WASHINGTON – Two weeks after President Biden’s inauguration, French President Emmanuel Macron has spoken publicly about the importance of dialogue with Moscow, saying that Russia is a part of Europe that cannot simply be avoided and that Europe must be strong enough to defend its own interests. .
On December 30, a few weeks before the inauguration, the European Union concluded an important investment agreement with China, days after a tweet by mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, to ask for an ‘early consultation’ with Europe on China and apparently warn against a swift agreement.
Thus, while the United States is withdrawing from the White House under new leadership, Europe is pursuing its own course over Russia and China in ways that are not necessarily in line with the goals of Mr. Pray not, and it’s a challenge as the new US president rebuilds a post. -Trump alliance with the mainland.
On Friday, Mr. Biden addresses the Munich Security Conference, a gathering of leaders and diplomats from Europe and the United States that he has attended for decades and that has helped strengthen his reputation as a proponent of trans-Atlantic solidarity.
Mr. During the conference two years ago, Biden lamented the damage the Trump administration had done to the once solid post-war relationship between Washington and Europe’s largest capitals. “It will also succeed,” he said. Biden said. “We’ll be back.” He promised that the United States would once again take on ‘our responsibility of leadership’.
The president’s remarks on Friday will certainly repeat the promise and highlight the now well-known call for a more uniform Western front against the anti-democratic threats of Russia and China. In many ways, such talks will certainly be received like a hot massage by European leaders who are tense and shocked by four years of President Donald J. Trump’s mercury and often contemptuous diplomacy.
But if Mr. Praying with ‘leadership’ to return to the traditional American assumption – decide us and you follow – many Europeans feel that the world is over, and that Europe should not behave like the American American wing in battles defined by Washington.
Demonstrated by the European Union’s trade agreement with China, and conciliatory talks on Moscow by leaders such as Mr. Macron and Germany’s likely next chancellor, Armin Laschet, Europe has its own set of interests and ideas on how to manage the United States’ two main competitors. , one that will complicate Mr Biden’s diplomacy.
“Biden is taking an incredible hawkish approach to Russia, and doing so with China, defining a new global Cold War against authoritarianism,” said Jeremy Shapiro, research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
It makes many European leaders nervous, he said. And other regional experts said they saw fewer signs of open continent enthusiasm than Biden government officials could have hoped.
There was always a clear acknowledgment that we could not just show up and say, ‘Hello, we’re back! “No,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, who would be in line to become the National Security Council’s director for Russia, but who did not accept the post for personal reasons.
“But even with all that, I think there was optimism that it would be easier than it would seem,” she said. Kendall-Taylor, the director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for New American Security, said. .
Ulrich Speck, a senior visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin, added: ‘After the freezing of relations under Trump, I expected more warming. I do not see it yet. ”
Mr. Biden quickly took many of the easiest steps towards reconciliation and unity with Europe, including joining the Paris climate agreement, renewing its emphasis on multilateralism and human rights and the promise to rejoin the disruptive 2015 nuclear deal in Iran.
But it will be much harder to tune in against Russia and China.
China may be a peer competitor to the United States, but it has long been a major trading partner for Europe. And although European leaders see Beijing as a systemic rival and rival, they also see it as a partner and hardly consider it an enemy.
And Russia remains a nuclear-armed neighbor, no matter how truculent, and has its own financial and emotional leverage.
Since Mr. Biden was last in the White House, as Vice President during the Obama administration, Britain, historically the most trusted diplomatic partner of the United States, left the European Union and now coordinates foreign policy less effectively with its continental allies.
“That sophisticated British view of the world is absent,” said Nicholas Burns, a former Secretary of State and ambassador to NATO in the George W. Bush administration. “I do not think the US is diplomatically and strategically intertwined with Europe,” he added.
This week’s security conference is not being hosted by the German government, but Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany will address it with Mr Biden, mr. Macron and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain. And Germany itself illustrates some of the problems the Biden government is facing in its attempt to close its arms against Moscow.
Mrs. Merkel’s ruling Christian Democratic Party called Mr. Laschet was chosen as leader, and he is likely to be the candidate to succeed her in the fall election. But Mr. Laschet is more sympathetic to Russia and China than Mr. Biden. He questioned the extent of Russian political disinformation and burglary and publicly criticized a marketable anti-Putin populism. He was also a strong supporter of Germany’s export-led economy, which is highly dependent on China.
Germany is still planning to put the Nord Stream 2 pipeline into operation, a 746-mile artery of natural gas that runs under the Baltic Sea from northern Russia to Germany. The paired pipelines are owned by Gazprom, which is itself owned by Russia. Work was halted last year – with 94 per cent of the pipes laid – after the US Congress imposed further sanctions on the project on the grounds that it helped fund the Kremlin, damaged Ukraine and gave Russia the potential to manipulate Europe’s energy supply.
Last year, German politicians responded to threats of economic punishment made by Republican US senators by claiming ‘extortion’, ‘economic war’ and ‘neo-imperialism’. Many people want to complete the pipeline project, but on Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that Biden opposed it as a “bad deal” that divided Europe and made it more vulnerable to Russian betrayal.
Despite the sanctions, Russian ships renewed pipes, and Ms. Merkel defends the project as a business venture, not as a geopolitical statement. The Germans argue that European Union energy regulations and new pipeline configurations reduce Russia’s ability to manipulate supplies and that Russia is more dependent on revenue than Europe is on gas.
There are signs that, as with the China agreement, the Biden government wants to move on and negotiate with Germany on a solution to remove a major annoyance with a key ally. This could, according to some, include snapback sanctions if Moscow diverts supplies or stops transit fees to Ukraine.
In France, Mr. Macron has long sought a more positive dialogue with Mr. Putin to develop, but his efforts for a ‘recovery’ went nowhere. European Union head of foreign policy Josep Borrell Fontelles tried something similar this month when Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov humiliated him at a news conference calling the European Union an “unreliable partner”. .
Along with the attempted assassination and subsequent imprisonment of Russian opposition leader Alexei A. Navalny, the treatment of Mr. Borrell that Brussels is likely to impose new sanctions on Russia, but not before the end of March, and that it will be more open. to mr. Biden’s suggestions for a stricter line.
Biden administration officials say coordination with a troubled Europe has never been so easy and that its leaders welcome the restored American leadership – especially over a Chinese threat that was clearer to Europe than it was five years ago.
As for China and the investment deal, European officials defended it after seven years of difficult talks as a major attempt to gain the same access to the Chinese market for their companies that US companies received last year through Trump’s China deal.
“There is no reason for us to suffer from an unequal playing field, not even for the US,” Sabine Weyand, the EU’s director general, said in a virtual forum in early February. “Why do we have to sit still?”
Ms Weyand said the agreement set high standards for Chinese trade practices, which would ultimately put the United States and Europe “in a stronger position to have a more assertive policy on China.”
However, the agreement needs to be ratified by the European Parliament, which has criticized the failure to guarantee more labor rights, and it is likely not until much later this year. And once again, it appears that Biden administration officials are willing to go ahead, given the importance of cooperating with Europe across China.
“The agreement could complicate trans-Atlantic cooperation across China,” said Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator and vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, “but I do not think it will exclude it.”
Michael Crowley reported from Washington, and Steven Erlanger from Brussels. Ana Swanson reported by Washington contributed.