Elon Musk\u2019s personal foreign policy of promoting far-right parties is sparking outrage among leaders in Europe and handing them a dilemma: How do they rebuke the tech titan without angering his new patron \u2014 Donald Trump? <\/p>\n
Musk could easily be dismissed as a mischievous antagonist who simply loves to shock and is pursuing his own obsessions one X post at a time. <\/p>\n
But he\u2019s not just some troll. He\u2019s the world\u2019s richest man, owns some of the globe\u2019s most strategic and influential businesses, and is wielding a mighty social media network. Musk is highlighting his enormous influence as a populist force galvanizing political provocateurs as a kind of one-man supranational non-state power. <\/p>\n
He\u2019s also previewing the international disruption that likely lies in store when the president-elect returns to the White House in two weeks and the potential conflicts of interest ahead. That\u2019s because the Tesla and SpaceX pioneer will not simply be a powerful free agent \u2014 but an inner circle adviser to the new US government at the head of the Department of Government Efficiency. It\u2019s therefore going to be hard to know where Musk\u2019s policy ends and official US foreign policy starts. <\/p>\n
To foreigners, his attacks on elected officials with whom he disagrees risk coming across as an attempt by a future US government to interfere in the politics of fellow democracies and sovereign nations to destabilize their governments. <\/p>\n
And his moves beg the question of whether he\u2019s working at Trump\u2019s direction, is seen by the president-elect as a useful vanguard of disruption or could soon end up irking the 47th president as he tries to put his stamp on the world. <\/p>\n
\u201cWill Musk be carrying out Trump\u2019s foreign policy agenda, acting as a personal ambassador of Trump to everywhere?\u201d said Lindsay Gorman, managing director and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. \u201cOr will Musk be advancing his own vision for global affairs, which may align with Trump in some ways, but not in others. And then what will be the power dynamics between those two?\u201d <\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s willingness to tolerate Musk\u2019s fierce attacks on allied leaders is also a sign that the coming months could be even more rocky for America\u2019s friends than his first term. That reality played out Monday when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation. Trudeau had long since squandered the trust of Canadians and his own Liberal Party. But Trump\u2019s threats of imposing a 25% tariff exacerbated the political crisis in Ottawa and may have hastened the departure of an antagonist Trump branded the \u201cgovernor\u201d of America\u2019s 51st state. <\/p>\n
The apparent sense of freedom that Trump and Musk feel in playing politics abroad is also a marker of the self-confidence in MAGA world ahead of Trump\u2019s inauguration. They\u2019re demonstrating a belief that their strength allows them to bully smaller countries and may augur a new and brasher incarnation of \u201cAmerica First.\u201d <\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s attacks \u2014 conveyed to his 211 million followers on X \u2014 have snapped the patience of the leaders of some of America\u2019s closest traditional allies and stoked already elevated transatlantic tensions ahead of Trump\u2019s second term. <\/p>\n
\u2014 British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has been targeted by Musk for weeks, warned the SpaceX owner had crossed \u201ca line\u201d after he said the British minister responsible for safeguarding children should be jailed and was an apologist for rape. <\/p>\n
\u2014 French President Emmanuel Macron accused Musk of fueling a new \u201cinternational reactionary movement\u201d and intervening in elections. <\/p>\n
\u2014 Norway\u2019s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr St\u00f8re said it was \u201cworrying\u201d that a man with such power was so directly involved in the affairs of other countries. <\/p>\n
\u2014 The German government has already criticized the multi-billionaire for backing a far-right pro-Russia party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), in upcoming elections. Musk will host the party\u2019s leader in an interview on X this week. <\/p>\n
The resentment provoked by Musk reflects the core ideology of Trump\u2019s \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d movement. He is going after establishment politicians and seeking to promote far-right, outsider populists whose views and temperaments mirror those of the president-elect. In Europe, as in the United States, many voters have become resentful of governments they believe have failed to improve their economic situations and to stem immigration. <\/p>\n
To many Americans, Musk is simply exercising his First Amendment rights. But in Europe, a continent haunted by the horror of far-right extremism, his support for radical populism is seen by many leaders as offensive and less an example of free speech than an attempt to stifle freedoms and democracy. <\/p>\n
If there\u2019s a strategy in Musk\u2019s rabble rousing, it\u2019s that opposition forces in these countries are far more in line with Trump\u2019s anti-immigration and anti-free trade instincts than the leaders who are currently in place. And Trump may be hoping to promote political interlocutors who would be more sympathetic to him. <\/p>\n
