Fill the void

Continuing to give local revisionist powers – Russia, Turkey, and Iran – a free rein in Europe’s southern and eastern neighbourhood, as the Biden administration is likely to do, is hardly in Europe’s interests.

 
If Joe Biden is elected tonight (Tuesday, 3 November), there will be a sigh of relief in most European capitals. Understandably so – the transatlantic partnership would be unlikely to survive another four years of Trump.

However, that should not blind us to the fact that the Biden presidency will not be a walk in the park for Europeans, either.

Biden’s own foreign policy record is a mixed bag, and while rhetorically he will style himself as the quintessential anti-Trump – a thoughtful, reliable, and thoroughly multilateralist partner to Europe – there will be at least as much continuity in substance between Trump and Biden as there was between Trump and his predecessor.

True, there will be bows to liberal pieties: rejoining the Paris Agreement and (possibly but less likely) also the Iran Deal, and steering away from unilateral moves that make Europeans nervous.

Yet, fundamentally, US foreign policy will continue to be shaped primarily by power competition with China and the looming crises in the Indo-Pacific region, and not by European concerns.

Συνέχεια ανάγνωσης εδώ

Πηγή: aei.org