President 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 in which he stressed the importance of refining alliances and going on to defend Europe, was predictably well received during a session of the security conference in Munich that Mr. Biden addressed in 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.
And even Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who is leaving office within a year, praises the decision of Mr. Pray to cancel the plans for the withdrawal of 12,000 US troops from the country with the warning that ‘our interests will not always converge’. 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 Mr. Macron and me. Merkel about mr. Biden, a politician who knew them well, to welcome back. from his years as senator and vice president.
And Mr. Biden used the moment to warn about the need for a common strategy to promote an Internet-fueled story, promoted by both Presidents Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China, that the chaos surrounding the U.S. election was another sign of democratic weakness and decline.
“We need to demonstrate that democracies can still deliver for our people in this changing world,” he said. 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. Given the pandemic, the conference in Munich was limited to a video meeting of a few hours. An earlier, briefly closed meeting of the group of 7 allies to which Mr. Biden also participated, which was presented this year by Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, was also done via video.
The next personal summit is still planned for Britain this summer, with a pandemic.
Mr. Biden never mentioned his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, in his remarks, but surrounds them to erase the traces of Trumpism in the American 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 the 2015 core agreement that Mr. Trump went out.
But rather than setting out an agenda, Mr. Biden seeks 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 with mr. Trump, who spoke on the withdrawal from NATO and famously on several occasions refused to recognize the United States’ responsibilities under Article V of the Alliance’s Charter to help members who were attacked, Mr. Trump said. Pray the United States is ready to accept its responsibilities as the core 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.
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“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 claimed that he had pushed back against Russia – he had Mr. Putin called on his surname, without title, and mentioned in particular the need to respond to the SolarWinds attack targeting 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,” he said. Biden said.
The president avoided the difficult question of how to get Russia to pay a price without escalating the confrontation. A senior cyber-official White House told reporters this week that the extent and depth of the Russian invasion was still being studied, and that officials were clearly struggling to come up with options to mimic Mr. Pray to get Putin to pay a price for the attack. .
But that was the dynamic with Mr. Macron, who had made the habit of criticizing the NATO alliance as a brain death and since the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact was no longer ‘pertinent’, and it attracted attention.
Mr. Macron wants NATO to act more as a political body, a place where European members have the same status as the United States and are 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 maintained. 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.
Mr. Macron also insisted that the refurbishment of NATO’s security capabilities should involve “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 as much on the United States 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 Mr. 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.
Mr. Biden, on the other hand, 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 Mrs. Merkel, who has focused on the complexity of dealing with China, given his 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 counter it,” she said. 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 Mr. Biden has announced that he 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 step taken last year by a Democratic House and a Republican Senate approved. – there were clear differences in approach during the meeting.
Mr. Macron acknowledged the importance of the European Union to Africa and called on Western countries to provide 13 million vaccine doses to African governments as soon as possible 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”, said Mr. 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 drugmakers to help speed up the production and distribution of vaccines around the world, warning that the world would be “back in Square 1” if some countries continued their vaccination campaigns and left others behind.
“Vaccination is not only the right thing to do, it is also the smartest thing to do,” said Dr. Tedros said at the conference in Munich. He argued that the longer it takes to vaccinate populations in each country, the longer the pandemic will remain out of control.
Melissa Eddy, Elian Peltier and Mark Landler contribution made.