While we were sleeping

By Ann Higgins

Last night, literally while we were sleeping, the US Senate armed services committee was carrying out the first of the confirmation hearings on President Elect Trump’s selections for his cabinet. Why should this be of any interest to CfE members, you ask? A good question, and the answer is that first up was Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defence. “Ok”, I hear you say, “I still don’t understand why this should interest me”. I must confess that not even I would normally pay much attention to the nominations for US cabinet members but this time round the impact on Europe of the outcome of the presidential election and the new administration’s policy towards NATO can hardly be overstated.

Who then is Pete Hegseth? An almost complete unknown prior to his nomination (except to those who spend a lot of time watching Fox News, as a certain President Elect is believed to do) his background is as a national guardsman and leadership roles in two veterans’ associations where serious financial irregularities were uncovered. Apart from this, he has no management or leadership experience, so overseeing more than 2 million military personnel and another 800,000 civilian staff as well as a budget of nearly $800 billion may be quite a challenge. But perhaps of even more concern to those of us on this side of the pond is his attitude to NATO. While he was understandably questioned in detail about his alleged sexual misconduct and excessive drinking, (which he has promised to give up if he is appointed), he was not asked a great deal about this so we have to rely on his written word to enlighten us, and enlighten us it does, when in his book American Crusade, pub 2020, he states: “Nato is not an alliance; it’s a defense arrangement for Europe, paid for and underwritten by the United States (…) The defense of Europe is not our problem; been there, done that, twice,” Hegseth writes, adding: “Nato is a relic and should be scrapped and remade in order for freedom to be truly defended. This is what Trump is fighting for.” 

Added to Trump’s covetous eyes being cast upon Greenland (which, through its links with Denmark is a member of NATO and has been since 1949), this presents a dilemma for NATO of which 23 are EU members and 4 others have applications to join the EU pending. There are also formal arrangements for cooperation between the EU and NATO written into the Lisbon Treaty (at the insistence of the UK, ironically), all of which means that should there be an outbreak of hostilities, the EU will inevitably be drawn into the conflict as, of course, will the UK as a NATO member.

Chances are that despite his unsuitability for the high office of Defence Secretary, Hegseth will be confirmed by the Republican majority in the Senate. Unfortunately, none of the other nominees for the new US Cabinet look a great deal better. The rest of NATO and the EU are going to have to get used to dealing with a hostile force within their midst. Let’s hope that on his frequent visits to Brussels and other European capitals, our PM has found time to discuss this increasingly pressing issue with our EU friends as well as our NATO allies.

Meanwhile, back at home Kemi Badenoch asks us to accept that she is genuine when she acknowledges that the Tories mishandled Brexit, saying that “leaving the EU without a growth plan was a mistake”. This is presumably one of the “hard truths” she has pledged to tell, rather than saying things the public wants to hear, though she does not blame anyone in particular for doing so. Perhaps that truth is too hard for the public to hear.