America is Back

But not everyone in Europe is happy

Reputation matters in international relations. On this Joe Biden wanted to be clear, following his 3 hour meeting with Vladimir Putin in Geneva last week. “How would it be if the United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections […] of other countries, and everybody knew it?”.

It would be terrible for America’s standing, Biden explained, and therefore bad for America’s leadership.

The remark, delivered without the slightest hint of irony, revealed much about Biden’s self-image.

Perhaps Biden really knows nothing about Washington’s track record in Latin America and the Middle East. It would be surprising. More likely, like most progressive Americans, he has convinced himself that when the US interferes abroad, it mostly does so for the sake of democracy, and this isn’t “interference” at all.

With this conviction, Biden hardly stands alone. Except Donald Trump, all recent US Presidents have told a story about the US as a benign, post-colonial and liberal power. A hegemon perhaps, with influence abroad, but a righteous one.

However, ask a random selection of Chileans, Turks, Nigerians, Iranians and even Greeks, and most will tell you that they have long since stopped believing in the democratic righteousness of American Presidents. Since Trump, many Europeans share their scepticism.

It is precisely why Biden now tries to restore Europe’s faith in US exceptionalism. His diplomatic tour of the continent last week, with stops in Cornwall, Brussels and Geneva, was meant to turn persistent doubt into renewed devotion. “America is back”, Biden claims. A show of Western unity was what he intended. It is precisely what the world got.

Yet the truth is that American exceptionalism is not what Europe’s leaders are waiting for. To be sure, the continent much prefers Biden’s narrative of America to Trump’s. No-one has forgotten Trump’s calamitous European road trip in 2018, which also ended in a meeting with Putin.

But Biden’s “America is Back” narrative, infused with rhetoric about a new great battle between Freedom and Tyranny, portends other risks for Europe.

Chief amongst those is that Biden’s agenda undercuts Europeans’ ability to deal with strongmen like Putin and Xi directly and in ways that suit them best. Not least thanks to Trump, the EU has become aware that it has geopolitical interests of its own, which do not always coincide with those of the US. It wishes to develop robust strategic capacity to defend those interests. Carving up the world into US-led and China-led blocks for the next half century or so has no place in this strategy. 

The trouble with the narrative Biden hopes to sell in Europe is that it weakens the legitimacy of Europe’s efforts to assert itself as a self-standing global actor, a problem felt all too keenly in Paris and Berlin. The cinematographic clash between Freedom and Tyranny that Biden perceives leaves little room for other actors. It has Putin starring as the “killer” and Biden as the hero. What legitimate role is there for Europe?

Acting on their own, or under the EU banner, leaders like Merkel, Johnson and Macron are cast as bit-part players tip-toeing on the fence for petty economic gain, as accessories who have no real role in history at all. “Stand by the US, or become an international sideshow”, one American expert summed up Europe’s choice earlier this year, following the EU’s decision to strike a bilateral investment deal with Beijing.

Reflecting on the Putin meeting in Geneva, Tony Barber, the FT’s Europe editor, called it “striking that France and Germany persist in keeping open channels for dialogue” with Putin. Macron’s ambition to position himself as a “negotiating party” with Moscow, Barber further argued, “reeks of the Gaullist yearning for an independent French role.”

However, what is Europe’s alternative? Should it shut those channels down, renounce its status of “negotiating party” with its biggest neighbour, and trust the United States to advance Europe’s interests in Moscow? That really would be a striking move, an utterly incomprehensible and entirely reckless political move even, considering how the world has changed in the last decade or two.

The United States, of course, wouldn’t mind. Europe surrendering its independent diplomacy with Beijing especially would greatly help it “win the 21st century”, as Biden sums up his foreign agenda.

However, it is hardly surprising if Europeans respond to such ideas with a large dose of scepticism. Working closely with the United States remains a strategic choice for Europe. Shutting down its own diplomatic channels to Moscow and Beijing clearly isn’t. America may well be back. But the days of the benign hegemon are over.