Although he is holding on at the moment
The “traditional marriage” between Europe and America may collapse because of China and Russia
During Biden and Merkel's meeting at the White House last Thursday.
Father
Trump with Macron and Merkel during the "NATO" summit, as he was considering his country's withdrawal from the alliance.
Father
picture
The 75-year relationship between the United States and Europe after World War II is a bit like a traditional marriage between two great families, always fraught with tension, threats of cutting, occasional foreign flirtations (with China and Russia), and occasionally spousal abuse, as he did Former US President Donald Trump.
But surprises rarely happen, and we can't imagine divorce.
doubts
Yet when two of the leaders of this geopolitical union, outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Joe Biden, met at the White House, there was something new and troubling in the air: the sense that the relationship was changing, perhaps permanently.
Americans are increasingly frustrated with European reluctance to join Washington's strategic shift away from Moscow and Beijing.
Europeans remain skeptical about the US's viability as a democracy and an appropriate partner, a concern that Biden has only partially calmed.
It is true that Biden worked to heal the transatlantic wounds of Trump's presidency, during his trip last month, his first abroad when he participated in the G7 and NATO summits.
In the form of a harsh rebuke to Trump, who questioned the usefulness of NATO, Biden called the alliance a "holy commitment" and worked to resolve the dispute between Airbus and Boeing.
But Germans and other Europeans are even more angry with Biden because he is pushing them toward a new consensus, especially against China, the very policy that has characterized the Trump era.
Indeed, some European experts shocked by Trump pay more attention to domestic problems of the United States, such as voting reform, the fate of the Senate, and the 2022 midterm elections, than they do to traditional transatlantic issues, such as NATO and defense spending.
urgent question
“The burning question is: How long will this new friendship last: what will happen, and who will come after Biden?” Charles Kupchan, a specialist in transatlantic relations at Georgetown University, says. is what US politics will look like in a post-Merkel era.” After 16 years as chancellor, Merkel will leave office this fall and is expected to be replaced by another member of her conservative bloc.
Brookings Institution expert Stephen Beaver recalls a recent conversation he had with a senior German official, in which the official said: “We see Biden restore normalcy to transatlantic relations, and we welcome that, but will the 74 million people who voted for Trump agree with that? Trump remains the dominant force in the Republican Party.
A new book by Washington Post correspondents Philip Rucker and Carol Leonig, titled "Donald Trump's Last Disastrous Year," confirms that Trump is considering withdrawing from NATO if he wins a second term.
It is also hard for Europeans to ignore the fact that Biden's hostility toward China is more of a continuation of Trump's policy than a break with it.
Nor did Biden raise his predecessor's tariffs on steel and aluminum.
With the exception of French President Emmanuel Macron, no leader has embodied these European skepticism more than Merkel, who has not only had a toxic relationship with Trump, but has worked hard to develop better relations with Beijing.
Even before Biden took office, she had been pushing other EU member states to agree to a major investment agreement with China, which had become the number one trading partner of both Germany and the EU as a whole.
Germany's position
“Merkel came to Washington with two messages: First, we do not want a new cold war," says Ulrich Speck, an expert with the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.
Second, we don't want to separate from Europe, but if the Americans wanted to put us on a hostile path toward China, we wouldn't be on that boat.
Germany does not want to get caught up in a broader geopolitical conflict between the United States and China.
"It didn't happen, and Germany never will," said Rachel Rizzo, an official at the Center for a New American Security.
"I believe the United States is finally coming to terms with this reality, and the Biden administration has made clear that it is not asking Germany (or Europe, for that matter) to choose either side," she wrote in an email.
An official in the Biden administration who was talking about the relationship between the United States and the European Union acknowledged that "there is still more work to do," but stressed that there is "a growing European rapprochement on China," and that Germany and other major European Union countries, will not be on the same page. Willingness to outlaw certain types of business with China. Although the Germans praised Biden's outreach to Russia at the Geneva summit that brought him together with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June, they are also hedging and placing their bets through their business dealings with Moscow, especially with regard to the gas pipeline "Nord Stream 2". » The new one that Washington opposes.
On a deeper level, Europeans are also realizing that the relationship that has been at the heart of America's geopolitics for three-quarters of a century no longer matters to them.
While Biden's team puts the issues of the Indo-Pacific at the top of its agenda, we find that there is a competing alliance represented in the form of a quadrilateral security dialogue, which includes the United States, Japan, India and Australia.
This may also push the Germans towards the concept of strategic self-reliance that Macron has championed, although it may also take a long time.
Europe worried about US financial dominance, but it found no way to escape the tyranny of the dollar.
And while Macron and other Europeans want to boost Europe's defense capability, Europe's largest country remains extremely cautious.
• Europeans remain skeptical about the viability of the United States as a democracy and an appropriate partner, a concern that Biden has only partially calmed.
• Americans are increasingly frustrated with European reluctance to join Washington's strategic shift away from Moscow and Beijing.
Follow our latest local and sports news and the latest political and economic developments via Google news