Joe Biden Has a Europe Problem

[Celerity]

The new president has a daunting list of foreign-policy challenges. Among the biggest will be managing a longtime ally.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/01/joe-biden-europe/617753/



Joe Biden begins his first full day as the 46th president of the United States today with as daunting a list of foreign-policy challenges as almost any of his predecessors. After four years of Donald Trump, the new administration must overcome scepticism about America’s ability to deal with the great tests facing the world, including the rise of China as a 21st-century superpower, the spread of nuclear weapons, and the onslaught of man-made climate change. To this list can be added a new issue: patching up the transatlantic alliance. Last month, with Biden’s inauguration just weeks away, the European Union and China pushed a new economic agreement over the line. The actual terms of the China Investment Agreement remain unclear—the text is still to be finalized—but the broad outline is simple enough: a deeper trading relationship based on common and apparently enforceable standards. According to the EU, the deal ties Beijing to a new “values-based investment relationship” that will protect labour and environmental standards, and help root China in the rules-based global order. This is Europe fulfilling the global role it has cast for itself as a “regulatory superpower,” exporting and defending its values through its economic size.

Yet this is not how the agreement is seen in Washington. Brussels went forward with the deal despite a very public plea from the incoming administration to hold fire. Four years of Europe-bashing by Donald Trump, it seems, had hardened European hearts in favour of a pointed display of “strategic autonomy.” Autonomy from whom, you might ask? The United States is the only answer. Europe’s refusal to wait until yesterday’s transfer of power in Washington is an indication of the extent to which the world has changed since Biden was last in government. Today’s Europe is not prepared to “consult” the U.S. before signing an agreement of such importance, as Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, requested—and it rejects the very notion that it should have to. Just because the U.S. defends Europe does not mean a kind of Brezhnev doctrine of obedience is in place, the EU argues. In one sense, then, Biden’s Europe problem is obvious: The continent that the U.S. fought two wars to free, paid to rebuild, and has spent 75 years protecting at great, uneven, and continuing cost is now striking deals behind its back with its main strategic rival. Some ally. In this telling, Trump’s short-sighted and unpredictable malevolence has created the world that he claimed already existed but that, in fact, did not: one in which the U.S. is being taken for a ride by allies that are no such thing.

This deal with China, however, masks an altogether more profound problem for Biden: not European strength, but weakness. For much of the past few years—and particularly the past few weeks—the spectre that has haunted the West is one of American decline. In contrast, Europe, embodied by that most unlikely of liberal heroes, Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, had come of age and was the real leader of the free world. Europe had its problems, the argument went, but was showing none of the morbid symptoms on display at the Capitol this month. While the U.S. clearly does have significant problems to overcome, though, these should not overshadow some of the systemic challenges facing Europe, which may prove in time to be far more serious than those in America. In 2007, following years of solid growth, the EU’s economy was slightly larger than that of the U.S., according to the World Bank, and both were drastically larger than China’s. By 2019, the American economy had grown by around 50 percent, whereas the EU’s had essentially flatlined. China, meanwhile, had all but caught up with the EU. George Magnus, an economist at Oxford University’s China Centre, told me that the trend over the past decade was clear: American resurgence and European stagnation. Since 2010, the U.S. share of the global economy has not only held, but increased, from 23 percent to 25 percent, according to International Monetary Fund data used by Magnus. Europe’s has shrunk from 21.5 percent to 17.5 percent, even including Britain in the total.

If you take Europe’s perspective that economic heft is its own form of might, then it is Europe that is in relative decline, not America. One notable aspect of the past few weeks is the steady discrediting of Trumpism as a political ideology, but without the cost of an economic revolution that might erode America’s extraordinary strength, at least so far. Europe, meanwhile, even as its second-biggest economy, Britain, opted to leave, has yet to face a moment of crisis, because its decline is not so obvious—a steady, creeping crisis rather than a bombastic one as seen across the Atlantic. European diplomats are concerned, for example, that the continent—including Britain—simply does not have the industrial or technological base to compete with the U.S. or China. Of the top 50 companies in the world by market capitalization, only three are headquartered in the EU, and only one of those is involved in technology. The U.S., by contrast, has 34, 10 of which are tech-focused. With Britain’s departure, the EU also has only three universities in the top 50 in the world (the UK has 8, the US 17), and has lost the continent’s global financial hub, London. Even the region’s economic engine, Germany, has question marks hanging over it: Tesla, for example, is worth more than all of Germany’s main car manufacturers combined. On top of this, although the EU has shown admirable political unity over Brexit, it remains a politically weak confederation of states that have hugely different economies and interests, featuring higher levels of economic inequality than even the U.S., with poorer southern Europe lagging far behind wealthy northern countries. It must also now deal with a pesky regional competitor in Britain, whose future remains unclear.

