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Editor’s note: David A. Andelman, a CNN contributor and executive director of The Red Lines Project, is the author of the forthcoming book, “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy and a History of Wars That May Still Happen.” He was previously a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia. Follow him on Twitter @DavidAndelman. The opinions expressed in this comment are yours. See more opinion at cnne.com/opinion.
(CNN) – Europe, but particularly France and Germany, the continent’s two powerhouses, are holding their collective breath over the outcome of the US presidential election on Tuesday, November 3. They recognize that the future of the transatlantic relationship, the very nature of the Atlantic alliance, which has preserved peace in Europe for three-quarters of a century, is at stake.
Yet there is a nascent recognition in both nations that some elements of a decades-long transatlantic partnership may be almost irrevocably lost, regardless of who wins in America next month.
There is considerable uncertainty in both Paris and Berlin as to how much the United States can be trusted. “Donald Trump has not fallen from the sky out of nowhere,” Jana Puglierin, head of the German office of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), told me in a Zoom conversation from Berlin. “He has not taken half the American population hostage and brainwashed them. So there is a reason why he is there, and the reason remains even after he is gone.
Still, the Germans, and especially the French, can be forgiven for being somewhat distracted at the moment. Even more immediate and frightening for Europe than the US elections is the sudden resurgence of the coronavirus infection for which the US has been of little help and certainly no model of containment.
France registered more than 270,000 new cases in the last week. President Emmanuel Macron told the French people in a nationwide address Wednesday night that a second national shutdown was coming on Friday for a nation already approaching paralysis. Germany is also heading for a second partial shutdown.
Elections across the Atlantic, of course, can hardly be ignored. Yet at the heart of all sentiment between the French and Germans today is the increasingly uncompromising belief that the will of the American electorate is so unpredictable, their choice of a leader so self-centered and dependent on forces spiraling out. of control, that Europe may be unable to count on a strong and reliable America in the long term.
The ECFR found, in a continental poll, that even if Joe Biden were elected, voters in France and Germany believe that Europe should ‘have good relations with the United States, [pero] prepare for disconnection. However, if Trump were to win, voters in Belgium, Sweden, Austria and Croatia also believe that preparation for the disengagement would be necessary.
In France, most commentators, as well as officials within the Macron government, have become convinced that even a Biden victory “would not mean a return to the old, often wrongly mythologized days,” as the commentator recently put it. Le Monde diplomat, Piotr Smolar.
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Macron, who sees himself as the rightful heir to the mantle of European leadership that German Chancellor Angela Merkel will renounce when she retires next year, has already started campaigning for the creation of a European defense force. that could make Europe less dependent on the US military, even if Biden reverses Trump’s announced plan to begin withdrawing thousands of US troops from bases in Germany.
The French still hope for a more realistic military prospect of a Biden victory. Like Trump, Biden has promised an end to America’s involvement in “wars forever,” particularly in the Middle East.
However, Biden has vowed to leave residual forces in some key countries, particularly Iraq, to maintain stability and prevent the emergence of terrorist groups that could pose a threat to American interests. “I think we need special operations capability to coordinate with our allies,” Biden told Stars and Stripes last month.
Of course, Biden has not unequivocally accepted all the European initiatives that Trump opposes. Trump has vigorously opposed the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, designed to bring cheap Russian natural gas to Germany and which Chancellor Merkel has long believed to be a fundamental pillar for future German prosperity. But equally, it so happens that Biden described it four years ago as “a bad deal” for Europe that would ensure “greater dependence on Russia.” Biden’s views, though unchanged, are likely to be somewhat more nuanced than Trump’s growing threats of retaliation if the pipeline project continues. These have been described as “blackmail” by Manuela Schwesig, prime minister of the German state where the pipeline would end.
Still, the French and the Germans are in many ways equally desperate for the return of the Americans on a number of different levels. The leaders of both nations want the United States to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA), as well as the World Health Organization and take a joint role in the battle against covid-19 and the development of vaccines and treatments. That, in turn, could lead to relief for millions of unemployed in the service sectors of both countries awaiting the return of American tourists and their much-needed dollars.
But above all, the French and the Germans want a certain degree of coherence to be restored in transatlantic relations: the end of government through tweets and the feeling that they are constantly perceived as second-class citizens. What they fear most, however, is a second Trump administration with a completely unchained and unhinged president. Few are prepared to explain what that would look like, though, for fear of it happening.
