‘Cutting US aid’ prompts EU geopolitical-risk warning

Bloomberg

Europe’s disaster-relief chief leans back in a chair in his Brussels office and fires off a warning: President Donald Trump’s plan to slash US international aid could undermine global geopolitical stability—and threaten America’s interests.
The admonition by Christos Stylianides, the European Union commissioner for crisis management, highlights the extent to which Europe is grappling with Trump’s “America First” policy. Trump has already shaken the trans-Atlantic security order, international trade relations and the worldwide fight against climate change.
For Stylianides, the biggest challenge is development in Africa. Without America’s active involvement, he says, Europe risks having a neighboring continent wracked by political instability, economic shocks and migratory flows, with dire consequences for all, including the US.
“A global response is needed, ” Stylianides, a Cypriot who bears more than a passing resemblance to the late Egyptian film actor Omar Sharif, said in the interview in his 11th-floor office.
“We can’t do it alone. Geopolitically, when Europe confronts a problem that’s beyond its abilities, the US has an interest.”
To highlight an increasingly interdependent world, he points to how the EU assisted the US during the devastating hurricanes that hit Texas and Florida by sharing images from a European earth-observation programme. The satellite service, known as Copernicus, helped the US Federal Emergency Management Agency map the hurricanes’ destruction. “This is tangible European solidarity,” Stylianides said. “Nobody can manage these kinds of crises alone. Everywhere we need to
act together.”
Europe is the world’s biggest donor of humanitarian and development aid, followed by the US. The Trump administration has proposed cutting the budget of the State Department and the US. Agency for International Development by about 30 percent while boosting military spending. The plan has run into resistance in Congress, including among members of Trump’s Republican Party.
The proposal “worries us,” said Stylianides, 59. “Fortunately, even on the Republican side, there have been voices opposing this.”
Europe’s anxiety over the matter has been heightened by the tide of refugees landing on its shores.
About 2.2 million people sought refuge in Europe during 2015 and 2016 in the continent’s biggest wave of asylum seekers since World War II, according to the Pew Research Center in Washington.