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[Wounded Bear]

1. Can't really blame the Europeans for not trusting us after the Trump fiasco...

Gonna take some time, and probably several administrations, to build back some confidence in us.

[Blue_true]

6. I agree.

The most damaging thing that could have happened to us happened on November 6, 2016. It is going to take some effort to rebuild trust in us, while we cross our fingers and toes that a Trump or smarter Trump never gets elected again.

[Irish_Dem]

8. We still have a significant number of crazy train members of congress.

And in 8 yrs one of them could be president.
No reason for Europe to place a lot of long term trust in the US.

China will be a superpower in the 21st century.
Whether the US remains one is the question to ponder.

[Ferrets are Cool]

2. I would be willing to be a weeks pay that they are heaving a big sigh of relief.

[GoCubsGo]

7. Yep, and it's not like they haven't dealt with Biden before.

Or, many of the people working under him. They know what they're getting now.

[JI7]

14. Their issue is not Biden himself or even Democrats in GEneral but the Voters who might elect another

fool .

They know the US has a lot of right wing backwards types that hold the country back from doing much better.

[Ferrets are Cool]

15. True this

[NoRoadUntravelled]

3. Seems like Europe would have more confidence in US ability to manage these delicate affairs

if they had confidence that US voters would not be so easily swayed by gold toilet seats and orange skin.

What if we begin with an education campaign that sees to it that every child in US schools is taught Civics appropriate to grade level and that every high school graduate (along with every candidate for public office) is able to pass the test that immigrants must pass to become US citizens? It's a start.

[Thekaspervote]

4. Of course things are shifting, that's the nature of things. America minus dotard is also

Changing, and rapidly. Let’s see where we are in a year, or two.

[Dawson Leery]

5. The world is changing and growing.

The world is not going to wait (nor should they) for the US after Trump.

[roamer65]

9. I think the UK will breakup during his administration.

NI and the Republic of Ireland will unify and Scotland will separate, joining the EU shortly thereafter.

[GulfCoast66]

10. I would like to see DFW's take on this. He is our European guy.

His post are always worth reading.

[NCjack]

11. Europe is likely concerned that DEMs have the energy to maintain

the push to secure a hold on the presidency, house, and senate until the GOP is purged of fascists. How long to rehabilitate the GOP into a trustworthy administrator of democracy? 30 years?

[Silent3]

12. How can another country trust treaties and other agreements with the United States...

...until they know we can be trusted to sustain them and hold up our end?

I think they'll trust the Biden administration, but that administration could be gone in 4-8 years, and then what? Back to another, possibly worse fascist/would-be autocrat who delights in trashing our alliances and sucking up to despots?

[Initech]

13. Trump left a huge, steaming turd behind and it's going to take a lot to clean up his mess.

And I am confident that Joe is the man for the job!

[EndlessWire]

16. China

started to climb when Bill Clinton opened the trade door. (That is forgotten by China.) Now, you can't find *anything* completely made in America. And, a lot of their stuff is crap, made to last only a short while. They don't have to measure up because we are smothered in their goods. Something you bought break down after only a few weeks? Well, buy another!

As said up thread, you better believe that Europe followed all the US politics and is now breathing a sigh of relief. All you can do is walk the walk. We were reliable in the past, and we will be reliable again.

As far as the fascism is concerned, we will not allow that. We will (hopefully) root out all the fascists. We have a lot to repair. We are not going to turn away from the work, however.

If the EU is now right wing and prefers to deal with President-For-Life Xi rather than the Democracy that saved their asses, well, we will still prevail over our problems. Could be we need to pay attention to others who might actually like a chance to deal with us.

"No good deed goes unpunished." Isn't this true? You can't do anything for purely altruistic reasons, unless it is disaster relief and such -- and sometimes you can't even do that.

Well, I suggest that, if we are truly worried about our standing in the world, we get busy and share what the world needs right now: pandemic relief. Joe rejoined us to WHO. That's a damned good start.

[DFW]

17. I think the article's main premise is solid

The EU acts not out of new-found strength, but out of weakness. The loss of the UK was a serious blow. It should have also been a big wake-up call, but European bureaucracy is too deeply-seated for that to happen.

