Europe and the power vacuum left by the US in the international scenario

One of the major effects of the Trump presidency, internationally, is the progressive removal of the United States from the role they had held until the Obama presidency: in the position of greater world power, Washington exercised a sort of control of the diplomatic scene, which ensured a certain stability in the world. If this role was positive or negative it is a subjective judgment that could vary according to the contingency of the moment, but for an analysis of the current vacuum of power appears irrelevant. It is also true that a kind of abdication had already begun with Obama, who had tried not to engage the US in the first person and directly in some international crises, first of all the Syrian, and had adopted a kind of delegation to the more collaborative allies, leaving him the pre-eminent position and reserving a more secluded and secondary role for the American country. However, despite this disengagement, dictated by political reasons, but also economic, Washington and the White House remained at the center of the international scene and ready to fit with the usual Western values. With the new tenant of the White House this sort of custom has changed: the American disengagement, as promised in the electoral campaign, has increased to take on original features, very different from the modalities that Obama had assumed. In addition to representing a novelty on the international scene, the new American attitude, only mitigated by the US military and diplomats, constitutes a power vacuum that offers the opportunity to be filled by other powers. On the other hand, the international situation has undergone substantial changes, has largely overcome the phase of bipolarism and presents a more fluid reality with a series of subjects capable of causing significant alterations in the general equilibrium, almost without these processes being halted. The emergence of non-national actors such as the Islamic State, has highlighted the danger of the lack of control of phenomena capable of overcoming the classical dialectic between states, to crack a vision that is now too crystallized. Russia has resumed playing a superpower role, but its internal structural deficit still puts it on the US side, although Putin's activism has certainly created major difficulties in Washington, but the real US competitor appears to be China, which has already passed the American country in some significant data. Beijing represents an adversary with different aims because it seeks economic and technological supremacy, but does not aim to interfere in the internal politics of the states, at least for now. However, it is a country with an authoritarian form of government and which has a great financial liquidity, factors that allow it a greater decision rate than democracies and the facility to enter the western markets, as in those of the third world, with the concrete capacity to condition them from within. Probably this scenario would have been inevitable, but the closure of the US in itself facilitates the conditions of success. The future presents great unknowns, especially for European states, which have too slow reaction times to change and are still too far behind to play a leading role in the arena of international politics. The real danger is that the Chinese advance, marked by a great penetration in the markets and therefore in European societies, is transformed, subtly, from economic to political, without the American shield being present anymore. To remedy this sort of threat it is important that Europe continues to develop contacts with China, because in this economic phase they are essential, but from an equal position and to do so we need an independence from Washington that is becoming obligatory but that it has not yet been conquered. If the scenario has changed, it is necessary to adapt, not with solutions found from time to time, but with a well-planned plan, which passes from the reform of the European central institutions and necessarily arrives at the criteria of adhesion and permanence within the union. Otherwise the American vacuum of power is destined to be filled by a subject that has very little in common with European democratic values.