from the post World War II traditions and they are trying to figure out who he is."

However, after welcoming the British referendum vote to leave the EU, Trump appeared to reverse course during a joint press conference with visiting Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni on Thursday, when he called a strong Europe "very, very important" to the United States.

"That again could be a sign of evolution," Kupchan noted.

But again, as if to dampen the people's relief, Trump told the Associated Press one day later that a deadly attack on a police bus in Paris last week would "probably help" Marine Le Pen, the French far-right candidate who campaigned against the EU integration in the presidential election.

On Sunday, Trump doubled down on that statement, saying "whoever is the toughest on radical islamic terrorism and whoever is the toughest at borders will do well at the election."

"I think that it'll probably help her because she is the strongest on borders and she is the strongest on what's been going on in France," said Trump, though emphasizing that his comments on Le Pen's border policies should not been seen as an endorsement.

EUROPEAN BACKLASH

As observed by former U.S. President George W. Bush in 2003, since the end of World War II, Washington has "strongly supported European unity as the best path to European peace and prosperity."

In such case, Trump's stance on EU integration -- ambiguous at best -- immediately caused backlash from erstwhile allies in Europe.

In a speech in March, EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker threatened that if Trump continued to encourage other EU countries to follow the Brexit, he will "promote the independence of Ohio and Austin, Texas, in the United States."

"To have Europeans question whether the United States supports this project is troubling," said Kupchan.

"That's why Junker made that statement, to try to help Trump understand that splitting up Europe, or calling for more countries to leave, would be not unlike Europeans calling for the secession of California or Florida or some other similar kind of event," he added. Endi