Biden’s European Tour: Towards a New Kind of Transatlantic Alliance?
Joe Biden’s European tour, which started at the G7 in Cornwall and went through Brussels and Geneva, was symbolic as well as politically charged. Through his visit Mr. Biden wanted to above all signal the return of the United States on the multilateral stage and to reinvigorate the Western alliance with European partners in a way that would seem to break-off from the past.
In Cornwall, UK Prime Minister Johnson and President Biden signed a new “Atlantic Charter” which revises the historical document stipulated by the two wartime allies in 1941 that laid the framework for NATO’s creation. As much as the revision of the Charter “updates” the list of modern challenges from the “climate crisis” to the “cyber space”, President Biden expressed threats having an older flavor that are reminiscent of those faced in the 1940s, coming from “autocrats, autocratic governments around the world”, as he told reporters at the conclusion of a Group of Seven leaders’ summit in Britain. Besides wanting to distinguish himself from his predecessor’s protectionism and unilateralism, it is Mr. Biden’s acute, almost Manichean, perception that America needs to ‘rally’ its democratic partners which explains why he is trying to get US diplomacy back on track with global partners that share common values.
While the G7 acted as the scene setter, Brussels was the first foreign capital Biden visited as American President, and for good reason. Washington wanted to firstly reposition its full commitment to NATO and secondly to re-establish links with the European Union after four years of unstable relations. Mr. Biden surely found a changed European Union to that of when he was Vice-President of the Obama administration. The Trump presidency was a wake-up call for many EU leaders making Europeans realize that they could not count on the American security umbrella indefinitely. It is no coincidence that since 2017 several military initiatives like the European Defence Fund, the MPCC, CARD, Strategic Compass or PESCO emerged. This sent the counter signal that Europe would be on its way to take security and defence matters more into its own hands.
The new US administration has been quick in displaying an interest to become involved in such activities. The first signals came with the decision, by the EU, to welcome on May 6th the US to the PESCO ‘Military Mobility’ project – an EU-led military project that aims to make cross-border movement of troops or equipment take no more than five days. The joining of the US in such a flagship European project signals, at the very least, its receptiveness to Europe’s military ambitions Moreover, in the Council Conclusions of the EU-US Summit, leaders committed to working towards an Administrative Arrangement with the European Defence Agency which would mark a further step toward strengthening transatlantic military ties under the Biden administration.
What these first decisions usher is a potential shift in the way the United States perceive the American and European security partnership, one seemingly more oriented towards accompanying the process of EU defence integration. A report published by the Center for American Progress, a think-tank close to the White House and the Democratic Party, just two weeks before Biden’s ‘Euro-tour’ takes a view that would forecast this view change. Authors Max Bergmann, James Lamond and Siena Cicarelli, make the case that “U.S. opposition to EU defense efforts since the 1990s has been a strategic mistake that has undermined both the EU and NATO.” The authors call for a “new U.S. approach that encourages ambitious EU defense strategies”.
Early evidence that such a “new approach” could be taking effect can be discerned by the joint EU-US Summit Statement which mention that “EU security and defence initiatives will enhance the European contribution to transatlantic security” and that “this will also contribute to strengthening the rules-based international order with the United Nations at its core.” While clear-cut conclusions still cannot be made, Mr. Biden seems to manifest, perhaps owing to his extensive background in diplomatic spheres, a new understanding of EU-US relations which would be underpinned by the logic that strengthening and modernizing the security architecture within Europe will help to both protect European and American security needs and advance their international agenda where several interests converge.
President Biden however still needs to dispel the existing perception within American policy circles that NATO and the EU are, to put it succinctly, discordant organizations. In the last decades, as the Center for American Progress report further mentions, NATO and EU defence were perceived as “incompatible and at odds” but that in truth “supporting EU defense does not mean choosing the EU over NATO…this is a false choice and a faulty premise.” What the same report stresses is that “the EU could help strengthen the alliance by building a stronger European pillar, creating a more unified, efficient, and capable partner for the USA through NATO”.
In this vein, the EU-US Summit Statement mentioned to “work jointly to raise the level of NATO-EU ambition in order to further strengthen this mutually reinforcing key strategic partnership.” Whether such a ‘game-changing’ development will materialize in the short term is still to be seen but US influence within NATO, together with diplomatic efforts, can surely affect this outcome.
Ultimately, it is worth recalling that the United States were at the core of the creation of the European project, by favoring the socio-economic recovery and political start-up of the Western Europe after the devastations brought by World War II. An opportunity presents itself today where the US can work with Europe to make it the defence actor capable of contributing to the transatlantic collective security by facilitating the development of Europe’s existing common defence initiatives. More broadly, however, this will warrant a greater alignment of US foreign policy with the EU’s.
