Many European leaders are relieved now that most of the midterm results are in, the loss of Biden is not so bad. Yet experts foresee tensions between Europe and the US: is Europe doing enough on the geopolitical stage?
The United States has provided twice as much aid to Ukraine as the EU and its member states combined. Republicans are starting to notice. They say: why don’t Europeans do more? It’s their continent,” said Daniel Hamilton, a former senior civil servant and foreign specialist at Johns Hopkins University.
In Europe, the results of the midterm elections were greeted with some relief. Republicans won less than expected, while ex-President Trump’s protégés tended to outperform more moderate candidates. This makes the chance of Trump’s return in 2024 suddenly seem a lot smaller.
Analysts mainly expect continuity, as most Republicans support President Biden’s foreign policy. However, the game between the US and Europe will be played harder if the Republicans win the House of Representatives. Europeans will be pressured to do more for Ukraine and to take a stronger side with the US in its geopolitical power struggle against China.
Russian President Putin hoped for a major victory for the Trump-promoting wing that would spark disagreements over support for Ukraine. “Not a cent for Ukraine,” conspiracy theorist and extremist delegate Marjorie Taylor Greene said in her campaign. ‘Our country comes first.’
But the new Congress will continue to support Ukraine, says German political scientist Daniela Schwarzer, director of the think tank Open Society Foundation. “When Russia invaded Ukraine, Republicans strongly supported military aid to Ukraine and even criticized President Biden for not doing enough,” Schwarzer said.
However, a certain war fatigue will also appear in the US as the country enters a winter with high energy prices. That is why we will look more emphatically at Europe. America will continue to supply weapons, Hamilton expects, but will ask Europe to provide much more financial support to Ukraine. The United States spends 0.25 percent of its gross domestic product on aid to Ukraine, according to figures from the Institut für Weltwirtschaft in Kiel. The United Kingdom follows with 0.24 percent, but the large EU countries are considerably lower: Germany at 0.17 percent, France and Italy at 0.15 percent.
The EU talks a lot about ‘strategic autonomy’, says Daniel Hamilton of Johns Hopkins University, but the war has shown once again its security dependency on the US. Because strategic autonomy is an illusion for the time being, Hamilton prefers to speak of ‘strategic responsibility’. Is Europe doing enough to close the gap with the United States? By 2030, Europe should have half the capacity needed to deter Russia. Now it’s way below that. It is not even capable of doing smaller missions by itself. In their mission in the Sahel, the French depended on American intelligence,” said Hamilton, speaking at a webinar hosted by the European Policy Center think tank.
Joe Biden is often seen as arguably the most pro-European president America has ever had. Yet he does not shy away from tensions with the EU, in a world in which relations between the major power blocs are becoming increasingly tense. He recently passed Congress on the Inflation Reduction Act, a $369 billion package to combat climate change and promote clean technology development. The EU considers parts of the package protectionist. She fears the huge subsidies will lure investment in clean technology away from Europe. In addition, electric car subsidies are only available for vehicles produced in the US, while European subsidies are also given for the America Tesla. The EU and the US are negotiating this, but under a Republican Congress the chances of US concessions are only getting smaller.
Tensions between the US and the EU threaten to focus mainly on China. Democrats and Republicans see China as the biggest strategic threat to the US. To thwart China’s advances, President Biden recently banned the export of high-tech technology to that country. Europe was asked to join. The EU and its member states are hesitating: they want to reduce their dependence on China, but a country like Germany has just lost its cheap Russian gas and does not want to lose the lucrative Chinese market, at least not in the short term.
A Republican Congress pays little attention to such sensitivities. According to the German Mercator Institute for China Studies, Europe could eventually be hit by American sanctions if it refuses to follow the hard line against China. In that case, European companies would lose access to the US market if they continued to do business with China. Based on conversations with analysts and senior officials, Maja Rudge of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank summed up the Republican stance as follows: ‘We were there for the EU against Russia, now the EU must be there for us against China. If the EU is not there, there are enough issues to start a fight about.’