With Joe Biden back from his “If it’s Tuesday, it must be NATO” tour of Europe, the question is: What did it accomplish? President Biden told the G7: “America is back at the table. America is back leading the world.”1 The communiques and statements issued by the G7, NATO, and the meeting with the EU were reasonably strong. They mentioned China, human rights, Russia, etc. The NATO statement said that China posed “systemic challenges” to the rules-based international order.2 According to President Biden. while the G7 didn’t mention China in 2019, this year they did, “explicitly agree[ing] to call out human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.” On Russia, the NATO statement said that in appropriate cases, co-ordinate cyber attacks could be a justification to invoke the collective defense provisions of Article 5 of the NATO agreement.3
The question is what countries will do now that the meetings are over and they are back to day-to-day considerations of politics and national interest.
Since the meetings, Armin Laschet, head of Germany’s CDU and the frontrunner to succeed Angela Merkel as Chancellor after the September election, told the Financial Times:
“If we are talking about ‘restraining’ China, will that lead to a new conflict? Do we need a new adversary? And there the European response was cautious, because, yes, China is a competitor and a systemic rival. It has a different model of society, but it’s also a partner, particularly in things like fighting climate change.”5
As for Russia, just last week, the day before an EU leaders meeting, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron surprised other EU leaders with a call for closer engagement with Russia and inviting Russian President Vladimir Putin to a summit meeting with the leaders of all EU countries. Chancellor Merkel’s theory was, in effect, if Biden can meet with Putin as he did at the end of his whirlwind tour, why can’t we? She said: “However much we argue, we must keep the channels of communication open, so as to be able to clearly express our positions and interests and then look to see if any solutions can be found.”6
Except this wasn’t something Merkel and Macron could decide by themselves. All EU leaders needed to agree, and many of them didn’t.7 Smaller countries and countries next to Russia weren’t quite as keen on being nice to President Putin. While countries like Poland and the Baltic countries have business interests in Russia, they worry more about their borders. Something Germany and France don’t have to. The Financial Times explained:
“[A] newly-arrived US president can hold an exploratory meeting with a Russian counterpart without this necessarily signaling a policy shift. The EU, by contrast, suspended twice-yearly summits with Moscow after Russia sized Crimea and fomented war in east Ukraine in 2014. Putin’s behavior has not changed since then. Reinstating summits without very careful messaging could be seized on by Moscow as a sign of faltering resolve.”8,9
The problem with Merkel’s and Macron’s proposal could be seen in its timing. As they were making it, Russia was claiming it has fired on a British destroyer. According to the British, the ship was sailing in international waters near Ukraine and Crimea and the Russians were merely engaged in firing exercises nearby. The shots never got close to the ship.10 Regardless of what Russia did, however, and it is hard to see Russia picking on somebody even close to its own size, the fact Russia would claim to have fired on a British warship indicates there is a problem with Russia that is not going to be addressed by a big summit between Putin and all the leaders of the countries in the EU. Communications between defense agencies make sense. The reward of a massive summit does not.
Still, as I talked about here, it is understandable that countries prioritize the well-being of their own citizens over complaining about other countries’ human rights records.11 I wrote that post from the viewpoint of a US politician, but it applies to other countries, too. This is even more understandable when you consider that the United States has less trade, on a proportional basis, with China and Russia than other countries do. It is easier for the United States to risk its trade with Russia or China than it is for a country whose trade is two or three times the size of the US’s trade. Also, the US is so big that China may be hesitant to retaliate against the US in the same way it would against a smaller country.12
The world is different than it was before 1989. Russia is not the threat that the USSR was. Russia is not going to invade western Europe. Plus, even with its limited economy, Russia is a bigger customer – and supplier – than the USSR was. There is business to be done and there aren’t tanks to worry about.
Which is even more true with respect to China. Europe does not’ want a “New Cold War” with China. They want to sell stuff to China and buy things back. China is not going to invade them or tell them what to do, other than to be quiet about the Uighurs and Hong Kong. And let China do whatever it wants, pretty much whenever it wants, with Taiwan. How much should Taiwan or the Uighurs and Hong Kong weigh in a balance of jobs and business for European leaders? Human rights are important, but their own their own national economies. Not to mention climate change.
The bottom line is that Joe Biden may have said the United States is back and he may have gotten European leaders to say things he wanted in communiques and statements, but what they will really do could be a lot different. Keeping Europe, et al, on track vis-à-vis China and Russia is going to be tough. It is going to take a lot of work and attention – and skill. Whether it is a high enough priority for the Biden Administration, and its supporters, is unclear. Whether they can actually do it may be even more unclear.
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1 George Parker, Sebastian Payne, Leslie Hook, and Lauren Fedor, “Biden rallies western allies in bid to counter Chinese influence,” Financial Times, June 14, 2021.
2 Michael Peel, “China’s military goals threaten international order, Nato warns,” Financial Times, June 15, 2021.
3 Financial Times, June 14, 2021.
4 George Parker and Jasmine Cameron-Chilesme, “Bonhomie on the beach masks G7 divisions,” Financial Times, June 14, 2021
5 Guy Chasan and Roula Khalaf, “Laschet warns against cold war with China,” Financial Times, June 22, 2021.
6 Sam Fleming, Valentina Pop, Mehreen Khan, Michael Peel, and Henry Foy, “Berlin and Paris propose reset for EU relations with Moscow,” Financial Times, June 24, 2021.
7 Also, Guy Chazan, Sam Fleming, Mehreen Khan, and Michael Peel, “Merkel laments EU lack of ‘trust’ on Russia summit,” Financial Times, June 25, 2021.
8 “How Europe should deal with Russia’s Putin,” Financial Times,” June 25, 2021
9 Even if the Crimea annexation is not completely reversed, something has to be done so Ukraine can somehow accept whatever is agreed upon. And Russia needs to get out of east Ukraine.
10 Here and here. One also wonders how the Merkel-Macron proposal would have gone over if the UK were still in the EU. Consider suggesting a massive summit meeting just after Russia said it has attacked a ship of a fellow EU member.
11 While it is almost ancient history by now, one of the reasons that the United States could not continue to rely on sanctions against Iraq in 2002/03, is that countries like France were unwilling to continue to comply with them. There was business to be done.
12 See, for example, how China has treated Australia since Australia called for a World Health Organization into the origins of Covid-19 in China.
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