A Post Western- West?

• Author: Kimmage, Michael C.

"You can't repeat the past," a character is told in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, to which he grandly replies, "Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can!" Condemned to live in the present, President Joe Biden has been hurrying to restore the transatlantic relationship, and Western Europe has welcomed partnership with the United States post-Donald Trump. Central Europe has breathed a sigh of relief. Having returned to strategic clarity on Europe, the Biden administration is giving its consistent support to NATO. It has abandoned President Trump's serial calls for friendship with Russian president Vladimir Putin. It is imposing costs on Moscow, while highlighting the divide between an autocratic Russia and those of its neighbors that aspire to democracy. Biden champions multilateralism and the further integration of the European Union.

This is the path forward endorsed by the lion's share of foreign-policy experts and DC think tanks. Without a robust transatlantic relationship, Russia and China will become unmanageable for the United States. Russia profits from division within Europe and from division between Europe and the United States. In Putin's eyes, such division has the potential to upend sanctions, to create ad-hoc partnerships with willing European governments, and to solidify a sphere of influence on Russia's western flank. Meanwhile, Russia's partner China has integrated its economic, military, technological, diplomatic, and cultural might in ways that cry out for a transatlantic counter-response. Transatlanticism augments democracy promotion and collective security in Europe and Asia, augmenting an international order shaped by deliberation and cooperation.

Obvious as all of this may be in theory, transatlantic partnership is proving tricky in practice. So far, the Biden administration has taken a rather technocratic approach to the transatlantic relationship. Its emphasis has fallen on the common toolbox of diplomacy in hopes that a shared set of interests will help to manage its top-priority challenges, from geopolitics (China and Russia) to global public health to the many policy conundrums that follow from climate change. So far, Biden has yet to achieve any major victories with Europe, and the recent Afghanistan and nuclear submarine debacles have worsened the pre-existing fissures: continued European worries that the United States is, as Angela Merkel said of Trump's America, "unreliable," and continued American frustration with the sorry state of a European foreign policy. Germany and the European Union are also not convinced by the claim that China is no longer a partnet and unambiguously a threat. Quite the contrary. They see America as tracing a return to antedated Cold War impulses. On Russia, Berlin has gotten Washington to pull back on Nord Stream II sanctions, much to the consternation of Ukraine and its champions. Then there is the Middle East. On the Arab-Israeli conflict and on Russia policy, Europe and the United States are not perfectly coordinated. Europe and the United States have a common toolbox. But do they have a common vision?

Historically, transatlanticism has never depended on having the best foreign policy on paper. It has depended on a firm cultutal foundation, which at mid-century was the West or Western civilization. The architects of the Marshall Plan and the NATO alliance had the West as their beau ideal, as did those tasked with turning Germany from the saboteur of global order into an anchor of European stability. Long out of date, the cultural configurations of the transatlantic relationship have not since been rethought. As Europe and the United States continue to contend with populism...