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Trump win will further embolden far right in Europe

For many Europeans, Trump's presidential campaign reawakened dreaded memories of populist leaders who rose to power through fear and intolerance.

A jittery Europe woke up on Wednesday morning to the shock that the United States has elected Donald Trump as its new president. Along with coffee, croissants or brioche, many across the continent tried to digest the bewildering news, wondering what became of the sensible and steady America that helped defeat the Nazis in WWII, rebuild shattered countries through the Marshall Plan and then prevail in the Cold War.
For many Europeans, Trump's presidential campaign reawakened dreaded memories of populist leaders who rose to power through fear and intolerance. Correctly or not, the rise of Trump even evoked the ghosts of Hitler, Mussolini and other ultra-nationalists that brought such disaster in the end.
With the US Republican party to the right in European sensibilities, the continent has long preferred Democratic presidents. Its mainstream populace will find it difficult to relate to a country whose president seems to celebrate xenophobia and protectionism.
Markets fell across Europe as Trump delivered his acceptance speech, wary that a new American isolationism could endanger trade agreements.
"The exact contours of the dystopia that will be the Donald J. Trump presidency remain to be seen, but repercussions of this development will be nothing but dire, both for the United States and the world," said Vassilis Ntousas, international relations policy advisor at the Foundation for European Progressive Studies in Brussels.
"Mr. Trump's attractiveness due to his elegy of America's lost greatness and fear-based demagoguery might have won him the election, but the country's global standing stands to suffer considerably from his toxic political brand of unpredictability."
Ntousas said that Trump's "idiosyncratic character and incoherent foreign policy proposals also presage a problematic, if not dangerous, trajectory for the relationship with Europe. Throughout the campaign, the newly elected US president has variously come out in favour of abandoning alliance commitments to Nato and argued against free trade deals such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, while also calling for abandonment of the Paris Climate deal, among many others. If enacted into policies during the incoming Trump administration, these proposals can seriously jeopardise the liberal international order that the transatlantic relationship has traditionally been predicated upon".
Yet some see the Trump victory as a potentially unifying force for Europe itself. Italian historian and former Nato diplomat Sergio Romano said Europe "must prepare to face circumstances in which it will be neither possible nor wise to rely on the United States".
"And we must prevent that the void left by the decline of their leadership from being filled by the ambitions and adventurism of other powers. The answer to this question can be given only by a united Europe based on solidarity. Now more than ever this is necessary."
With long-standing trans-Atlantic agreements now up the air, Trump has even put US involvement in Nato in question. "Nato was set up when we were a richer country," he told the Washington Post. "We're not a rich country anymore. We're protecting Europe with Nato but we're spending a lot of money. Number one, I think the distribution of costs has to be changed."
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said results of the election came as a "huge shock". The Christian Democratic Union politician now expects stronger demands from the US for German engagement in Nato.
"Of course we Europeans, as a Nato ally, know with Donald Trump as president, he'll ask: 'What are you contributing to this alliance?' But we're also wondering, what's your position on this alliance?"
Coming on the heels of the UK's vote to leave the European Union in June - another vote the pollsters got badly wrong - Trump's election might also further embolden the far right in Europe and fuel the rise of the right wing populism. Also troubling is the new US president's alleged ties to Russia's Vladimir Putin, who openly supported his candidacy. European leaders are wary that a US-Russia alliance could isolate the continent.
Ironically Trump's victory became clear in Europe on the same date in November that the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.  "On 27th anniversary of the fall of the wall, the US has elected president who wants to build a new one," said German student Christian Schwager.

The writers are editors at LuminosityItalia, a communications firm based in Monza, Italy