First, tell Europe it is wanted—one national capital at a time and as a Union. Conversely, the United States must also be told it is needed—not only for what it does but also for who it is. On both sides of the Atlantic, in the United States and Europe, an emotional reset is sorely needed.

Soon after the election, the new president should formally reassert America’s unequivocal commitment to an ever closer and more capable Europe, as well as a stronger and ever more cohesive NATO. There can be no ambiguity: the EU and NATO are very important U.S. interests, if for no other reason that they are vital interests for its members, America’s allies of choice. If not Europe as a Union, how; if not the EU with NATO, with whom?

To share that certainty across the Atlantic and elsewhere, the U.S. president should make the Euro-Atlantic institutions in Brussels the first stop of an early trip to Europe, as George W. Bush did in February 2005, then the earliest such trip after a presidential election. The goal would be to explain and discuss how the new administration intends to redress existing grievances and address the agenda inherited from the past years.

More specifically, and compatible with the positions adopted by most current democratic candidates, the new president should quickly announce his or her intention to restore the pre-Trump consensus on three issues of immediate significance: to re-embrace the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, with the expectation of a broader round of multilateral negotiations with Iran; a return to the Paris Treaty on Climate Change, with shared goals of further progress in many of its specific dimensions; and to negotiate a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact for completion and eventual ratification at the earliest possible date.

Second, relaunch a community of overlapping interests, shared goals, and compatible values into a balanced and capable Euro-Atlantic community of complementary action.

The strategic vision improvised by Harry Truman after 1945 was neither American nor European. It was a Western strategy for a new transatlantic order in which America’s European identity was reset and Europe’s geography recast, with defeated Germany in and Soviet Russia out. Thirty years after these goals were met during the Reagan-Bush three-term co-presidency, no new vision is needed. But the goals need to be adapted—keep the United States in, move the EU up, and inch Russia closer. As was the case with Truman, America’s alliance policy does not end in Europe—but it does begin there.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the strategic road map for the 2020s demands more from the EU and its members, and more from NATO and its members, including the United States. A new balance between and within both institutions is imperative, but neither can be nor ever become sufficient because both are necessary for the “smart” use of their members’ complementary power. For Europe, a mere return to its perennial institutional debates will not move the partnership beyond America’s “me, Tarzan” dialoguing with “you, Jane.” Unless the capability gaps across the Atlantic are reduced, defense cooperation will become increasingly difficult, and the security partnership will cease to be operational and, therefore, relevant.

“Qui fait quoi,” then-French president Jacques Chirac used to ask. To help address this question, a new transatlantic agenda is long overdue to account for the comprehensive changes of the past twenty-five years. To assume a role commensurate with its interests and capabilities, the EU and its members should be prepared to lead on issues which they are especially well-suited to address historically and geographically. Admittedly, much can happen in 2020. But with each crisis showing an increasingly short fuse, the case for more EU leadership grows stronger. For a new beginning with Iran, alongside the new U.S. administration, but also for new diplomatic openings with countries whose regimes gambled on Trump and will find it necessary to adjust accordingly. In Eastern Europe, a geopolitical reset with Russia, a country faced with a sputtering economy and a weary leadership, making it ripe for a liquidation of its costly security portfolio—including Ukraine—and, eventually, a smaller, post-Putin grand bargain with the Trump-less West. And a reset too with China, another country with an economy struggling to keep pace, but also increasingly aware of a security environment that is arguably the world’s second most dangerous.

And third, post-Brexit, Britain will remain a vital EU partner. And however the Brexit transition evolves, the reset of EU-UK relations is strategically essential to a balanced transatlantic partnership. 

Foreign and security policy begins at home, and both the United States and Europe need to put their respective houses in order. Forget Trump and Brexit—the trends of the past thirty years have not been good on either side of the Atlantic. There has been too much politics and not enough policy in the national capitals, but also too much policy and not enough efficiency out of the institutions. Likewise, there has been too much ambition and not enough conviction from the top down, but too much resentment and not enough time from the bottom up. Yet, there is an internal upside to the turbulence of the Trump and Brexit years: while the latter is still exposing the costs of exiting the EU, the former has shown the added pains of living without allies.

There should be no doubt: absent Britain, the EU is weaker—geographically amputated, historically crippled, and politically betrayed. But the reverse is also true—just wait and watch. End the bickering, therefore: the EU and a few of its members are powers in the world, just like Britain is and will remain even after its exit. But lacking bulk, capabilities, and will, none can be a world power without the others—European countries in need of their Union, the Union in need of Britain, Britain in need of a Union, and the United States in need of both as its most willing, capable, and compatible allies. Don’t count on any one, two, or three post-Brexit EU powers to compensate for the loss of Britain.

As the dust settles into the 2020s, it will be important for both sides of the Channel to agree on the terms of their mutual interdependence in ways that also satisfy both sides of the Atlantic. The sad fact is that there is only one thing the United Kingdom alone can do for the United States better and faster than the EU, and that is to say “Yes” when asked by Washington, with little comparable in return except “Get lost.” Call it Britain’s Mexican option. Post-Brexit, direct institutional and operational links with the EU across the board should grant the United Kingdom a presence and an influence compatible with its ability to contribute to the EU’s ability to act—no longer a member, to be sure, but a non-member member whose privileges and obligations continue to be significant and potentially indispensable.

WHILE POLITICAL theory and electoral arithmetic point to a likely defeat of the incumbent president in November 2020, recent history and electoral geography point to forecasts that failed to account for Trump’s uncanny ability to defeat the odds as he did in 2016—the “what if” that was broadly overlooked during the past four presidential elections in the United States, as well as for the June 2016 referendum in the United Kingdom. 

It is during their second term in office that U.S. presidents find their way into history, for the better (Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush) or for the worse (Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton). Barack Obama was a special case: his election alone made history, for which he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize which should have gone to the American Union. As to one-term presidents like Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, they have been cast primarily as caretakers—the latter for giving Reagan a virtual third term, and the former for giving his country the timeout it needed after Nixon. 

Don’t expect that much from a second Trump term. As the former UK ambassador Sir Kim Darroch stated upon leaving his post in Washington, the U.S. president will not “become substantially more normal, less dysfunctional, less unpredictable, less faction riven, less diplomatically clumsy and inept.” With his 2016 electoral triumph confirmed in 2020 after a scorched-earth political battle over impeachment, Trump would be fully unleashed—more personal and confrontational, more unpredictable and unreliable, angrier and more vengeful. But he would also be more unfiltered and insulated and, therefore, more impulsive and freer of any constraints. He will stand permanently at the edge of a constitutional confrontation but comforted by an obedient Republican Party (likely to be still in control of at least the Senate) and protected by “his” Supreme Court, poised to gain as many as two more conservative Justices.

These thoughts are not reassuring. In 2016, Americans did not get the president they hoped for and deserved: too much controversy surrounded his election. Yet the world may have gotten what it deserved, including the adversaries who cheated too much and even the allies who are said to do too little. With a Trump reelection in 2020, however, the roles would be reversed: Americans who vote for a second mandate would get the president they want and thus deserve. But Europe and even the world would receive more than they can possibly manage, including a populist brand name which will be aggressively promoted at the expense of national leaders the U.S. president might not like, not to mention a more confrontational approach with states and governments that denied him the economic and nuclear deals he had hoped to conclude during his first term. Thus, moving hypothetically into Trump’s second presidential term, there are a few priorities to be adopted in such a scenario.