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BERLIN: Europe and the United States must face a “new Cold War with China” together, regardless of who wins the White House in November, Germany’s point man on transatlantic relations told AFP.
With only five weeks left until the US elections, the German government coordinator for relations with the United States and Canada, Peter Beyer, insisted that there were more shared interests than differences.
“Europe must stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States to meet China’s enormous challenge,” he said.
“The new Cold War between the United States and China has already begun and will shape this century.”
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After four years of frequent friction between Donald Trump and Angela Merkel on topics such as Iran, trade, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and climate, Beyer said it was no secret that Germany would find it easier to work. with Joe Biden.
“I’m the last person who is so naive to say, ‘If Biden wins, everything will be great, it’s the beginning of a golden age,'” he said.
“Controversial issues will not disappear overnight, but with Biden the transatlantic friendship would once again become more reasonable, calculable and reliable.”
“IT WILL NOT BE BETTER”
On China and Iran, the Americans and the Europeans had “similar, sometimes identical interests,” Beyer said.
“That is why it frustrates me that we cannot find a common denominator right now,” he said, on issues including support for the World Health Organization amid the COVID-19 pandemic, ways to curb the nuclear ambitions of Iran and the fight against climate change. .
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But Beyer insisted that despite the high stakes, Trump’s re-election will not implode the West, citing long-standing close cooperation with members of Congress and many US states.
“Not everything will be discouraging if Trump two comes. But it will not be better,” he said.
“Who is sitting in the White House is essential. But it cannot dominate the transatlantic friendship. Washington and especially the United States is not just the Oval Office.”
Beyer said decades of postwar cooperation between the allies had built a foundation of “supposedly old-fashioned values” such as “freedom and democracy, peace and prosperity.”
“It is worth remembering that the Americans taught us those values and we are still grateful for them,” he said.
That contrasted with a Chinese system marked by “dictatorship, lack of freedom of the press and human rights, digital surveillance, (abuse of) the Uyghurs, Hong Kong, the environment.”
Beyer is one of the few senior members of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Merkel’s party, in a foreign ministry run by the Social Democrats, junior partners in her ruling coalition.
He said the CDU would have to think about those crucial factors when choosing a new leader in December before the general election next year at the end of Merkel’s 16-year tenure.
“Whoever wins will have to face these problems.”
HEARTS AND MINDS
He said security was just one area in which Germany would have to improve its game, particularly given Trump’s plans to reduce the number of US troops stationed in Germany from 9,500 to 25,000.
Trump cited anger at Germany for failing to stick to NATO’s defense spending targets and for treating the United States “badly” on trade to justify the move.
“I don’t think a Biden administration would completely reverse the plans, but I also doubt that it will pursue them as vehemently,” Beyer said.
In any case, however, Germany must deliver on its promises to increase defense spending while working with European partners to play a bigger role in security.
“We don’t want to make NATO obsolete,” Beyer said. “But for our own sake we have to boost defense cooperation within Europe.”
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He said a younger generation of Germans were less interested in American pop culture or study abroad programs than they had been growing up in Cold War West Germany, noting that Australia, Canada and parts of Asia now they were more likely to capture hearts and minds. .
And he admitted that Germany had occasionally neglected ties with the United States over the past decade and was partly to blame for any distancing.
“Polls show that Germany and Germans are very popular with many Americans,” Beyer said, with a view to rekindling the relationship. “It’s a place to start.”
