The then US President Donald Trump mocked his challenger Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe” during the election campaign. And even the biggest Biden fans had to admit: Trump had made a point there. During his performances, the 79-year-old often seemed agitated, got muddled and sometimes drew meaningless conclusions. In short, Biden was not exactly what you would call a stirring orator or a charismatic statesman.
Since Russia started its campaign of conquest in Ukraine almost four weeks ago, not only the Americans, but above all the Europeans have been looking to a different Joe Biden – a US President who is as prudent as he is determined, a strategically and tactically good acting US President, a man , which one notices that he experienced his political socialization during the Cold War.
On Thursday, the President will visit his European partners – and there are some reasons to be grateful. It is the Americans who have always warned Berlin against becoming too dependent on Russian energy imports – while the federal government hid behind its formula “change through trade”, which in retrospect appears politically extremely naïve. It was the Americans who predicted the invasion of Ukraine – while German politicians were still trying to explain, sometimes even justify, Putin’s aggressive behavior in recent years with NATO’s eastward expansion.
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And it is the Americans who are the only ones able to force China to take a clear position in this epochal conflict. On the side of those who recognize the sovereign equality of states as an elementary principle of international law and consider territorial integrity to be just as indispensable as the rule of law – or on the side of those for whom the limits of a country’s power are measured solely in its military capacities.
Joe Biden makes America a protecting power
Biden has presented himself as a strong Western opponent of Putin. With his commitment, he revitalized belief in the transatlantic alliance, as well as in NATO, which was believed to be “brain dead” at the time. He organized the extensive unity of the West, which, along with sanctions, is the most effective means of containing the aggressor. All in all, America can rightly claim that after a long absence, it is once again assuming the role of protector of freedom and democracy.
Biden called it the “sacred duty” of the United States to defend “every inch” of NATO territory against Russia in an emergency. What would the security of Europe be worth if this trust were no longer there today? What if Donald Trump, who thought Putin’s invasion was “brilliant” and NATO “obsolete”, was now in the White House?
The US President and the Chinese head of state exchanged views on Ukraine in a telephone call on Friday. Biden tried to stop China from supporting Russia.
(Photo: dpa)
The new strength of the USA as a regulatory power once again reveals the striking weakness of Europe’s largest economy in particular. Over the past few decades, Germany has delegated responsibility for national defense to the United States. It has offloaded its energy needs to Russia and largely pledged its economic fate to China.
All this only worked well as long as there was a guarantor for a more or less rules-based world order on which the German economy could thrive almost perfectly. The USA was and is the military protecting power, Germany picked up the peace dividends.
But those times are over, historically speaking, the relative stability of the past 30 years was the exception anyway. The Ukraine war now shows the strategic naivety in all clarity.
>>Read here: All current developments on the Ukraine war
If Germany had spent its two percent share of economic output on defense since the fall of the Wall, as promised, additional expenditures amounting to trillions would have been due. And that reflects only a small slice of what a stable world order is worth.
Europe and above all Germany have long indulged in a post-imperial illusion – and their societies have always indulged in latent anti-Americanism.
Joe Biden will conjure up the new western unit in Brussels. And he will demand a significantly higher contribution from Europeans to the defense of Western values - rightly so.
Europe talks a lot about emancipation, about the language of power that the continent needs to learn, and about geopolitical sovereignty. All of that is correct, only it still seems like wishful thinking.
America is back, yes. The question is how long it stays. There are presidential elections in 2024 – and a return of Trump, who during his term in office played a considerable part in the dismantling of a western-style world order, cannot be ruled out. Joe Biden would then begin his second term at the age of 82 if he were re-elected. This is not necessarily a promising scenario either. Europe doesn’t have much time to adjust its sometimes blue-eyed view of the world.
More on this: “The turning point is global”: New US ambassador sees lasting change in the world as a result of Putin’s war