The EU will once again have a cooperative US partner when Joe Biden becomes president, but Europeans should harbour no illusions: Washington will be no globo-cop nor NATO’s big protector, leaders and analysts say. […]
But Jean-Claude Juncker, former European Commission president, earlier offered a typically blunt assessment: ”Joe Biden isn’t going to change Washington’s approach to international issues overnight, because he can’t.”
And Sebastien Maillard, head of the Jacques Delors Institute named after an influential former EU chief, cautioned that ”the Europeans need to learn to live without American global leadership.”
”For the foreseeable future, the US will be preoccupied with itself,” agreed German political scientist, Markus Kaim. […]
While the US still maintains aircraft carrier battle groups in different regions, and bases including in Europe, South Korea, Japan, Afghanistan and Bahrain, it has been withdrawing from conflict zones under a trend accelerated by Trump but started by his predecessor Barack Obama.
More notably, within the past two decades much of its military focus has moved to Asia, away from Europe. Nathalie Tocci, head of the Italian think tank the Instituto Affari Internazionali, added: ”We are witnessing the end of American imperialism with the United States no longer wanting to be the world’s policeman.” […]
”With Biden as president, the EU could expect and welcome a much more predictable and constructive US-EU relationship on trade, NATO, Iran, the Middle East and above all on climate change, if the US re-enters the Paris climate agreement,” predicted Mujtaba Rahman, director of the Europe office of the Eurasia Group risk analysis firm. […]
NATO can hope for a normalisation with Biden, but analysts believe Washington will stay retrenched in looking out for US interests.”That will be uncomfortable for the Europeans,” whose NATO members are split between a pro-Europe camp and an Atlanticist one, said Kaim. Läs artikel