As the year draws, mercifully, to a close, it is a good time to not only take stock of what has occurred during the preceding twelve months, but to look ahead at what may come in the new year. This past year was, for many, exceedingly trying, with the coronavirus pandemic affecting countries around the world to a variety of extents. The dawning of 2021 does not mean that COVID-19 will vanish, or the problems of 2020 will not roll over with the calendar, but it does offer an opportunity to re-examine not just the problems that cropped up in the past twelve months, but some of the more persistent problems that governments have yet to address. While these are frequently issues that require bilateral or multilateral cooperation to achieve progress on, there are some issues that simply come down to a matter of changing perspectives and altering how one calculates a win.
Obviously, there are a myriad of issues that need addressing, from the ongoing situation in Ethiopia to the corruption in Bosnia that could all use greater commitment and focus from senior U.S. foreign policy officials. However, there is one area in which significant progress could occur simply by resetting expectations and recognizing that if trade and security are inextricably linked, and security is a country’s paramount concern, then occasionally the United States needs to seek out more win-win scenarios in our relationship with the European Union. If Europe truly is a vital partner, then a more cooperative footing is vital, even if it may be initially unpopular.
The major issue where progress could be made simply by readjusting expectations is with the situation regarding the United States’ transatlantic partnerships. While there have been numerous articles about the need for the incoming Biden administration to strengthen the transatlantic alliance, it is not an issue that gets enormous news coverage, and while it was discussed in the context of Biden’s nominees for Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, the importance of the transatlantic relationship with Europe receded quickly to the background. Furthermore, in recent days, the opportunity to reinvigorate the transatlantic partnership may have hit an early snag after Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s nominee for National Security Advisor, tweeted, somewhat vexedly, in response to a Reuters story about China and the EU aiming for agreement on an investment pact by the end of the year, that the “Biden-Harris administration would welcome early consultations with our European partners on our common concerns about China’s economic practices.”
While the frosty tone of Mr. Sullivan’s comments can be taken as perturbation that the European Union would sign off on a trade deal with a country who both sides at least partially label as a systemic rival and strategic competitor without consulting the incoming Biden administration, the tussle simply points to the fact that both the United States and the European Union and its member states all need to do a better job of aligning their strategic priorities and making sure that all international agreements are negotiated in light of what those overarching strategic goals are, and are not simply attempts to achieve the best possible results of whatever particular deal is being hashed out at the moment. In the case of trade and investment deals, this may mean leaving short-term gains, or gains that only help one country, one region, or one economic sector, on the table. In the case of the current deal being discussed, that would mean easier access for European, specifically French and German, companies to Chinese markets, with fewer requirements for local ownership in the automotive and telecom sectors. The deal would also provide Chinese firms with more access to the EU’s energy and high-tech sectors.
Without diving into the specific merits of the proposed investment agreement, whose details are still subject to negotiation and whose specifics are not yet available, there remains the issue that any trade deal being negotiated between the EU and China at this specific point in the calendar is bound to raise a variety of red flags, not the least because it occurs against the backdrop of both the lame-duck period of the Trump administration, but also the waning days of Germany’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
An investment pact between China and the EU is not necessarily a bad thing for any side. However, the timing of it could not be worse if one looks at the situation through the lens of the renewed European calls for transatlantic cooperation after American retrenchment during the Trump era. The next few months were supposed to be a period where Europe and the United States consulted closely and determined a joint course of action not just in regards to China, but for all the problematic hot spots that both societies are concerned with. While lofty goals of solving the world’s problems obviously was going to be impossible, the fact that the EU is pursuing this deal with less than a month to go until the U.S. inauguration, it does not bode well for the future of the relationship.
If the incoming Biden administration really wants transatlantic rapprochement, if he wants, as he says, “more friendships, more cooperation, more alliances, more democracy.”, then it seems likely that the United States will have to do a better job of convincing partners that any interaction with China needs to be done from a truly collective standpoint. Countries deciding that it is alright to make deals with China on just this issue or that will erode the entire idea of a collective response from the U.S., and its other western partners and allies. To that end, it is imperative that President-elect Biden, as well as his entire national security team, begin a public diplomacy campaign to convince both the American as well as European publics’ of the vital nature of the transatlantic alliance. Through op-eds, media appearances, and public statements from the transition, the Biden team should be aggressively making the case to the American public that in the 21st Century, the only way that the rules-based international order will survive is for democratic countries to put aside differences and to occasionally leave money on the table in trade deals with allies and partners which share our liberal, democratic values.
President-elect Biden tied his foreign policy agenda during the campaign to the pursuit of America’s democratic values. Indeed, the concept of values appears eleven times in the essay he penned for Foreign Affairs alone. The concept also appears at least as many times in the EU’s Joint Communication to the European Parliament, the European Council and the Council. The values of open, democratic societies where free speech is a paramount right need to be front and center in all negotiations with authoritarian governments run by parties like the CCP and individuals like Vladimir Putin. Ignoring authoritarian or anti-democratic abuses by those countries in bilateral deals undermines the entire project of transatlantic unity based on common values.
China has now surpassed the United States, as well as the EU, in share of global Gross Domestic Product, and that gap is only projected to rise in the next few decades. An EU and United States that works together to combat China on human rights abuses, authoritarian uses of surveillance, electoral interference, and their overall hostility to democratic governance, stands a chance of competing, as together, the U.S. and EU comprise over ⅓ of global GDP. Simply agreeing to work together is not enough. To truly leverage the joint power of the U.S. and EU, leaders will have to look past quick-win trade agreements and decide that collective action in the face of systemic rivalry is the only logical way forward. For the EU, that may mean a worse trade deal for Mercedes and Peugeot, and for the United States, giving up their quixotic WTO cases and realizing that sanctions needed to be pursued together with allies and not unilaterally. To quote Benjamin Franklin, “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
Pundits in the 1990s liked to talk about the “end of history”, that with the fall of facism and communism, there would not be serious competition for liberal democracy going forward, and that the market economy had simply won the battle of ideas. The events of the past 30 years have shown that to be a foolhardy conclusion at best, as fascistic ideas are on the rise at home in Western nations, and communist ideologies are still alive and well (to some extent) in China. To combat this ongoing rise, both the United States and the European Union and their leadership will need to have frank conversations about putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to really reinvigorating the transatlantic alliance in a way that enables it to stand up to systemic rivals in the world.
Foreign Policy Reviews 