Biden is guaranteed warm applause when speaking to G-7 leaders and the Munich Security Conference on Friday, but his government must expect a more difficult road ahead.
After talks with his British, French and German counterparts in order to revive the nuclear deal with Iran, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with Quad counterparts (India, Japan and Australia) on Friday and the council EU foreign affairs on Monday. His audience expects him to play the bad transatlantic cop, compared to the ever-optimistic Biden.
On other fronts of the charm offensive, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ended two days of meetings with NATO colleagues, where he successfully argued to delay the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan, while climate envoy John Kerry today joins the Secretary UN General António Guterres to sweep the USA back to the Paris Climate Agreement.
POLITICO spoke to a dozen European and Japanese leaders and senior officials who often lived in fear of former President Donald Trump’s tweets. Although they are positively relaxed about Biden’s speeches on Friday, they know that Biden’s powers are limited.
European leaders, in particular, fear that Trumpism will stay alive, are skeptical about the results that the White House can get from a deeply divided US Congress and have not yet convinced to meet the Biden government’s expectations of China, Russia and the trade.
To maximize the chances of a functioning G-7 and a rekindled transatlantic relationship, the allies are lowering the bar for Friday’s meetings.
As chairman and host of the G-7 meeting on Friday, the United Kingdom is giving Biden a note of approval before he opens his mouth. “Biden does not need to come to this meeting with a set of creative policy announcements for it to be important or successful,” said a senior British diplomat, adding “it is enough to stop bleeding America’s image. I doubt anyone will be disappointed. ”
A Japanese government spokesman emphasized the need for the G-7 countries to “lead the international post-COVID order” and anticipated a total agreement with the shared democratic values that Biden must uphold.
Even the Hungarian government – which had an antagonistic relationship with the Obama administration – failed to raise any alarm about the Biden era: Zoltán Kovács, a cabinet member and government spokesman, said he had no concerns or expectations to convey to Biden .
While clandestine commitments to multilateralism and democracy are already flowing, they mask the bubbling transatlantic tensions on issues ranging from trade to energy policy for China.
European authorities know that difficult conversations cannot be avoided for long. Biden “said all the right things” to reassure Europe after “Trump’s unpredictable cacophony,” said Stubb.
“But the realistic picture is that the world is radically different from 2016 when Trump came on the scene,” he added. “This is the message that Blinken must convey” when he meets the 27 EU chancellors and the bloc’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell.
Europe is not afraid to go its own way
Shocked by Britain’s vote to leave, and squeezed between an aggressive Russia, a rising China and a disinterested America under Trump, the EU has set a course for “strategic autonomy” in recent years. During this period, China also overtook the United States as the EU’s largest trading partner.
The repositioning of the EU is only now bearing fruit, but that does not mean that it is superficial: there is an independent and determined approach to relations with China and Russia, a reinforced industrial policy, digital regulations and rigid taxes and only a provisional commitment with the european defense union and increased spending on national defense.
While the Biden government sees the EU as an essential pillar of stability in global affairs, it backs away from many of those decisions.
Europeans also fear that, in four years, a new Republican government could destroy Biden’s climate and defense commitments, leaving them stuck with long-term investments and no American backing. “Who said we are not going to end up exactly where we were four years from now?” asked a German defense officer.
National and official climate leaders welcome the US reintegration into the Paris Climate Agreement – Sebastian Kurz, the Austrian chancellor, called this “an encouraging step” – but said they will celebrate only when Congress passes a goal strict and well-funded 2030 emissions reduction plan.
Trade tensions are simmering
In commerce, there is goodwill, but that does not prevent the containment points from spreading openly.
Kurz, the 34-year-old Austrian chancellor, told POLITICO that as soon as progress is made against Covid-19 and towards economic recovery, “we must give a new start to our commercial relations by resolving ongoing trade disputes and ending punitive measures. as soon as possible. “
Kurz is referring to Trump-era tariffs that the new government has yet to release and Biden’s new “Made in America” government procurement policy, which is causing complaints in Brussels. Valdis Dombrovskis, EU trade chief, told reporters on Thursday: “We will be assessing the extent to which the US is meeting its [World Trade Organization] commitments under the global acquisition agreement. “
As part of a broader review of trade policy, Dombrovskis promised that the EU will be “tougher and more assertive”. This includes an effort by the European Commission to provide an “anti-coercion” trade instrument, which would allow it to retaliate against any future US efforts to block EU trade. EU officials are frustrated that European companies like Airbus and Renault have lost because of US sanctions against Iran. Brussels also fears that Washington may ban EU companies from dispatching goods (such as cars) made with microchips from the USA to China for national security reasons.
