President Joe Biden uses his first public meeting with America’s European allies to describe a new struggle between the West and the powers of autocracy, declaring “America is back”, while acknowledging that power and influence over the past four years claimed a toll.
His message emphasizing the importance of refining alliances and reconnecting with Europe’s defense was predictably well received during a session of the Munich Security Conference addressed by Biden from the White House.
But there was also a setback, especially of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who in his speech made a passionate defense of his concept of ‘strategic autonomy’ from the United States, which expressed the case that Europe is no longer too dependent on the United States. The states focus more on Asia, especially China.
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And even German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is stepping down within a year, praised Biden’s decision to cancel plans to withdraw 12,000 US troops from the country, warning that ‘our interests will not always be do not contract ‘. This appears to be a reference to Germany’s ambivalence to confront China – a key market for its cars and other expensive German products – and to the ongoing battle with the United States over the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Russia.
But all three leaders seem to acknowledge that their first virtual meeting was a moment to celebrate the end of the era of ‘America First’, and for Macron and Merkel to Biden, a politician they knew well from his years as senator, to be welcomed back. a vice president.
And Biden used the moment to warn about the need for a common strategy to promote an Internet-driven story, promoted by both Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China, that the chaos surrounding the US election is still was a sign of democratic weakness and decline.
“We need to demonstrate that democracies can still deliver for our people in this changing world,” Biden said, adding, “We need to prove that our model is not a relic of history.”
For the president, a regular visitor to the conference, even as a private citizen after serving as vice president, the address was something of a homecoming. The session was shortened to a video meeting by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, this year’s host, and European leaders decided to do the same for a short, closed meeting of the group of 7 allies in which Biden also took part. .
The next personal summit is still planned for Britain this summer, with a pandemic.
Biden never mentioned his predecessor, Donald Trump, in his remarks, but surrounded them to erase the traces of Trumpism in the United States’ approach to the world. He celebrated his return to the Paris climate agreement, which came into force just before the meeting, and a new initiative, announced on Thursday evening, to engage Iran diplomatically with Britain, France and Germany in an effort to end the 2015 to restore a nuclear deal that Trump went out of his way. .
But rather than setting out an agenda, Biden sought to recall the first principles that led to the Atlantic Alliance and the creation of NATO in 1949, near the outbreak of the Cold War.
“Democracy does not happen by accident,” the president said. “We have to defend it. Strengthen it. Renew it. ”
In a deliberate contrast to Trump, who spoke of withdrawing from NATO and famously on several occasions refused to recognize the United States’ responsibilities under Article V of the Alliance Charter to help members who were attacked, Pray the United States is ready to accept its responsibilities as the pivot of the alliance.
“We will keep the faith” with the commitment, he said, adding that “an attack on one is an attack on all.”
But he also pressured Europe to think in a new way about challenges – unlike the Cold War, even though the two biggest geostrategic opponents seem familiar.
“We need to prepare together for long-term strategic competition with China,” he said, citing “cyberspace, artificial intelligence and biotechnology” as the new area for competition. And he argued that he had pushed back against Russia – he mentioned Putin on his surname, without a title, and mentioned in particular the need to respond to the SolarWinds attack aimed at federal and corporate computer networks.
“Addressing Russian recklessness and hacking into computer networks in the United States and across Europe and the world has become critical to protecting collective security,” Biden said.
The president avoided the difficult question of how to get Russia to pay a price without escalating the confrontation. A senior White House official told reporters this week that the extent and depth of the Russian invasion is still being studied, and officials are clearly struggling to think of options to meet Biden’s commitment to get Putin to pay a price for the attack.
But it was the dynamics with Macron, who made the habit of criticizing the NATO alliance because he is ‘brain dead’ and has not been ‘pertinent’ since the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact, that attracted attention.
Macron wants NATO to act more as a political body, a place where European members are equal to the United States and less subject to the American tendency to dominate decision-making.
A Europe that is better able to defend itself and more autonomous will make NATO ‘even stronger than before’, Macron insisted. He said Europe needed to “be much more in control of its own security” and increase its commitment to defense spending to “rebalance” the trans-Atlantic relationship.
This is not a common view among the many European states that do not want to spend the necessary money, and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are not prepared to entrust their security to anyone other than the United States.
Macron also insisted that the refurbishment of NATO’s security capabilities should include “a dialogue with Russia”. NATO has always claimed that it is open to better relations with Moscow, but that Russia is not interested in that, especially as long as international sanctions exist after the seizure of Crimea from Ukraine about seven years ago.
But Macron, who spoke in English to answer a question, also argued that Europe could not count on the United States as much as in recent decades. “We need to take more of our own protection,” he said.
In practice, it will take many years before Europe builds a defense arm that will make it more independent. But Macron is determined to get started now, just as he is determined to increase the European Union’s technological capabilities so that it can become less dependent on US and Chinese supply chains.
In contrast, Biden wants to deepen the supply chains – of both hardware and software – among like-minded Western allies in an effort to reduce Chinese influence. He is preparing to propose a new joint project for European and American technology companies in areas such as semiconductors and the kind of software Russia used in the SolarWinds hack.
It was Merkel who stuck to the complexity of dealing with China, given its dual role as a competitor and essential partner for the West.
“In recent years, China has gained global influence, and as trans-Atlantic partners and democracies, we must do something to counteract it,” Merkel said.
“Russia is constantly expelling members of the European Union into hybrid conflicts,” she said. “That is why it is important that we draw up a trans-Atlantic agenda for Russia, which on the one hand makes cooperative offers, but on the other hand mentions the differences very clearly.”
While Biden has announced that it will fulfill a US pledge to donate $ 4 billion to the campaign to accelerate the production and distribution of coronavirus vaccines around the world – a move made last year by a Democratic House and a Republican Senate approved – there were clear differences in approach during the session.
Macron stressed the importance of the European Union to Africa, and called on Western countries to provide 13 million vaccine doses “as soon as possible” to African governments to protect health workers.
He warned that if the alliance did not succeed, “our African friends would be pressured by their people, and rightly so, to buy doses of Chinese, Russians or directly from laboratories.”
Vaccination donations reflect “a common will to promote and share the same values,” Macron said. Otherwise, ‘the power of the West, of Europeans and Americans, will only be a concept and not a reality’.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, on Friday also urged countries and drug manufacturers to help speed up the manufacture and distribution of vaccines around the world, warning that the world could be “back on Square 1” if some countries continued their vaccination campaigns and others left behind.
“Vaccination is not only the right thing to do, it is also the smartest thing to do,” Tedros said at the Munich conference. He argued that the longer it takes to vaccinate populations in each country, the longer the pandemic will remain out of control.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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