Europe’s dismay could only have deepened when Congress seemed to cheer Mr. Trump on. Republicans, who once prided themselves as stewards of national security, have shown little concern about the way Mr. Trump treated NATO members or the links between Mr. Trump’s aides and Russia. In a statement, Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gushed over Mr. Trump’s trip to Europe and the Middle East, saying it was “executed to near perfection.”
.. These new stresses in the alliance come at a bad time.
- Europe has been battered by the Greek financial crisis;
- the rise of authoritarianism in Turkey, Hungary and Poland;
- Britain’s decision to withdraw from the European Union;
- and the flow of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa.
Mr. Putin, always eager to expand Russian influence, has exploited every weakness and crisis, along with instigating a few of his own.
- Russia invaded Ukraine and has
- interfered in electoral campaigns in the United States, France and Germany.
- Mr. Putin has meddled in the Baltic States,
- cultivated far-right-wing allies in Hungary and
- wooed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on NATO’s eastern flank.
- He is now courting Italy with a savvy ambassador to Rome and financing for anti-establishment parties.
There are some bright spots.
- One is that Ms. Merkel seems committed to playing a lead role as the United States pulls back; another is
- France’s election of President Emmanuel Macron, who has demonstrated a willingness to work in partnership with Ms. Merkel. The two won’t always see eye-to-eye, but
- Germany needs France and Mr. Macron is a good fit.
.. Mr. Macron gave Mr. Putin full honors but did not mince words on Russia’s destructive role in the Syrian conflict, in Ukraine and in its dissemination of fake news.
How Will Germany Respond to Emmanuel Macron?
In recent years the alliance between France and Germany has fallen into disrepair. German policy-makers have ceased to respect the French point of view, because of the weakness of both the French economy and of its outgoing president.
.. Germany wants more fiscal discipline and new mechanisms to make countries like France and Italy engage in painful structural economic reform, while France wants common instruments such as ‘eurobonds’ and steps towards a transfer union.
.. lowering the state’s share of economic output (currently 55 per cent of GDP)
.. Those close to Angela Merkel and finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble doubt that Macron will achieve a great deal in the short term. These Christian Democrats are wary of his Keynesian thinking
.. Yet the conservatism of Germany’s voters and politicians makes it unlikely that Macron will get very far in redesigning eurozone governance, at least in the short term.
The Center Holds
Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France on Sunday in a victory for a political newcomer who campaigned on promises to revamp France’s heavily regulated economy and fight a tide of nationalism sweeping the European Union. The 39-year-old former investment banker has vowed to undertake contentious changes to labor markets in France as part of a push for greater economic convergence among the EU’s fractious member states. At the core of his program are overhauls of France’s sluggish economy and the eurozone, with all its shortcomings. To get what he wants, he will first have to convince a skeptical Germany. Mr. Macron won 66.1% of the vote, surpassing pollsters’ predictions that he would win about 60%. Marine Le Pen, who ran on a plan to pull the country out of the euro and close its borders to migrants, took 33.9%. The euro briefly touched a seven-month high against the dollar after the results.
U.S. Far-Right Activists Promote Hacking Attack Against Macron
“Intervening in the final hour of the official campaign, this operation is clearly a matter of democratic destabilization, as was seen in the United States during the last presidential campaign,” Mr. Macron’s campaign said in a statement late Friday, minutes before the communications prohibition went into effect.
.. By Saturday, a trail of digital crumbs appeared to tie the attack on Mr. Macron’s campaign to Russian hackers. Forensics specialists found that one of the leaked Excel documents from Mr. Macron’s campaign had been modified on a Russian version of Excel, and edited on Russian-language computers.
One document had last been modified by a Russian user named Roshka Georgiy Petrovich. Mr. Petrovich, 32, an employee of the Moscow-based Eureka CJSC, a Russian technology company, did not immediately return emails requesting comment. Eureka CJSC’s clients include several Russian government agencies
.. A week before the second round of the French election, for instance, online activists, many from the United States and other English-speaking countries, flooded Twitter with coordinated anti-Macron memes — online satirical photos with often biting captions — carrying hashtags like #elysee2017 that were linked to the campaign. That included portraying him as a 21st-century equivalent of Marie Antoinette, the out-of-touch last queen of France, and other memes made allegations of an extramarital affair.
“They tried to bombard French Twitter with memes favorable to Le Pen,”
.. posted what were said to be copies of documents showing that Mr. Macron had supposedly set up a bank account in the Bahamas to avoid paying taxes. He denied the allegations.
Ms. Le Pen referred to such an overseas bank account during the vicious debate, leading to a bitter rebuttal by Mr. Macron’s team and an official investigation into the spread of the rumors.
.. Yet in a sign of how the far right outside the country is trying to foment the discussion, many of the Twitter posts about the hacking have originated in the United States, according to Trendsmap, a data analytics tool. About half of the social media messages around political hashtags linked to the breach have been written in English
.. “Misinformation is increasingly used to achieve political ends,” Mr. Sarts said. “Technology helps to amplify that message through fake news sites and social media.”