Most European leaders are looking aghast and with a hint of moral superiority at what is taking place in the United States after the presidential election on November 3, 2020.
When U.S. President Donald Trump claimed victory on November 4 and said he would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the counting of postal ballots—which make up many of the votes that remain to be counted—several German politicians knew exactly what this implied. The basic principles of democracy were being challenged. The very idea of what America represents was being threatened. No wonder they dread the idea of another four years of Trump.
But they are not naive enough to believe that if Democratic candidate Joe Biden enters the White House in January 2021, all the tensions and disputes Europe had with Trump will simply become things of the past.
A Biden presidency will be so preoccupied with domestic issues that the foreign policy agenda—and that includes tackling climate change—will be put on the backburner. The European Union, unless it fundamentally changes the way it functions, will be in big trouble. And if Trump is reelected, the EU will be in even bigger trouble.
It’s not only because Trump had put paid to the multilateral institutions that the United States was instrumental in building after World War II. It’s because several leaders inside the EU will be delighted by a Trump victory. It would give a real fillip to nationalist, populist leaders, whether in Hungary, in Poland, or in Slovenia, where Prime Minister Janez Janša congratulated Trump prematurely.
Trump’s illiberal views of democracy, accountability, and the judiciary and his penchant for authoritarian leaders is more to their liking than Europe’s values based on the rule of law.
That is why both the leaders of the EU institutions and in particular German Chancellor Angela Merkel have to use the outcome of the U.S. election—whether the winner is Biden or Trump—to drag Europe out of its complacency.
It’s a complacency based on an unwillingness to take security threats seriously and collectively. It’s a complacency that has allowed the Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Polish leaders—to name just a few—to run roughshod over the rule of law. If ever there was a time for the EU to act politically and strategically, surely this moment has come.
First, the EU has to take measures to sanction governments that undermine the basic values of the EU and its treaty. Whether it’s the European Commission, the European Parliament, or the European Council that represents member states, it’s time to stop paying lip service to values and stop resorting to mild threats against member states flouting democratic values.
Second, and this is going to demand clarity from Berlin, the EU is not going to have any strategic clout if it does not further integrate politically. The longer the delay, the greater the risk of further political fragmentation inside the EU. Nationalist and populist leaders, but also inertia by the leaders of EU institutions, are feeding this trend.
Third, EU leaders have to recognize that Europe’s security and defense anchored on NATO cannot be taken for granted.
Trump’s disdain for NATO is well known. As for a Biden presidency, such an administration is not going to bend over backward to its allies. Just recall how the defense secretaries serving under former president Barack Obama were in despair over NATO’s strategic and financial shortfalls.
Pentagon chiefs are also frustrated over Europe’s inability to take its own security and defense seriously. This is where European leaders, particularly the big countries, have to explain if they want “strategic autonomy”—and what this term exactly means—or if they want to give NATO real strategic teeth.
Either way, NATO and the EU are in the same boat. Since most European countries are members of both organizations, they share the same intellectual malaise: the absence of a strategic culture that would embrace the idea of hard power.
This absence is glaring when it comes to Europe’s relations with its Eastern and Southern neighbors.
It’s all very well for European leaders to complain that Trump has little interest in the conflict raging between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorny Karabakh, or the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in Belarus, or the destructive foreign policy pursued by Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
But since all these issues affect Europe’s security and stability, the EU needs to assume the political and strategic capacity to tackle them.
As it is, the leadership vacuum left by the United States and the inability of the EU to compensate in any way for this vacuum is being exploited by the protagonists in these neighboring countries and by Russia.
Whoever sits in the White House come January will not restore American global leadership overnight. That should give the Europeans all the more reason to discard a complacent mindset that is damaging the union’s interests, damaging its values, and damaging any attempts to become a major strategic player.
