BERLIN — Whoever wins the U.S. election, Europe has already lost.
It’s no secret that most Europeans have been praying Joe Biden would win the presidency; he may yet, but not with anything like a landslide. That might end up being worse than the alternative.
If Donald Trump, the president Europe loves to hate, had prevailed by a wide margin, Europe would at least have had clarity on its options and could plan accordingly.
Instead, America remains as divided as ever. That’s not just bad for the U.S., it will also temper hopes in Europe for a clear path forward in the transatlantic relationship.
Yes, transatlantic relations would inevitably improve under a Biden presidency after the bitternerness of the Trump years (how could they not?). Nonetheless, the ambitious agenda many European leaders were hoping to pursue on everything from environmental policy to trade to defense, already seems out of reach.
The reason is twofold. Not only will Biden lack a strong mandate if he wins by the skin of his teeth, but Congress looks likely to remain divided, with the Democrats controlling the House of Representatives and the Republicans in charge in the Senate.
The technical term for that constellation is “gridlock.” It will force Biden into the same corner that Trump faced for the past two years and that bedeviled much of Barack Obama’s time in office.
Without a majority in both houses of Congress, neither president was able to pursue much of his legislative agenda, relying instead on executive fiat, orders that can be reversed with the stroke of a pen by a successor.
For Europe, that makes the U.S. a flighty partner when it comes to pursuing an ambitious global agenda.
One needn’t look further than the Iran nuclear deal of 2015 to understand what’s at stake. Without a Democratic majority in the Senate, Obama faced a choice of no deal or one that lacked the full legitimacy of a treaty under U.S. law. He chose the latter course, only to see the accord, which Europe and the U.S. negotiated with Iran and other world powers over a period of more than a decade, collapse after Trump came into office and abandoned it.
The same dynamic was at play with the Paris climate accord. Without a congressional stamp, it was much easier for Trump to withdraw.
That’s why European leaders were hoping Biden would win by a landslide with the Democrats riding his coattails in Congress.
Indeed, many of the polls in the run-up to election day pointed in that direction, feeding expectations in some corners of the Continent of a “revolution” on the scale of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 win, a victory that triggered a dramatic change of direction in American politics.
A strong Biden win could have allowed Washington and its European allies to pursue the kind of sweeping transatlantic agenda many think is essential in order to renew and redefine the alliance, especially in the face of the growing challenge posed by China.
It wasn’t meant to be. Though some in Europe, especially in Germany, have signaled interest in trying to resuscitate the effort to craft a transatlantic free trade deal, it may not be worth the effort if the next president can’t get it through Congress.
At the back of Europe’s mind will also be the question of what happens four years from now, even if Biden wins this time. Given his age, Biden could well choose to be a one-term president. If he were to be succeeded by a Republican in the mold of Donald Trump — a distinct possibility given the current American political climate — why bother negotiating deals that could evaporate as soon as he exits?
The answer might be that Europe doesn’t have any better options, especially when it comes to security. Confronted with an increasingly belligerent Russia, Europe needs America’s security umbrella more than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Germany and other countries will do whatever they can to keep the U.S. engaged in Europe’s defense.
Yet that issue could remain a source of tension with a Biden administration, which, like Trump, is keen to focus more on China in the coming years. A Biden administration would likely follow Trump’s policy of pushing Europe to take on more responsibility for its own security, albeit with a less aggressive tone.
With Europe’s economy hammered by the pandemic and the public’s appetite for more spending on defense tepid at best, the security question seems bound to remain a source of transatlantic tension.
In other words, even if most Europeans can’t wait to see the back of Trump, they may soon find themselves stuck in the same situation they’ve been in for the past four years: Hoping for the best but fearing the worst.
No comments:
Post a Comment