One of the biggest arguments for the UK to leave the EU was the EU's bloated bureaucracy and its inflated cost. If you think the Republicans are good at placing incompetent friends in overpaid positions, just check out the EU. Pro-Brexiteers pointed to the fact that to satisfy French ego (and Strasbourg's economy), the EU Parliament must convene for one week out of the month at the EU parliament building in Strasbourg, France. So, once a month, a huge convoy of trucks loads up the whole EU (and its EP members travel the hundreds of KM first class) from Brussels to Strasbourg. At the end of the week, the process reverses, and the whole mess is moved back to Brussels for the next three weeks. This costs tens of millions of Euros every time, paid by the already overtaxed EU citizens. But none of these bureaucrats are going to vote their cushy jobs and immense pensions out of existence, so the system perpetuates itself. Getting anything done or decided is so cumbersome, that almost no one tries unless it's an easy sell, like the "goals of clean energy and world peace."

The EU is wildly diverse with a few economically sound countries like Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, plus the small economies of Sweden, Finland, Ireland and Denmark in the north. In contrast are the basket case economies of Italy, Romania, Bulgaria in the south, and a few strugglers like France and Spain in the middle. Getting them to agree on a unified economic policy is like getting California and Mississippi to agree on equal percentages of their contributions to the Federal Government being returned to them, i.e. no more giver or taker states. California would become a paradise, and Mississippi would become a deserted hell. Ain't gonna happen.

The Trump era did a lasting damage to the post World War II European mind set than can ever be understood in the USA unless you spend a lot of time in Europe. While they are breathing a loud sigh of relief that Trump and his gang are gone, and that the Republicans no longer call the shots in the Senate (that got big headlines here, too), they see no mechanisms of guarantee that something similar--or worse-- can't happen in the future. There is nothing as extreme as Fox "News" or national hate radio that is permitted in Europe, even in Hungary or Poland. We have it, and they know it. After the fascist and socialist regimes of the 20th century, where total control of the media lay in the hands of the ruling party, Europeans know how crippling that can be to the general awareness of a population, how easily it can be manipulated. It makes them cringe that the same entities that made a Trump candidacy (let alone "election" ) possible are still very much intact in the USA.

The invasion of the Capitol on January 6th was like a taser shock to Europe. The ease of setting it up and carrying it out scared the living shit out the whole EU. Again the classic Trump question: "how could you let that happen?" The nuance of "we didn't let it happen, it was done to us" is lost on them. "It's your country, isn't it? Or do we now have to ask the Russian consulate for a visa to visit New York?"

It's quite conceivable the damage is permanent, though Biden is the perfect man to try to prevent that. He is well-known in diplomatic circles around the world, and has a deep understanding of both how our allies think, and how the US government works. He knows its weaknesses only too well. As Obama's VP, he has seen first hand, in every last detail, what McTurtle and the forces of darkness will try to do to him, and what their weapons are. It doesn't mean he'll win every battle, but at least he know what he is up against.

One of OUR main weaknesses is the self-centered Republican mind-set. You've all seen Jimmy Kimmel ask Republicans on the street if the can identify a country--ANY country--on a map of the world. They don't know where any place is, including the United States!!! These people weren't clones of Forrest Gump. They could all speak and communicate coherently. But they know NOTHING about the world. How are we supposed to engage a world half our citizens don't even know exists? And why should the rest of the world trust such a country? The Europeans have been occupying and fighting each other for 2000 years. They trusted us as long as we gave the impression that we were a solid, reliable pillar of strength and benevolence.

If we now give the impression we are no longer solid, no longer reliable, and no longer benevolent (to them), even though they KNOW that turning to Russia or China will come at the price of their own autonomy and freedom, they will gladly trade that for security. Europe is the continent of bureaucrats. They never heard of Ben Franklin ("Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" ). There is hardly a country in Europe that hasn't experienced getting demolished at some point. They are tired of it, and are far more willing to trade their liberty for safety than we are. Even if they know that the check will bounce, they see it as better than no check at all. They're wrong, but it will take more than a benevolent four years of Biden and Harris to convince them of that. It's too short a time, and Europeans know who McConnell, Gohmert, Gaetz, Hawley and Cruz are. if they are not all known by name, they know that such characters exist in the US Congress, and that they have no good in mind. They know they have more to fear from McConnell and Cruz than from Dmitri Medvedyev, and so they place their bets on Medvedyev's boss or on Xi.

The monumental task of Biden/Harris is not only to convince Europe that "we're back," but that we're back to stay. The mechanisms to make that a credible promise are far from being in place, and as long as we can't regain their trust that something like Trump was a one-off ugly accident, the Europeans will look for someone who will give them exactly what Ben Franklin warned them against.

I wish I could give you a rosier assessment. Though I haven't traveled as much in the last year as i usually, do, I still speak to people from one end of Europe to the other, and I can tell you that this the general feeling, with notable exceptions, of course, from Lapland to Sicily, and from Porto to Moscow.