November 25, 2015, Donald Tusk (then President of the European Council) and Joe Biden (then Vice-President of the United States) (source: European Council website)
The election of Joe Biden to the presidency of the United States largely reassures the Europeans. There is something. But be careful not to be deluded: Europe will not be Biden’s priority.
–
You had to be patient. It has been almost a month since the citizens of the United States of America voted to choose their president, and the fog that had set in as a result of the ballot is just starting to dissipate. The last legal remedies of the Republican camp are rejected one after the other, while Donald Trump acknowledges his defeat lip service. For his part, Joe Biden gradually unveils his future government team and announces the main lines of his first days in power. The European capitals and the rue de la Loi in Brussels can now breathe.
Europeans know what they are losing. The four years of Trump’s tenure have worn them out. In 2017, it was first necessary to wait long weeks after the inauguration of the new president to find the right contacts in the new administration, poorly prepared. But that was to find himself then faced with an amateur and chaotic American diplomacy. The first secretary of state in place, Rex Tillerson, attached to historical alliances, tried somehow to smooth things over with the old continent. Alas, he was systematically and publicly contradicted by Donald Trump, until his resignation in 2018.
The Trumpian decisions followed one another like so many cheap blows against the European Union: support for Brexit and the supporters of a hard Brexit, trade tensions with Germany, withdrawal of the Paris climate agreements and of Vienna on Iranian nuclear power. Four more years would have been even more painful, with a Trump freed from electoral constraints.
A real relief
The victory of Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris inevitably comes as a relief. European diplomats and leaders can expect a minimum of consideration and stability. No need to watch Twitter to learn the latest White House decisions along with the rest of the world. Still a candidate, Joe Biden had promised in his program to restore confidence with the traditional allies of the United States, Europe in the lead. Brussels could well be the first diplomatic visit of the future president. And above all, among the priorities of the next administration are subjects reviving multilateralism, such as the return to the Paris Agreement. The Iran nuclear deal is likely to be next. Tensions with NATO, and in particular around its financing, should decrease.
Likewise, Europeans will discuss again with reliable interlocutors. Future Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is French-speaking and lived in Paris in his youth, has been Biden’s right-hand man for nearly twenty years. The risk of miscommunication between the two men is therefore limited. The same goes for the other names already known to the next US government. Jake Sullivan (future national security adviser), Ronald Klain (future chief of staff to the president) or John Kerry (future special representative for the climate) are personalities of the Democratic establishment, well known to Biden, and who have an interest in multilateralism and European construction.
Beware of disillusion
Europe therefore expects a lot from Joe Biden’s mandate, but perhaps too much. Because certain inflections taken by the United States during the Trump presidency will not necessarily be reversed. The United States as the policeman of the world and guarantor of the security of the West is no longer a hot idea in Washington. Joe Biden has thus taken over the policy of withdrawing American troops projected abroad, a trend timidly initiated by Barack Obama and pursued with great fanfare by Donald Trump. It is difficult to say whether the world will gain in stability and peace, but the European Union will have to gain responsibility.
Especially since the world has changed since the Obama era. Beyond the fight against the pandemic due to covid-19, the United States may well be monopolized by Asia for the next few years. The growing Chinese ambitions, especially in the South China Sea, are sometimes worrying and will require great diplomatic efforts on the part of Washington. Europe will not really have a say, but it will have an unexpected opportunity to accelerate its strategic autonomy. It will be his turn to work hard to end conflicts on its periphery and avoid new ones. The United States did not get involved in the Ukrainian conflict or the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. And they will not intervene this time in the event of a new conflict in Kosovo.
It is also useless to hope that the Biden administration will espouse all of the great progressive causes. The gestures made towards the left wing of the Democratic Party were only temporary during the campaign, and the future president quickly returned to the center of the political spectrum, in particular through the appointments of his future administration. It is a position which anticipates perhaps one of the last unknowns of this presidential transition: the second round of two senatorial elections in the state of Georgia, which will take place on January 5, 2020. If the Democratic Party wins both , then he will have full control of the country’s legislature and the president will have a free hand. Otherwise, which seems the most likely, President Biden will have to govern with great compromise with the Republican camp, and his ambitions in international politics could suffer.
With Joe Biden, the United States will once again become a trustworthy partner for Europeans. But we will not have to give up too quickly the reflexes taken during the mandate of Donald Trump: the EU will still not be the first center of interest of the United States. And it has everything to gain by opening the debate on its strategic sovereignty.
–
