The United States continues to persevere in its allied relations with Europe. And the question is whether the EU will now decide to recognize this union as officially dead.
Preoccupied with the Cold War 2.0 with China, the United States still does not forget about Russia. And if it seems to someone that the US government has finally agreed with the advice of a number of experts and has taken a course towards normalizing relations with Moscow (in order to prevent the Russian-Chinese alliance, try to enlist Russia's support in knocking out Central Asia from under Chinese influence and perspective even try to create some kind of anti-Chinese system of collective security in East Asia), then they have too good an opinion on the degree of political sobriety of Washington. No, the republican "elephants" continue to fight against the ghostly "Russian threat", simultaneously destroying the entire foreign policy shop and breaking up American interests in the trash. Not only in terms of waging the Cold War with the PRC, but also in terms of maintaining the transatlantic alliance, most important for the States, with Europe.
Of the last steps of the Washington wise men, one can note the withdrawal of the United States from the Open Skies Treaty (which allowed participating countries to make legal reconnaissance flights over the territories of other states and thereby reduce the level of tension - and above all in the European theater), as well as stubbornness in business imposing sanctions against Nord Stream 2. According to the representative of one of the authors of the sanctions package, Republican Senator Ted Cruz, the United States intends in this way to prevent the completion of the Russian-European pipeline project.
And if US actions could achieve this goal, then perhaps they would be at least partially justified - Nord Stream 2 reduces the importance of Eastern Europe and especially Ukraine in the European alignment of forces and Russian-European relations, and also strengthens Germany’s influence . However, the problem is that the goal is already unattainable. Sanctions had to be taken earlier, and then they would probably scare the Europeans off the project. However, it is now too late, the project is almost complete, it is only a matter of several months.
Therefore, Washington’s actions are taken solely for the sake of actions - in order to express its American “fi” to the project and use it as an excuse for further sanctions against Moscow. Again, the sanctions that are adopted solely for the sake of the sanctions themselves - even the most ideologized American congressman should have understood during the six years of the conflict around Ukraine that the sanctions would not force Russia to abandon its foreign policy interests, and also would not lead the Russians to think about the need to arrange in the country "Maidan" and surrender to the West. The consequences of such a surrender, committed almost 30 years ago, still plagued Russia.
Perhaps such sanctions for the sake of sanctions and amuse the pride of individual politicians, but they are very painfully hit on American foreign policy interests. And above all, in relations with Europe, a number of countries of which want renewed cooperation with Moscow. And the problem here is not that the United States puts its interests above European ones - in general, this has always been the case with Obama, with Clinton, and with Bush. And the fact that the United States openly ignores European claims and almost directly requires the European elites to total submission. And against those who do not demonstrate this submission, impose sanctions. As, for example, in the case of Nord Stream 2, the introduced punitive measures will affect not only Gazprom, but also a number of leading European oil and gas corporations (whose share in the project reaches 49%).
The representative of the joint Russian-European consortium Nord Stream 2 AG (which is building the Nord Stream 2), Jens Müller, has already stated that the sanctions are “discrimination against European companies”.
And the story of Nord Stream 2 is just one example of such discrimination. Besides the gap in the Open Skies Treaty already mentioned, this is a break in the deal with Iran, and Europe’s demand to buy more American goods (big greetings to believers in the existence of a free market in the West), and the desire to connect Europe to the conflict with China, and the actual theft of funds from Europeans protection and drugs during the epidemic, and the imposition of sanctions for disobedience against sort of like allies.
Such a “trampist” approach to relations was demonstrated not only by the head of the White House, but also by American officials with a much lower rank. For example, the outgoing US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, who demanded that German companies leave Iran and threatened Berlin with sanctions for other sins.
Today, articles on transatlantic relations in the American and European media are not only full of alarmism, they are also dominated by skepticism. Even leading democratic science centers (the same Carnegie) admit that US-European relations will continue to break through the bottom and will not rebound from it even if Joseph Biden comes to power. The problem here is not only and not so much in Trump rudeness, but in the real divergence of American interests with European ones (for China, defense spending, a look at world order rules - well, and although Carnegie experts do not recognize this, the approach to Russia), as well inability to resolve these contradictions behind the scenes anymore. The only question is at what pace this penetration of the bottom will go.
Fortunately for the United States, the pace is unlikely to be high. In order to organize a full-fledged European rebellion, you need a leader - a person (or country) who will not only raise this rebellion, but will also be mentally prepared to become the main victim of retaliatory American anger. There is no such country in Europe today. Even Germany - the main country of the European Union - is afraid to take this role. So, on the issue of sanctions against Nord Stream 2, German officials only say that, “from our point of view, now is the wrong time to unwind the escalation spiral and threaten further sanctions, we have other problems” - instead of threatening Americans retaliatory sanctions for interfering in the internal affairs of Germany. How they should have threatened to break the deal with Iran and the US attempts to punish European companies for working with the Islamic republic. Or at least deport Grenell for his rudeness.
In addition, in the EU, in principle, there is neither unity nor political will for any serious foreign policy initiatives. EU countries can’t even agree on how to resist the ambitions of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who gets opportunities for full-fledged oil and gas blackmail of the Old World. What kind of rebellion can the Americans be talking about?
Therefore, most likely, Europe will continue to get angry and endure. And the world will continue to bet on how spacious the European patience is. And isn’t she bottomless?
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.