Why the EU and US Will Continue To Butt Heads

Under Biden, the U.S. no longer sees the EU as an enemy. But the allies will continue to butt heads on many issues. And that’s necessary.

To date, President Joe Biden has done almost everything right to revive the trans-Atlantic partnership. But given the quantity and urgency of the problems, things need to proceed much more quickly.

Of course, one welcomes the fact that the U.S. under Biden wants to reassume a constructive role internationally and end Donald Trump’s destructive policies, or address their occasionally catastrophic consequences. It is healing for a fraught trans-Atlantic alliance to hear Biden say at the Munich Security Conference that “America is back. … The trans-Atlantic alliance is back.”

It is also reasonable that Europeans applaud him for a speech that would have sounded banal four years ago. The same can be said for Biden’s decisions and announcements. He has led the U.S. and thus one of the planet’s main global warmers back to the Paris Agreement on climate change, prepared a return to the nuclear pact with Iran, and, together with other Western nations at the Munich Security Conference, announced a desire to support poorer countries with vaccination against COVID-19. In an interconnected world with international trade relations, there can only be a solution for everyone, not for individual nations.

And it followed the logic of a charm offensive to hear Biden speak entirely about commonalities during the conference, and not points of conflict. Debate over Nord Stream 2, the 2% goal for NATO, the partial withdrawal of troops from Germany, the mission in Afghanistan, and many more issues will take place later. It works better when trust that has been lost is restored and everyone can feel they are on the same page.

But Biden could still have been more concrete on several issues; indeed, he should have been. It has long been clear to everyone that the Biden administration will take a more consequential approach to China. But what goals does he want to reach and how? Does he just want to pursue Trump’s confrontational politics after all to keep more of the trade pie for the U.S.? Or does he want to work with U.S. allies to get Beijing to adhere to international trade rules, remove Chinese trade restrictions and restore human rights in China? And how does he plan to get Beijing to come around?

And above all, how does he want to bring Germany and the European Union countries onto his side, after they just recently concluded a trade agreement with China? Biden and his team were annoyed that the Europeans pressed ahead with such a deal without consulting the new leadership in Washington first.

Who knows how the European public would have reacted had Biden used the Security Conference to explain his future political approach to China? It probably would have been apparent to many that, on the one hand, Chancellor Angela Merkel is particularly correct when she notes that China is necessary for climate and environmental protection. But on the other hand, she pays far too much attention to a positive trade balance, does too little for human rights and has not exactly basked in success with regard to climate and environmental protection, either.

It is clear, even with this one issue, that the different perspectives and occasionally contradictory interests of the Biden administration and the Europeans need to be discussed, point by point. Conflict is inevitable, necessary and can only be destructive when there is no compromise. Besides, everyone does not have to agree on every point.

Germany and the other EU nations should support Biden on this path as much as they are able to, so that as many issues as possible can be advanced as far as possible during his term. Only a successful Biden stands a chance of being reelected.

But the Europeans should not relinquish their goals in doing this. On the contrary, they should articulate and establish their interests, for instance, in a possible free trade agreement with Biden’s U.S. After all, they need to be prepared for the possibility that the U.S. takes another turn in a few years. First the George W. Bush administration and then the Trump administration have proven as much since the turn of the century, after all.