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US President Joe Biden
Biden goes to Europe to talk Ukraine. Will it make a difference?
Wars can make or break political careers. They present opportunities for leaders to show off their statesman bonafides, or alternatively, to flounder.
The test is on this week for US President Joe Biden as he heads to Europe to shore up allied resolve against Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Biden likely hopes he can rally European countries to put further pressure on Moscow and force the Kremlin to make some concessions. Can he pull it off?
Biden on tour. On Wednesday, Biden flies to Brussels, where he’ll meet with NATO members and European leaders Thursday. He’ll say all the right things about the transatlantic relationship and America’s enduring commitment to European security interests.
Biden will then fly to Warsaw, where he’ll meet President Andrzej Duda as a show of solidarity amid the ballooning Ukrainian refugee crisis spilling over into Eastern Europe. Poland, which shares a 300-mile border with Ukraine, has absorbed roughly 2 million Ukrainian refugees thus far, and Polish society is already feeling the pinch of this massive absorption effort.
The leaders of Poland, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic visited Kyiv last week, and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said recently that Biden should make the trip to Ukraine in a show of support. But the White House has said there is no plan for Biden to visit Ukraine.
“This is a country at war,” US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield has said. “I can’t imagine that [a Biden visit to Kyiv] would be on the table.” But US presidents have visited war zones many times, and a Biden touchdown in Kyiv would send a powerful message to Ukrainians, and the Kremlin.
Heavy on symbolism, light on action. Washington and Brussels have already rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s requests to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine because Moscow would likely see it as an act of war. They’ve also balked at requests to provide Soviet-era fighter jets to Kyiv, claiming that this would bring NATO members into direct conflict with Moscow.
Still, transatlantic allies will be under pressure to announce something after this week’s summit. Washington has tried recently to get Turkey, a NATO member, to transfer the sophisticated Russian-made S-400 missile system to Ukraine, according to Reuters. But such a move would infuriate the Kremlin, and Ankara, which shares a maritime border with Kyiv and Moscow in the Black Sea, knows that it would be playing with fire.
But the West still has plenty of other options up its sleeves to inflict further pain on the Kremlin. Crucially, the EU is discussing measures targeting Russia’s energy exports, says Edoardo Saravelle, a former energy and economics researcher at the Center for a New American Security. “Biden’s presence could help build a consensus on Europe’s next step on energy. Much will depend on building so-called ‘sanctions resilience,’ that is, ensuring that Europe has the resources and support to weather potential economic collateral damage from additional sanctions on Russia,” Saravelle says.
Indeed, the United States and Europe could also announce new ways to tighten financial sanctions and target more high-profile Russians. “Given the high-profile nature of the trip and the general trend of transatlantic coordination in sanctions actions since the invasion,” Saravelle says, “it seems likely that some sanctions announcement will come from President Biden’s travel, even if short of the strongest energy measures.”
What else is on the agenda? The alliance might also try to establish a blueprint for easing – or lifting – crippling economic sanctions on Russia. Though Brussels and Washington have been in lockstep in recent weeks, it still isn’t clear what Western preconditions are for loosening the chokehold on Russia’s economy.
What’s more, the Biden administration says that Russia is preparing to use chemical weapons on Ukrainian civilians and to launch cyberattacks on American infrastructure. Haunted by the ghost of Syria’s past, will Biden establish a “red line” requiring Western military intervention?
The China equation. Amid reports that Vladimir Putin has called on Beijing to supply Moscow with weapons and economic support, President Biden held a long call with his Chinese counterpart last Friday in which he tried to dissuade President Xi Jinping from rescuing Moscow. Indeed, ahead of an upcoming EU-China virtual summit on April 1, Biden wants to make sure that the EU and US speak with a single voice when navigating relations with Beijing.
US-EU tensions aren't just a Trump problem
"Many European diplomats are already infatuated with Biden," a US-based analyst wrote in May about the so-called revival of the transatlantic relationship. Well, that assessment seems to have aged as well as an overripe banana.
This week, the EU advised member states to restrict travel from the US because of America's rising COVID infection rate. While that may be true, it could also be, at least in part, a retaliatory move: Brussels is furious that the Biden administration has refused to allow most Europeans to enter the country for 18 months, despite the bloc now having vaccinated more adults than the US.
Indeed, this tiff between Brussels and Washington is just the latest development amid ebbing relations between the two.
A leader the world respects? Since moving into the White House, Biden has portrayed himself as the anti-Trump: reliable, sincere and a loyal ally. Where his predecessor made a habit of berating and belittling allies, Biden has said "we need a leader the world respects," vowing to bolster bruised relations, particularly in Europe.
Yet, while Biden talks a nice game, many of his policies over the past seven months have in fact further irked some European allies, who say that the US president's "foreign policy for the middle class" — focused primarily on domestic issues like infrastructure and containing COVID — does not feel materially different from Trump's "America First" approach.
This was certainly the dominant view in big European capitals in recent weeks, as the US embarked on a go-it-alone approach in Afghanistan. Allies with skin in the game complained of being left in the lurch as the US pursued a unilateral evacuation plan. Germany and the UK, two of the biggest contributors to the NATO mission there, were particularly incensed, with the UK parliament issuing what some called an "unprecedented rebuke" of a US president.
What's Biden's game plan? Biden's short-term agenda is domestically focused, and one that he hopes will help the Democrats win midterm elections next year and keep control of the US Congress. Ending "forever wars," a view popular with US voters, is part of that agenda.
But in failing to consult with allies on how and when to pull out, Biden took a big gamble because now he needs his European partners to make progress on other key issues like climate change, data sharing, and China. (To date, Biden has found little support in pushing back hard against China from the EU, which, broadly speaking, has pursued engagement with Beijing.)
Indeed, getting the Europeans on side might get tougher. For instance, it could be harder for the US to continue dragging its feet on climate change if Germany goes greener under a left-leaning government after next month's election. Similarly, France's President Emmanuel Macron has long been pushing the EU to pursue a defense policy independent from the US, which is only going to be an easier sell after the Afghanistan debacle.
Are COVID restrictions the new steel tariffs? Like with the US-China rivalry, which devolved into tit-for-tat shenanigans, perhaps the EU is enforcing new COVID restrictions to get back at Washington. But Brussels is unlikely to do anything to really punish the Americans, because it needs the US — badly.
The US is the EU's largest trade and investment partner by a long shot, with more than 164,000 EU companies relying on exports to the US. The EU also depends on America's military might: "It would take decades for Europe to build up its conventional and nuclear military forces to compensate for what the United States and NATO currently contribute to the continent's security," Germany's defense minister said recently, pointing to the fact that the US accounts for 100 percent of NATO's missile defense capabilities, while much of Europe's own military hardware is in bad shape.
"Being likeable is not the same as being a good ally," Edward Luce writes in the Financial Times. Biden is certainly testing the limits of that approach. But will it backfire? Given the EU's reliance on the US, probably not.