“In the coming years, we will witness a certain tension in the semiconductor field,” said Thierry Breton, EU internal market commissioner. “We in Europe intend to play our part fully in this new geostrategic game of chess.”
Back in Washington, government officials are biting their tongues, avoiding geopolitical controversies such as Russia’s Nordstream II gas pipeline to Germany, although House Republicans are calling for sanctions.
On Trump’s favorite topic of defense financing commitments, Austin, the secretary of defense, wrote on Wednesday that the US is “ready to consult together, decide together and act together”, with NATO allies, a tone markedly smoother than Trump.
European leaders know that this harmony will not last without an extra effort from Europe. “Both President Biden and Secretary Blinken know Europe very well. But it also means that they know that Europe can be a better partner and ally, ”Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told POLITICO.
“We need to put our European home in order by uniting in foreign policy and defense,” de Croo added.
Washington’s frustrations are almost certain to explode openly around EU pressure for “strategic autonomy” from the US, China and Russia.
While US officials roll their eyes at the confusion in the EU’s relations with Russia and see the bloc’s “technological sovereignty” boost as blatant protectionism, at the top of their list of complaints is a recent EU-China investment agreement that Angela Merkel and EU officials have deliberately promoted in the last weeks of the Trump administration.
China’s problem
“China will be the elephant in the room,” said Stubb, but others, including Kurz, from Austria, are happy to bring the discussion to the center of attention. “Austria is also ready to start an open dialogue with the United States about China,” said Kurz.
The problem for the US may be the EU’s lack of unity on the issue. “If Mr. Biden is extending his hand towards Europe, he expects a firm grip, not 27 opinions from so many member states,” said De Croo.
Many smaller European countries feel trapped in China: they are suspicious of how Beijing exercises power, but think it is too big to ignore and too big to control alone. Germany and France – the EU’s biggest powers – have expressed their preference for getting involved with China rather than forming a Cold War-style bloc against it.
As the EU approached U.S. positions on China in 2020, the lack of unity leaves many European countries still allowing Huawei on at least parts of their mobile networks and prevents the EU from imposing sanctions on China for human rights abuses against the Muslim Uighur minority.
Last week, as China tried to use a special summit to strengthen relations with Central and Eastern European countries, half of the 12 invited EU national leaders did not attend to honor Chinese President Xi Jinping, who hosted the event.
When Blinken meets with 27 European chancellors on Monday by videoconference, he will begin testing whether the EU can be a strong US ally in Chinese politics.
Aware that pressure from DC is on its way, Brussels is considering blocking products made with slave labor before entering the EU market as part of its new trade strategy, said Dombrovskis, head of EU trade. Countries like the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have taken steps to prevent imports of such products, following increasingly detailed reports on forced labor in the Xinjiang region of China.
Meanwhile, NATO – which includes 21 EU countries as members – has quietly expanded its powers to China: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance’s strategy should be based on defending democracy against “authoritarian resistance of China and Russia against the international rule-based order. ”
NATO’s traditional enemy is another source of EU division and potential conflict with the Biden government. To the irritation of the Baltic countries, Emmanuel Macron spent his French presidency trying to succeed where Merkel, Barack Obama and others failed – turning Vladimir Putin into a security partner for Europe. There is no evidence that it is working.
Italy’s new prime minister, Mario Draghi, seems determined to follow in Macron’s footsteps: using his opening speech on Wednesday to say that Italy will try to increase dialogue with Russia, while expressing concerns about fundamental rights violations in the country.
Draghi’s comments come as the EU is considering whether to hit Russia with more sanctions. The matter will be on the table at the bloc’s foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday, shortly after Blinken ends his discussion with the ministers.
We will always have Munich
President Biden is returning to familiar ground at the Munich Security Conference, with a familiar message to familiar faces: “Without a stable Atlantic alliance, everything, in my opinion, falls apart.” But what worked in 2009 and 2019 may not be enough in 2021, as democracy is under attack from all quarters, including at home in the United States.
Biden had to adjust his message and domestic policies to suit the time and take a series of concrete actions to repair the damage he discovered when he took office. Sooner or later, he will need to do the same abroad.
Matthew Karnitschnig and Mark Scott contributed to this report.