The past few weeks have shown us all how quickly geopolitical certainties and strategies can collapse. Just a short while ago, Europe and China were adjusting their economic relationship in an investment agreement. And now the result of the negotiations – however you want to assess it – seems to have become a wastepaper because of mutual sanctions. At the same time, Americans and Europeans are reassuring themselves of the solidity of their alliance, knowing full well how different their interests are – also in their respective relations with China.
What is daily political nervousness, where do we see the signs of tectonic power shifts, and, above all, what conclusions should we Europeans draw from all this? The experienced foreign policy expert and convinced transatlanticist Sigmar Gabriel guides us and you in his essay “Farewell to the Atlantic”. Far-sighted and at the same time unsparing. I wish you an enlightening and, at the same time, informative read.
Antje Sirleschtov
Farewell to the Atlantic
The election of Joe Biden as the new US president has raised many hopes in Europe and, above all, in Germany. Perhaps too many, because despite shared values, it is the different global interests that are causing Europe and the US to drift in different directions. It would be good if both sides were clear about this to prevent new disappointments. “America is back” also has a meaning that has more to do with the transformation of the United States under Barack Obama than with the continuation of old transatlantic traditions. If there is to be a renewed transatlantic alliance, it will have to deal with many things – but least of all with the Atlantic.
China wins where the US fails
It was Barack Obama’s speech on the “Pivot to Asia” that impressively described the marker of the United States’ change of direction. The US, shaped by its transatlantic relations, had been aware for some time that it was increasingly becoming a Pacific Nation. A term that both George W. Bush and Barack Obama used prominently. As early as 2007, then-presidential candidate Obama wrote that he would “reshape the alliances, partnerships, and institutions needed to address common threats and enhance shared security” and, to that end, would also “build new alliances and partnerships in other important regions” that are precisely not NATO regions. In other words, the ties and alliances of the post-war world were no longer a matter of course, and not just since Donald Trump’s presidency.
However, the “Pivot to Asia” speech was not immediately followed by a change in US foreign policy: The US remained deeply involved in the conflicts in the Middle East, Russia’s foreign policy continued to challenge US attention and presence, and the planned reset in China policy failed. Obama’s successor in office then put the finishing touches to this by derailing the most strategically important US project in the Indo-Pacific: The previously negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), which was intended to draw a ring of firm US economic ties with all neighboring states around China to virtually hem in the “Middle Kingdom”. Therefore, Donald Trump’s cancelation of this agreement was probably the most stupid foreign policy decision the former US president has made.
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