The EU Will Not Break Free from America’s Amiable Stranglehold

The United States of America is the principal military and political actor in Europe. Its influence determines the domestic and foreign policy of the EU and its member states. Who will occupy the White House in 2021-2024? That was a momentous question for Europe. Consequently, Europeans closely followed the entire course of the presidential race between Donald Trump and his challenger Joe Biden, a race that had been essentially transformed into a vote of confidence for the incumbent president.

Europeans were dying to see Donald Trump lose. They found his claims that there is no alternative to him rather vain, as well as the course he steers and his statements about having a mega-powerful popular support base of dedicated followers. Europeans dreamed of Joe Biden emerging victorious, so much so they appeared to have outwitted themselves. They lost their ability to perceive their own circumstances objectively and realistically. Ultimately, they invented the myth of the Democrats taking the world back to its “pre-Trump” state and of a Democrat victory equalling a triumph of democracy far beyond the U.S. itself. In so doing, Europeans made a huge mistake in their assessment of their own circumstances, one that will, most likely, cost them dearly.

Yet this mistake is far from accidental. Its roots go far back into that dubious strategic choice the EU’s major powers made in the 1990s and continued adhering to later.

Social networks and America’s most popular media did not wait for the official results of the vote count and announced the Democratic candidate’s presidential victory; the moment they did so, heads of state and government of the Euro-Atlantic space and the heads of the EU and NATO heaved a sigh of relief and hastened to offer Joe Biden their pompous congratulations. Both they and millions of ordinary Europeans had a feeling that “the nightmare is over”. French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, President of the European Council Charles Michel, and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg were among the first to do so.

They spoke in unison about the arrival of a new era in U.S.-European understanding and cooperation and called on the new U.S. President to take his country back to the old, trust-based relations with its allies, i.e., with the Europeans, and to support multilateralism, free trade, the climate agenda, and the system of international organizations, including NATO, the WHO and the WTO. For instance, Angela Merkel’s spokesperson said that “the Chancellor and President-elect agreed that transatlantic cooperation is of great importance in view of the multitude of global challenges”. Joe Biden promised the French President to "endow bilateral and transatlantic relations with a new dynamics" mostly "via NATO and the EU."

Naturally, no one in political, expert and media circles close to the EU or working for it puts the question quite that way. Yet it is telling that, immediately after Joe Biden was proclaimed U.S. President-elect, the U.S. was swept by a wave of very typical comments that explain some obvious points Europeans had not previously taken for granted. They emphasize that:

(1) the ideas of the EU’s strategic autonomy have always been pure idealism and theories detached from political and military-strategic reality;

(2) the EU has never had either the power or the political will to transform those theories into a practical policy;

(3) with the USA’s impending return to the heart of the Euro-Atlantic solidarity, these theories will lose their relevance to some degree. In any case, their current “urgency and relevance” are once again up for debate and more consideration;

(4) it should not now be a matter of autonomy of the EU and its member states; it should now be a matter of bolstering their power and solidarity. “The worst that can happen for the European Union is that the outcome of the U.S. election allows us to slip back into that state of apathy, complacency and resignation that has characterized us for too long,” urges Guy Verhofstadt, one of the best-known European politicians and the European Parliament Brexit Coordinator.

Now, therefore, it is time “to prove itself as a true ally, not a liability,” an ally strong enough for the transatlantic solidarity to be meaningful. That requires proposing “a more constructive relationship” in trade; rallying “the world’s democracies around common threats and values” under the auspices of Biden’s America; acting together in “forcing China to play by the rules or countering Russia when it blatantly breaks them” and thereby writing “new rules for tech giants, against tax avoidance or to boost the carbon transition.”

(5) Donald Trump is leaving, but "Trumpism" remains. It has already been integrated into the political reality. In any case, Donald Trump has already played his part in transforming the U.S., and global politics and economics.

The United States of America is the principal military and political actor in Europe. Its influence determines the domestic and foreign policy of the EU and its member states. Who will occupy the White House in 2021-2024? That was a momentous question for Europe. Consequently, Europeans closely followed the entire course of the presidential race between Donald Trump and his challenger Joe Biden, a race that had been essentially transformed into a vote of confidence for the incumbent president.

Europeans were dying to see Donald Trump lose. They found his claims that there is no alternative to him rather vain, as well as the course he steers and his statements about having a mega-powerful popular support base of dedicated followers. Europeans dreamed of Joe Biden emerging victorious, so much so they appeared to have outwitted themselves. They lost their ability to perceive their own circumstances objectively and realistically. Ultimately, they invented the myth of the Democrats taking the world back to its “pre-Trump” state and of a Democrat victory

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