[ad_1]
BRUSSELS – In the “America First” landscape created by President Trump, Joseph R. Biden Jr. was an old-fashioned, romantic ocean liner. So there is relief in Europe to have a willing friend in the White House who is more likely to support than berate, harangue and insult.
A former French ambassador to Washington, Gérard Araud, said that “all European leaders have had a horrible conversation with Trump.” Referring to the German Chancellor and the former British Prime Minister, Araud said: “He insulted Angela Merkel, he insulted Theresa May. I attack them. It was surreal. And it is over “.
But there will still be caution among European leaders, about what Mr. Biden may ask of them, especially knowing that he may be a one-term president and that the populist momentum that animated Trumpism has hardly faded.
Dominique Moïsi, a French analyst at the Institut Montaigne, a non-profit organization based in Paris, said: “We must not underestimate the feeling of relief and we must not overestimate the feeling that things will change a lot.”
Civility will be restored, with Biden planning to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and remain at the World Health Organization, offering warm words on NATO and allies and likely embarking on first visits to Germany and possibly Brussels, suggest analysts close to Biden’s campaign. There will be less confrontation in trade, fewer punitive tariffs and an early effort, Biden himself said, to create a kind of “world summit for democracy,” especially in the face of a rising China that is promoting its authoritarian capitalism. as well as a more unified stance against Russia.
David O’Sullivan, a former European Union ambassador to the United States, said he expected a renewal of US leadership, if not the hegemony of the past, then at least “the role of the United States as a convening nation” of multilateral initiatives and institutions.
But the world has changed, and so has the United States, where Biden’s victory was relatively narrow and was not an obvious repudiation of Trump’s policies. A fundamental trust has been broken, and many European diplomats and experts believe that US foreign policy is no longer bipartisan, thus no longer trustworthy.
“What is difficult to repair is the fear that this will happen again,” said Stefano Stefanini, Italy’s former ambassador to NATO. “If you worry about a one-term presidency, you hold back a lot, that’s why Congress will be important. If a Republican Senate tries, like Obama, to block everything Biden does, Europeans will say, ‘Okay, Biden is okay, but let’s be careful.’
Clément Beaune, French Minister for Europe, close to President Emmanuel Macron, said in a Twitter message, “It is a mistake to believe that everything changes; Europe must count, above all, on itself.”
The need for greater European autonomy and initiative – economically, politically and militarily – is a message Macron has been repeating for years, even as his own efforts to cheer Trump up have been unsuccessful.
A reelection of Trump could have accelerated that trend. But many, such as Nathalie Tocci, advisor to the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Fontelles, warn that a Biden presidency “runs the risk that Europe will return to its comfort zone.”
“Biden is a comfortable way to put his head in the sand,” he said, “but we must realize that the difficult and painful decisions that Trump presented to us remain unchanged.”
The French message may not triumph in a divided Europe, where Merkel views NATO and the relationship with Washington as vital to German national interests. The Germans already intend to present Mr. Biden with “concrete proposals on how we can close ranks as a transatlantic community” on China, the climate and the Covid-19 pandemic, Heiko Maas, the German Foreign Minister, said saturday.
Europe is also divided on Trump, where the less liberal states of Central Europe, particularly Poland and Hungary, have strongly supported Trump’s policy, and not just grateful for American troops.
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, close to Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, even published an early and now highly ridiculed cheep congratulating Mr. Trump on his re-election.
For NATO allies, it will not be necessary to hide decisions or agree to prior communications as they did with Trump, sometimes with the collusion of US officials. Biden will not threaten to leave NATO, as Trump did, nor will he see it as a quota club. And Biden has not expressed any special affinity with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia or President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
But Biden has a track record, after Iraq, of being cautious in using the US military: he opposed the surge in Afghanistan and intervention in Libya, for example. So while he is likely to renew the New Start nuclear weapons treaty with Moscow, he may not think that reducing the number of American troops in Germany is a bad idea.
And there are suggestions from NATO diplomats that the alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, who has been so adept at dealing with Trump that his term was extended, could be replaced in no time.
There is also some anxiety in the British government over the Biden presidency, given Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s support for Brexit and the close relationship with Trump.
Antonio Blinken, a top Biden adviser, has tried to reassure British diplomats. He told London think tank Chatham House in April that American leadership would return. “When Joe Biden looks at the world, one thing stands out,” Blinken said. “For more than 75 years, the United States played a leadership role in working to organize the world, establish the institutions, write the rules, and establish the norms.”
“If we’re not doing that,” Blinken added, “then one of two things will happen. Or someone else is, and probably not in a way that furthers our interests and values; or no one is, and that can be even worse. So you have a void that tends to be filled with evil things rather than good things. So the United States has the responsibility and self-interest to lead with humility. “
But it is less clear that even America’s traditional allies will follow as confidently as they have in the past.
Elian Peltier contributed reporting from London.
[ad_2]
