Valdai Club

It is true that many EU countries harbour misgivings about Donald Trump, especially on the matter of trade tariffs and the extent of his commitment (or not) to NATO. And they, too – especially the eastern-most members – have qualms about what Trump might concede when he meets Putin in Helsinki. But their future options are a lot less stark than those facing the UK.

No summit in the past half century can have gone as spectacularly awry as this year’s G7 gathering in Canada. Canada, of all places – a country that prides itself on its general niceness – found itself presiding over a train-wreck. The final indignity came when the US President, Donald Trump, took umbrage at remarks made by the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and sent word that he was retracting his approval of the final declaration.

Every now and again you hear a snatch of a radio bulletin or glimpse a newspaper headline and wonder where on earth it might have come from – so disconnected does it seem from everything else that is going on. This was my response to a recent front-page in the British Guardian newspaper that said: “Revealed: UK push to strengthen anti-Russia alliance”.

Even in current circumstances, where the West seems on the point of declaring a new Cold War, appearance may diverge from reality. There are long-standing hawks about Russia – such as the UK and some of the former Soviet-bloc countries - but the European Union as a whole takes a more differentiated attitude, and even the UK has done nothing so far that would seriously disturb its own economic interests.

“Our” version is that Russia’s “peace efforts” are merely an attempt to keep Assad in power at all costs, and that his departure must still be a precondition for peace. “Their” version is that there can be no solution without Assad, and that his fate should be decided in elections. Meanwhile a parallel, but potentially complementary, UN peace effort is making little progress, and the blood continues to flow in Ghouta.

If you had spent the past few weeks in the United Kingdom as a visitor from outer space, you could have been forgiven for thinking that Russian barbarians were at the gates. From land, sea, and air - we were told by the sort of people who ought to know - that the country was at risk from imminent or long-term Russian attack. Forget about rising crime, terrorism or even Brexit, the more urgent threat came came from Russia, or so members of the defence and security establishment told us.

If you had looked into 2017 last December and tried to forecast Europe’s political weather in the year to come, the tone would have been grim. All manner of tempests seemed to be heading Europe’s way.

The Entente Cordiale, signed in 1904, was supposed to end centuries of British-French antagonism, and to an extent it did. Despite periodic scrambles for influence in the Middle East, a particularly nasty spat about the Iraq war, and some mild unhappiness in Britain that the chief European Union negotiator for Brexit is a Frenchman, relations have remained on a reasonably even keel.

Will there, or will there not, be a surprise? That is the question. A few days before Germany’s 2017 election, Angela Merkel looks certain to be returned as Chancellor for a fourth term. The lead for her party, the centre-right CDU, has been in double figures for weeks. Martin Schulz, the chancellor-candidate for the centre-right SPD, has run a solid campaign, but never disturbed the status quo in the way that those who swept him to the party leadership hoped.

With Germany among its strongest supporters, Nordstream II is unlikely to be derailed by US sanctions. But this does not mean there will be no damage to EU-US relations. As Juncker’s words show, some damage has already been done, and more could follow.