Analysis || “I hate to get around Europe again,” wrote US Vice President Jd Vance, in the Signal Group where, along with other American responsible, planned an attack on Yemen’s Hethis Military Structures. “I totally share your aversion to European use. It’s pathetic,” replied defense secretary Pete Hegseth. CNN Portugal went to see how European diplomats deal behind the scenes with their events – and there are delicious subtleties
What does a European diplomatic guardian before Vance and Hegseth? “It does nothing, just take note,” says António Martins da Cruz, former Portuguese ambassador to NATO and former Foreign Minister (2002-2003). It is “an exchange of opinions among US politicians, has not been said directly to a European politician.” As a diplomat, there is no doubt: “Direct answer: Never. Immediate answer: Never. This kind of things never responds,” he argues. “Not even unofficially.” How much, “If one of these days the ambassador in Washington is taking a glass with any US State Department official, he may tell him, as well, that what was written will not have fallen very well in the public opinion of his country,” but nothing that looks like a reprimand.
In such a situation, “what is usual to do is ignore,” says Augusto Santos Silva, former Minister of Foreign Affairs (2015-2022). Since the insult in question “results from improper filtration of a confidential conversation, states cannot intervene,” he stresses. “As they say in justice: they do not know. Or as they say in diplomacy: do not take note. Take note is when you are informed and do not take position. When it is meant that one takes a favorable position, it is said that we have a good grade.” But in this case the states and their diplomats were not officially informed.
However, it must also be acknowledged that what was said by JD Vance and the other American officials “is nothing that surprises.” “They say on Virtually that. The only thing that surprises is the level of amateurism, “says Santos Silva.
This is also the opinion of diplomat Francisco Seixas da Costa: “What we saw there from the official speech about Europe. It is not surprising what JD Vance says. It is not much different from what Trump has said. After what Trump has said about several countries, not even in the use of a certain more banal lexicon.”
For Francisco Seixas da Costa, “Americans, whether republican or democrats, have, do not say contempt, but a lack of respect for European institutions.” “They are used to the state relationship to the state and understand that the European Union has never had a sufficient face that served it as an interlocutor,” says Seixas da Costa. And in this regard, what Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State between 1973 and 1977, used to say, “I used to say,” I have a hard time talking to Europe, I never know what the phone number is. ” The problems are not today, underlines Francisco Seixas da Costa.
Kissinger during a White House meeting with Trump in 2017
Also Martins da Cruz is of opinion that in the US “there has always been, especially in the Republican Party, isolationist trends.” “Trump is not the first,” he says. But regardless of the fact that Americans consider that they do not need Europe, the Europeans – and the Portuguese – cannot afford to.
“We must not forget that, in the twentieth century, the two times that Europe was distressed were the Americans who came to save it,” says Martins da Cruz. In addition, we “are a European country but we are above all an Atlantic country, we are the most Atlantic in European countries and we need the US for our defense and our security.”
When Vance says he is fed up with “giving” Europe, in that context, it is because the attack on the Suez channel would make life easier for boats that pass in that area, which are mostly Europeans. “This is accounting administration, that is, it makes a transactional reading of acts of a political nature,” explains Francisco Seixas da Costa.
Therefore, what Europe has to do is learn to deal with this new reality. “We need Europeans and Americans to understand each other,” Vinca Martins da Cruz – and this is the role of diplomats. “We were not we who elected this administration, it was the Americans. But we have to deal with it, we have to find the best way.”
