A conversation with Anthony L. Gardner, the former US ambassador to the EU under President Obama.Gardner is a former director on the National Security Council who has spent much of his career in Europe. He left his ambassadorial post in Brussels when Donald Trump entered the White House, and he was succeeded by Gordon Sondland, a hotel magnate with scant government experience.
Sondland has more or less hewed to a Trumpian script, occasionally pouring scorn on Brussels officials and raising questions about the relevance of the European project.
Now Sondland has been swept up in the investigation that could result in Trump’s impeachment. Congressional panels are pouring over details about Sondland’s possible role in pressuring Ukraine’s leadership to investigate Joe Biden, Trump’s likeliest rival in next year’s US election, and Biden’s son.
It’s against this background that Gardner talks with EU Scream about what’s ailing American diplomacy in Europe, his forthcoming book on the importance of EU-US relations, and where the continent may be heading under its new leadership.
A lexicon for this episode:
A “stagiaire” is a trainee; “DG Comp” is the EU’s antitrust department; the “Sablon” is an upscale part of Brussels teeming with antique and chocolate shops; “TTIP” is an acronym for Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a failed US-EU effort to strike a trade deal; Wilbur Ross is U.S. commerce secretary; Herman Van Rompuy represented EU heads of state and government as the first president of the European Council; “ECSC” is the European Coal and Steel Community, the group of six countries that started an integration process eventually leading to creation of the EU; SWIFT is the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a network through which interbank transfers are traditionally made; “PESCO” is Permanent Structured Cooperation, an EU policy goal for developing joint military capabilities.