Comments(3)
US global leadership is a euphemism for the maintenance of hegemonic unipolarity. But the iron-clad law of balance-of-power leads such a structure toward a new hostile bipolarity. This is precisely where geopolitics finds itself today. Europe, for it to be strategic, must not continue to be a junior partner in a G-2 world divided by Russia-China on one side, and NATO on the other. In strategic European terms, NATO has become an anachronism because a new cold war is a dead-end for European options. All the frozen conflicts in Europe will simply remain frozen within a G-2 European security architecture. In 2021, Trump will no longer be president, but Trumpism ("America First") will be alive and well within both US political parties. The fiscal crisis of the US state -- due to globalization's vast inequalities and also the US role as world leader) -- will place strict restraints on an extreme "guns and butter" political agenda. And unlike the 1960's, the US Treasury's gold-window has long been closed. The new Biden administration will find itself on a "guns VS. butter" political tightrope. America's financial future is only as strong as its untethered fiat currency and the mirage of stability under a chimera regime of permanent zero interest rates. How long can confidence in the US dollar last? Only as long as the US maintains a dominate role in world economic output. Without gold backing, such dominance becomes the sole criteria for global capital exchange and debt stability. But the dollar crisis of the 1970's and the tech revolution a decade and a half later, did not bring stability, it brought a vast US trade deficit and a shrinking of the US middle class (union- wage workers). The US financial sector has since ballooned; while production has declined precipitously, "NO MORE ENDLESS WARS!!" --- the Trump supporters shout. And so too do large elements of the Democratic Party. Nearly all Americans ask: "After 75 years, why are we still in Europe, isn't there a better way?" The world simply cannot survive with another G-2 nuclear arms race and a global conventional stand-off. The laws of ecology will not allow for the permanent growth rate necessary for an advanced cold war; and the laws of capitalist economics will eventually implode with lost confidence, debt ruination, dollar collapse and soaring interest rates. Europe needs a Russian partner. Russia is a crucial lynchpin to world peace! In the existential 21st century, peace and ecology are paramount!
I think Ms Dempsey is correct when she writes about European “complacency” to take security threats seriously and collectively. But there is more involved here than just the will to take on security, it will also cost money, and mean choices for European countries between social welfare expenditures and defense expenditures. I suspect that a President Biden and his team will not want to pump more money into conventional defense of Europe. The US has entered a new and very dangerous arms race with both China and Russia. It covers areas ranging from robotic warfare to hypersonic missiles with nuclear warheads. It was not Trump to be honest that initiated this arms race yet again, it was an evolutionary process involving all of these great powers. Probably the most dangerous idea I have read was the French attempt to provide the nuclear deterrence role in an integrated EU defense policy. France has neither the money nor the will to compete with China and Russia. Europe and the USA must stand together within the framework of NATO to create nuclear weapons containment frameworks that encompass both China and Russia, similar attempts must be made in relationship to robotic warfare. Ms Dempsey is also correct that the USA under a Biden administration will be faced with many internal problems in our country that will limit the focus on European affairs.
Europe is a hotch potch of countries with some having clear direction like Norway, Turkey, and now the UK. As for the EU countries they are all over the place on defence especially with most in EU expecting to be rescued by the US if a foe appears, only the UK and France look capable in military means, with some of the smaller countries hiding under this umbrella especially under the US. Now that the UK has left the EU you look at what is left apart from France not much possibly the Greeks have a reasonable defence posture and strategy geared against the Turks only. Again apart from France the US in the EU is seen as their defence and certainly not from an internal army of each country. This bodes the question will it ever be able to defend itself or project its might beyond its locality, not just now for sure until they have a co-operative defensive strategy away from Nato as a unified force made up of 27 countries, and being 3 of these want to remain independent or neutral being Ireland, Sweden and Finland even though these 3 are smallish countries it muddies the water on mutual defence. So America is seen as the power in Europe at least militararly and the EU does not want to rock the boat this relatively free force. A strategic Europe it will never be unless it can go solo away from America but still have a partnership with them.
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