In France, for instance, the far-right National Rally party (formerly known as the National Front) of Marine Le Pen has its best chance yet in 2027 to win in the two-round presidential election system that has always blocked it from power. While the AfD is unlikely to form a government in the German system that promotes coalitions, its influence may grow after federal elections in February. <\/p>\n
And Trump has already rolled out the red carpet at Mar-a-Lago to far-right European leaders including Hungary\u2019s strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n and Italy\u2019s right-wing populist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who may be the strongest national leader in the European Union right now. <\/p>\n
The nationalist DNA of Trump\u2019s foreign policy is often a reaction to policies and demeanor of center-left leaders in the West. <\/p>\n
This may help explain the president-elect\u2019s tormenting of Trudeau \u2014 who, as a self-professed feminist who offered a warm welcome to immigrants, is the antithesis of MAGA. Trudeau is likely to be succeeded in the short-term by a Liberal Party prime minister, but the most likely outcome of a general election that must take place this year is a new government under Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. The Albertan shares some of Trump\u2019s populist tendencies, including on immigration, and his penchant for awarding his opponents mocking nicknames. But he has also condemned Trump\u2019s branding of Canada as the 51st state, and at the helm of a majority government, he might turn out to be a more formidable negotiator on trade issues than a severely weakened Trudeau. <\/p>\n
Similarly, if Musk is trying to destabilize Starmer, his actions spring from a misunderstanding of Britain\u2019s political dynamics. The Labour Party leader has just won a huge landslide and won\u2019t have to face the electorate for again for nearly five years. And Musk even the far-right Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, the father of Brexit and a friend of Trump, is now deemed by Musk as insufficiently radical after he said he didn\u2019t agree with the X owner\u2019s support for jailed anti-Muslim far-right campaigner Tommy Robinson. <\/p>\n
Starmer felt compelled to speak out after Musk used X to accuse him of being complicit in the actions of grooming gangs in a historic child abuse scandal that he handled while director of public prosecutions. In other distortions of the truth, Musk also claimed Jess Phillips, the government safeguarding minister, was \u201cpure evil\u201d and a \u201cwicked creature.\u201d <\/p>\n
Starmer warned that \u201cthose that are spreading lies and misinformation, as far and as wide as possible \u2013 they\u2019re not interested in victims, they\u2019re interested in themselves.\u201d He added: \u201cWhen the poison of the far right leads to serious threats to Jess Phillips and others, then in my book, a line has been crossed.\u201d <\/p>\n
Despite Starmer\u2019s tough tone, the showdown with Musk is unwelcome turbulence for a prime minister, who, like all other world leaders, has been trying to build a relationship with Trump to spare his nation from the worst consequences of a new US foreign policy built on forcing American might on friends and foes alike. <\/p>\n
But the transatlantic fury might soon become a problem for Trump as well. <\/p>\n
Despite his transactional instincts and desire to intimidate other leaders, Trump may need the help of American allies one day, and Musk\u2019s antics are making it far harder for them to accommodate an incoming American president who is already deeply unpopular in many of their nations. <\/p>\n
Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the party with the third most members in Britain\u2019s House of Commons, reflected that antipathy toward Trump on Monday. \u201cPeople have had enough of Elon Musk interfering with our country\u2019s democracy when he clearly knows nothing about Britain,\u201d Davey said, ironically, on X. \u201cIt\u2019s time to summon the US ambassador to ask why an incoming US official is suggesting the UK government should be overthrown.\u201d <\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s jabs might also cause problems stateside. They already look like a headache for more conventional US foreign policy officials, including Marco Rubio, the Florida senator Trump has picked to serve as secretary of state, and Florida Rep. Michael Waltz, his pick for national security adviser. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s going to get very confusing very quickly. I don\u2019t envy the career diplomats at the State Department, who are certainly going to have their hands full trying to figure out whose agenda they\u2019re carrying out,\u201d said Gorman. <\/p>\n
Apparent conflicts between US policy and Musk\u2019s business interests pose another complication. He has already sat in on calls between Trump and world leaders like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose forces use Musk\u2019s Starlink internet system to support their war against Russia. <\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s massive commercial exposure in China might also weigh heavily on Trump\u2019s approach and may clash with the hawkish instincts of Waltz and Rubio, who are set to be part of the most anti-Beijing Cabinet in modern American history. <\/p>\n
In Trump\u2019s first term, when he made foreign policy by tweet, America became a force for global disruption. Musk\u2019s prominent role in his second administration may make those four years seem stable by comparison. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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