"The behavior of European countries that are looking at how will the United States act, how will US president Donald Trump be able to cope with the internal discord, how America will build these relations, shows that sadly, the European countries have lost their political identity," Director General of the Center for Political Information, Alexey Mukhin, said, summing up the results of the 53rd Munich Security Conference, which was held in the Bavarian capital on February 17-19.
Mukhin called Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's speech in Munich "the second part of Vladimir Putin's Munich speech", which Putin said in 2007, "with additional accents on what happened in the past 10 years." "Lavrov's confidence strongly contrasted with uncertainty of our European colleagues, who looked at the Americans too often, waited for what Pence will say. There was an impression that the Europeans are waiting for specific orders, which is very strange because our Western European partners are quite self-sufficient and can form their own policy," the expert said.
As for NATO's future, Mukhin believes that now bloc will deal with internal financial conflict: "Apparently, the United States will insist on other countries raising financing. I don't know whether they will save money and reduce their spendings, but judging by the mood of France and Germany, there will be a serious fight for funding."
The expert also expressed his opinion that Donald Trump is not as unpredictable as many believe: "His so-called unpredictability is well orchestrated and planned. Before the elections, Trump basically announced a trade war with China, but he withdrawed from the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a result, which China welcomed.Trump uses the same model in relations with Iran. His goal is to destroy temporary alliances that exist between Russia and China, Russia and Iran. In this connection, I have a question: do West or the United States really want to build better relations with Russia? Unfortunately, this question can't be answered right now."
Political scientist came to the conclusion that the European countries don't want to bear any responsibility and so they try to make Russia and the United States bear it: "They hope that someone else will solve all those problems that exist on their territory - the problem of illegal migration, difficult relations with Turkey and many others."
