Last Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel congratulated Joe Biden on his inauguration, once again demonstrating Berlin’s willingness to cooperate with the new US administration. But it is not necessary to count on the normalization of relations between the two countries.
Biden and Blinken
The transatlantic crisis reached its peak during the presidency of Donald Trump, who openly put pressure on the European Union. In this regard, European leaders hoped that the rotation in the White House would at least slightly correct the situation. However, Tony Blinken, Biden’s protege as head of the US State Department, shows that the confrontation will continue, writes the German edition of “Frankfurter Allgemeine”.
Blinken has already announced his foreign policy course, in which there is an obvious conflict of interests with Germany. First of all, the Secretary of State called the right decision of Donald Trump to force allies to allocate more money for militarization. However, this position should not be surprising, the newspaper writes. The fact is that the decision on military spending in the amount of 2% of GDP was made back in 2014, when the Democrats were still in power in the United States.
The second stumbling block is the Nord Stream – 2 gas pipeline. At a Senate hearing, Blinken called the project a “bad idea,” while saying that the Biden administration would do everything to prevent the completion of construction.
Cooperation with China will also provoke disagreements between Berlin and Washington. The United States is dissatisfied with the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, so it has declared China an enemy. As it turned out from Blinken’s words, the Biden administration also does not consider this point of Trump’s destructive foreign policy to be extravagant. Only Germany is not particularly concerned about the strengthening of China. Moreover, Berlin sees this as an opportunity for profitable cooperation. Under the influence of Germany, the European Union even concluded an investment agreement with China.
The publication believes that such a situation in the international arena could push Europe to an alliance with China against the United States or force the EU to declare its neutrality. However, Berlin, which has long lost its strategic compass, hardly thinks about such issues, writes Frankfurter Allgemeine.