As a politician with an eye on midterm legislative elections, “Biden will focus like a laser beam on his first year in the pandemic, the reopening of the economy, unemployment, infrastructure, health, economic stimulus,” he said. Kupchan said. “There will be much less time, energy and money for foreign policy.”
Sophia Besch and Luigi Scazzieri, from the Center for European Reform, argue in a new newspaper that “many Europeans will want to forget that Trump’s presidency happened”. But they add: “Europe cannot continue to wait for the US to answer key questions about what its interests are and how it should pursue them.”
This is particularly true for defense, in which most European leaders agree that more must be spent.
Germany’s Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer says that Europeans cannot replace the United States as a security provider, as leaders in Central and Eastern Europe do. But others, especially President Emmanuel Macron of France and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Fontelles, argue that Europeans cannot be sure of the United States’ reliability.
Biden’s victory should not divert or discourage Europeans from an objective of more independent defense and more strategic autonomy, they say, even in the context of NATO.
There are specific issues, such as terrorism, instability in North Africa and migration, where Europeans feel they need to be able to act more effectively on their own.
“We Europeans need to be careful about our expectations of Americans in our neighborhood,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of Italy’s Institute of International Affairs. On issues such as Belarus, Ukraine and the Balkans, “coordination with the United States is important, but we cannot expect the United States to step up its involvement,” she said.