WASHINGTON – Two weeks after President Biden took office, France’s President Emmanuel Macron spoke 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 taking office, the European Union closed an important investment agreement with China, days after a tweet by Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, calling for “early consultations” with Europe on China and appearing to warn against a quick deal.
Therefore, while the United States is re-establishing itself under the new leadership of the White House, Europe is charting its own course on Russia and China in ways that do not necessarily align with Biden’s goals, which poses a challenge when the new American president proposes to rebuild a post -Trump alliance with the continent.
On Friday, Biden will give a talk at the Munich Security Conference, a meeting of leaders and diplomats from Europe and the United States that he attended for decades and that has helped to consolidate his reputation as champion of transatlantic solidarity.
Speaking at the conference two years ago, Biden deplored the damage the Trump administration inflicted on the once solid postwar relationship between Washington and Europe’s major capitals. “That will pass, too,” said Biden. “We will be back.” He promised that the United States would again “assume our leadership responsibility.”
The president’s comments on Friday will certainly repeat that promise and highlight his now-known call for a more unified Western front against the anti-democratic threats posed by Russia and China. In many ways, this conversation will surely be received as a warm massage by European leaders strained and shaken by four years of President Donald J. Trump’s mercurial and often contemptuous diplomacy.
But if by “leadership” Biden means a return to the traditional American assumption – we decide and you follow – many Europeans feel that this world is gone and that Europe should not behave like the junior wing of the United States in struggles defined by Washington.
Demonstrated by the European Union’s trade agreement with China and conciliatory talks about Moscow by leaders such as Macron and the likely next chancellor of Germany, Armin Laschet, Europe has its own set of interests and ideas on how to manage the two main US rivals , some that will complicate Biden’s diplomacy.
“Biden is signaling an incredibly hawkish approach to Russia, matching China and defining a new global Cold War against authoritarianism,” said Jeremy Shapiro, director of research at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
This makes many European leaders nervous, he said. And other regional experts said they saw less signs of the continent’s open enthusiasm than Biden government officials expected.
“There has always been a clear recognition that we wouldn’t just be able to come up and say, ‘Hey guys, we’re back!'” Said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, who was in line to become the director of National Security Council for Russia , but who did not accept the position for personal reasons.
“But even with all that, I think there was optimism that it would be easier than it looks like it will be,” said Ms. Kendall-Taylor, director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for New American Security.
Ulrich Speck, senior visiting researcher at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin, added: “After the freeze on relations under Trump, I expected more warming. I haven’t seen it yet. “
Mr. Biden quickly took many of the easiest steps towards reconciliation and unity with Europe, including returning to the Paris climate agreement, renewing the emphasis on multilateralism and human rights and promising to return to the 2015 disintegrated nuclear agreement with Iran.
But alignment with Russia and China will be much more difficult.
China may be a rival to the United States, but it has long been a vital trading partner for Europe. And while European leaders see Beijing as a rival and systemic competitor, they also see it as a partner and hardly see it as an enemy.
And Russia remains a nuclear-armed neighbor, albeit a truculent one, and has its own financial and emotional influence.
Since Biden was last in the White House, as vice president during the Obama administration, Britain, historically the United States’ most trusted diplomatic partner, has left the European Union and now coordinates foreign policy less effectively with its continental allies.
“This sophisticated British world view is missing,” said Nicholas Burns, former Undersecretary of State and NATO ambassador to the George W. Bush administration. “I don’t think the United States is still connected to Europe, in a diplomatic and strategic way,” he added.
This week’s security conference is not chaired by the German government, but Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany will address it, along with Biden, Macron and Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson. And Germany itself illustrates some of the problems that the Biden government will face in its effort to close its arms against Moscow.
Merkel’s ruling Christian Democratic Party has chosen Laschet as its leader, and he is the likely candidate to succeed her in the fall elections. But Laschet is more sympathetic than Biden to Russia and China. He cast doubt on the extent of Russian political misinformation and hacking operations and publicly criticized “marketable anti-Putin populism”. He has also strongly supported the German export-oriented economy, which depends heavily on China.
Germany still intends to put the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline into operation, a 746-mile natural gas artery that runs under the Baltic Sea from northern Russia to Germany. The paired pipelines are owned by Gazprom, itself owned by Russia. Work on the project was halted last year – with 94 percent of the tubes installed – after the US Congress imposed further sanctions on the project, claiming it helped finance the Kremlin, hurt Ukraine and gave Russia the potential to manipulate the Europe’s energy supply.
Last year, German politicians responded to threats of economic punishment by American Republican senators alleging “blackmail”, “economic war” and “neo-imperialism”. Many want to complete the pipeline project, but on Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that Biden is opposed to this as a “bad deal” that has divided Europe and made it more vulnerable to Russian betrayal.
Despite the sanctions, Russian ships have renewed the installation of pipes, and Merkel defends the project as a commercial enterprise, not as a geopolitical declaration. The Germans argue that European Union energy regulations and new pipeline configurations reduce Russia’s ability to manipulate supplies and that Russia depends more on revenue than Europe on gas.
There are signs that, just like in the agreement with China, the Biden government wants to go ahead and negotiate a solution with Germany, to remove a major irritant with a crucial ally. This could include, some suggest, instant sanctions if Moscow embezzles supplies or suspends transit fees to Ukraine.
In France, Macron has long sought to develop a more positive dialogue with Putin, but his efforts to “reinitialize” have come to nothing. European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Fontelles tried something similar this month, with embarrassing results when Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov humiliated him at a news conference and called the European Union ” an unreliable partner “.
Along with the assassination attempt and then the arrest of Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, the treatment given to Borrell means that Brussels will likely place new sanctions against Russia, but not before the end of March, and will be more open to suggestions from Biden to a harder line.
Biden government officials say coordinating with a turbulent Europe has never been easy and that its leaders welcome the restored American leadership – especially in a more apparent Chinese threat to Europe than five years ago.
As for China and the investment agreement, after seven years of difficult negotiations, European authorities defended it as a major effort to gain the same access to the Chinese market for their companies that American companies received through Trump’s agreement with China. last year.
“There is no reason for us to suffer from an uneven playing field, even in relation to the United States,” said Sabine Weyand, EU director-general for trade, at a virtual forum in early February. “Why should we stand still?”
Ms. Weyand said the agreement sets 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 with China”.
The agreement must be ratified by the European Parliament, however, which has criticized its failure to guarantee more labor rights, and is unlikely to go to the vote until much later this year. And again, the Biden government officials seem ready to move on, given the importance of cooperation with Europe in China.
“The deal could complicate transatlantic cooperation in China,” said Wendy Cutler, a former United States trade negotiator and vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, “but I don’t think that will stop it.”
Michael Crowley reported from Washington, and Steven Erlanger of Brussels. Ana swanson contributed reporting from Washington.