BRUSSELS – Treated with contempt by President Trump, who sees him as a rival and a deadbeat rather than an ally, many European leaders are waiting for Biden to become president. But they know painfully that in Mr. Trump’s four years the world – and the United States – has changed in a way that cannot be easily reversed.
Even if citizenship can be restored, basic trust is broken, and many European diplomats and experts believe that US foreign policy is no longer bilateral, so it is no longer credible. Reinhard Biticoffer, a leading German member of the European Parliament, said, “It is not as bright as a city shining on a hill.”
For the first time, Ivan Kristev, director of the Center for Liberal Strategies, said, “Europeans fear that the United States no longer has a foreign-policy consensus. Every new administration can mean a completely new policy, and for them this is a nightmare. ”
The ideological split will be displayed on Thursday, while Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. will discuss his final presidency.
Europeans will be pleased to consider the low-hanging fruits the most for the Biden administration. The crop also includes the extension of the New Start Nuclear Weapons Control Treaty with Russia and the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Health Organization and the Iran Nuclear Agreement. There will be emotional meetings and statements about multilateralism, less confrontation on trade, new efforts to reform the World Trade Organization, and less fighting atmosphere at the 7th and NATO summits.
But Mr. Trump’s grievances are shared by many Americans, and seeing the polarization in America has forced French President Emmanuel Macron to set foot in a changed world in Europe, where China is emerging and the Trump administration is just a feature of American isolation from global leadership, not reason.
The idea of European “strategic autonomy” – Europe’s idea of being less dependent on Washington and with its own strong voice in the world – is gaining ground, despite its greater ambitions than reality.
Some, such as Nathalie Toki, director of the Italian Institute for International Affairs, and France’s security analyst France ç es Hasberg, fear that Biden’s presidency could short-circuit European autonomy and allow Europeans to walk. Sand. “
Trump’s re-election could, of course, accelerate the trend toward autonomy, although few believe Mr. Trump will be able to pull out of NATO, as one of his former national security advisers, John Bolton, suggests he might.
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American foreign policy has traditionally been bipartisan – especially during the Cold War. “Politics hangs on the water’s edge.” But the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that foreign policy, too, was subject to political polarization in the United States.
“The spirit of the United States as a leader is an incredible decay in Europe,” said Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council Foreign Relations.
“Biden doesn’t solve his American problem,” he said. “He will not be president forever, and the Democrats will not always be in power, and people know that foreign policy on the US cannot be trusted, because the next administration will come and wipe it out.”
U.S. Foreign policy inconsistencies have undermined American credibility, some have warned.
“There is an American decline in geopolitical weight,” said Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University. He said the only fact that shaped the U.S. role in global politics was polarization and that this polarization would disappear if Biden was elected. “Americans do not agree with each other on basic premises, even on how much America should be involved in global affairs and NATO.”
Former senior American diplomat William J. Burns, who now runs the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, thinks the loss is permanent, no matter who wins the election.
“The more insidious effects of polarization are to make foreign policy a tool of partisan politics.” “Being able to keep his word has done lasting damage to America’s reputation around the world.”
While Europeans saw the Biden presidency as a “return to culture,” Mr Hisberg said, the new partnership comes with a demand for new responsibilities and commitments, especially on China.
After Mr. Trump, Mark Leonard, director of the European Council for Foreign Relations, said, however, that there would also be a new wariness and reluctance on the part of America’s allies to take greater risks. “If you know that whatever you’re doing will last until the next election, you look at everything more casually.”
Europeans see anti-American policy as one of the few bilateral issues leading to American foreign policy, and Europeans are reluctant to make pawns or playing cards in that competition, given that China is Europe’s second largest trading partner behind the United States. States.
Opinion polls show that most Europeans do not want to take sides in some of the wars between Washington and Beijing. “We don’t see China challenging in the same way and we’re not a peer competitor,” said Reem Corteveg of the Klingandel Institute.
Europeans will be under constant pressure from Washington and Washington to spend more on defense – a bilateral demand that has not been broken.
Mr. Trump successfully pushed Europeans to spend more. But Europeans were also reacting to the vacuum of trans-Atlantic leadership, with doubts about Mr. Trump’s commitment to collective security and his views on Europe. Burden and rivalry.
“I am more keen to tell European partners that we disagree with US policies – a healthy legacy left by Trump,” said Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, director of the German Martial Fund in Paris.
Before Mr. Trump, those differences were hardly fundamental.
Former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brandtland, who has dealt with numerous American presidents on both sides, said: “We had differences, but there was never a fundamental distrust of having common world views.”
But over the past four years, he said, many European leaders have “not taken into account the fact that they can no longer trust the US, even on fundamental issues.”
Confidence in Washington will not return quickly, he said. “While most European leaders believe it is best for the global system to build closer US-European relations,” he said. Where does it go? ”
For Mr. Burns of Carnegie Endowment, American global dominance is over. He sees American hunger as “for a glorious foreign-policy crusade” and says: “We cannot go back to 1949 or 1992 – or 2016. The world has changed, and trans-Atlantic relations must change. ”
He said the Biden administration would first focus on domestic renewal in a coronavirus-run country. It will take a more collaborative partnership with Europe, calling it a “European security identity that does not come at the expense of NATO.” Will support.
Mr Burns said Europeans had “their own skepticism, which they have seen in a more inward-looking America.” But an efficient alliance on China, 5G, Russia, Africa and climate change is possible.
But Europeans must also be committed, Mr Burns said. “Both sides must take steps to invest in a new relationship, which they have not always done in the past.”
