The game is not over yet but we are coming out of the nightmare. The game is not over yet, since a large part of the Republican electorate remains convinced that victory has been stolen from them by a conspiracy of occult forces; since Donald Trump will do everything he can to give credit to these delusions and to stir up tensions; since the Democrats may still have to govern against a Republican Senate, and since in any case Joe Biden will have to reckon with the deep division of America, the health disaster bequeathed to him by his predecessor, and the international discredit, above all, that the last four years have brought to the United States.
We are getting out of the nightmare because the modern-day Nero will have to leave the White House, but the weakening of the United States today is a blessing for dictatorships and is detrimental to democracy all over the world. Worldwide, the damage done by Mr. Trump is so serious that it demands that European and American be able to strengthen their solidarity and show, both of them, enough intellectual audacity to entrench the Atlantic Alliance.
In Europe, we can no longer act as if the return of a statesman at the helm of America guarantees us the same military protection as during the Cold War. The United States no longer has vital interests to defend in Europe. It does not even have oil supplies to secure in the Middle East any more, and its priorities, as we know, are now the Pacific and Asia, the zone where it must meet the challenge thrown down to it by China.
Unless we want to find ourselves naked in front of the imperial nostalgia of Mr. Putin and Mr. Erdogan, the chaos of the Muslim worlds and the Chinese pressure on our borders and even within the Union itself, we must therefore establish a common defence.
This prospect is no longer a taboo in the Union, but it frightens Germany, which still fears – and it is all to its credit – becoming a military power again. Publicly at least, the Baltic countries and Poland refuse to recognize this reality because they fear that it might precipitate the withdrawal of the United States from Europe. While admitting the need for a common defence, we are not exactly in a hurry to take action, as it will cost a lot to our budgets and as we, without even admitting it, persist in believing that once the Trump parenthesis being closed, the American umbrella will reopen as in the good old days.
Well, it won’t! The American “pivot” towards Asia dates back to the second term of George W. Bush. Clad in Obama’s elegance or shown in Trump’s vulgarity, but it has never been denied since and Joe Biden will certainly not question it.
Not only will we have to open our wallets, but we will have to affirm a common foreign policy and get used to having to defend our interests alone. Not only must the Union agree to become a global power, but if we don’t, the United States will soon have no reason not to let transatlantic ties fall apart, because why keep an alliance with us if we can’t bring them anything?
It is, in other words, not by developing a Common Defence but by not doing so that we will distort our ties with the United States. In a word, it is only by becoming a political and military power that the European Union will be able to durably strengthen its alliance with America.
So yes, we Europeans still have a cultural revolution to make, but just as much as we, the Americans have to review the way they think about our alliance, too.
They cannot, at the same time, distance themselves from Europe and want to continue to divide Europe in order to reign there. They cannot expect us to finance our defence while at the same time hindering the development of a European defence industry that would inevitably compete with their own. The United States cannot at the same time call on us to defend ourselves and encourage Poland and the Baltic countries to slow down the development of a European Defence. The United States cannot want to perpetuate the Atlantic Alliance and continue to dream of reaching an agreement with Russia over the head of the Union. Finally, it cannot let Mr. Erdogan attack the interests and security of the European Union on the grounds that Turkey is a member of NATO and that its current president will not last forever.
If the American Democrats want to be able to defend democracy with us, they must accept a redistribution of influence, roles and power between us and them. If the United States wants us to be at its side in its arm wrestling with China, it must finally come to terms with the idea that Europe has a weight on its own. If we want to join forces to defend democracy from now on, we must immediately take the necessary steps towards each other to redefine and strengthen our alliance.
So yes, rationality, decency and courtesy are back in the White House. Joe Biden’s United States will return to the Paris Agreement and seek to resurrect the nuclear accord with Iran. They will no longer aspire to break the Atlantic Alliance and open a trade war with us. We are coming out of the nightmare, but everything, absolutely everything, remains to be done.
