Can a Biden administration repair the U.S. relationship with Turkey — a geostrategically important NATO ally whose partnership with Washington gradually deteriorated in the past few years?  Short of policy towards the big threats — Russia, China, North Korea, Iran—it is hard to think of a more important security issue facing the incoming team.  Turkey can be a critical player in helping the U.S. handle — or, if we get it wrong, mishandle — the first and last of those other threats. The importance of this pivotal Muslim country between Europe and the Middle East is much greater than commonly perceived.

The temptation for the incoming administration will be to punish Turkey for its many transgressions. The autocratic ways of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his heavy-handed military reprisal against Syrian Kurds — critical U.S. allies in defeating the Islamic State — and his purchase of Russian missile defense systems have left Ankara with few friends in Washington. Clearly, Erdogan’s Turkey is a country to shunt aside as much as possible, no?  Some would even have NATO’s other twenty-nine members kick Turkey out of the alliance, notwithstanding that there is no mechanism by which a NATO member can be expelled or even suspended.

Any of that would be a mistake. The United States should certainly speak up and openly criticize Erdoğan’s deepening autocracy. But in the meantime, it should also face reality. For all his own flaws, Erdoğan still leads an important country — and is still the only person that the United States can attempt to do business with even if there are major disagreements between the two countries. Moreover, for all of his mistakes in regard to the Syria conflict over the years, they are no worse than our own failures and missteps in the Middle East over the last two decades. Turkey is bearing the brunt of the Syrian conflict as much as any other neighbor, hosting as many as four million refugees who would otherwise likely flood western Europe.

Yes, Erdoğan’s friendliness with Putin is a major concern. But the alternative of a Russian-Turkish war that would drag the United States, as a NATO ally, into a conflict with Moscow would be much worse. After all,  Russia and Turkey are not natural partners. In fact, they are on the opposite sides of conflicts in Syria, Libya and the Caucasus between  Armenia and Azerbaijan. And in  2015 Turkey downed a Russian jet on its border with Syria — the first time a NATO country shot down a Russian plane in half a century.  As troubling as things are now, therefore, they could be much worse—and may get worse if we are not careful.

To put things on a better and less dangerous track, progress is needed in addressing two major problems with Turkey. They are not only impediments to improved bilateral relations, but real security issues in their own right with potentially large consequences for American and allied well-being if not handled adroitly. This is why instead of confronting Ankara with coercive diplomacy, the Biden administration should propose Turkey a conditional reset.

The urgent problem concerns the S-400 air defense system Turkey purchased from Russia. The less urgent but highly important second problem is Syria.

The S-400s will include Russian involvement in its operation—meaning that Moscow could gain intelligence about any aircraft flying in Turkish airspace, most notably the stealthy F-35 that Turkey was on track to purchase and helped build as a partner of the project. Without a resolution of this matter, Turkey’s role in the F-35 program will remain suspended, and it will not be able to acquire the aircraft. Moreover, the U.S. Congress stands ready to pass severe military and financial sanctions as further punishment against Ankara over the S-400.

Turkey recently tested but has not fully activated the S-400. If Erdoğan is serious about a reset, then Turkey should openly commit not to activate the radar, and declare its willingness to buy a NATO compatible system. In return, the Biden administration should declare that Turkey is reintegrated in the F-35 jet program and consider offering Turkey financial and potentially technical incentives for its purchase of Patriot missile-defense systems.

The transactional model for a reset with Ankara should also cover Syria. The war there is winding down—but the postwar situation is far from settled. Although U.S. support for Syrian Kurds has always targeted the Islamic State, Turkey believes Washington supports Kurdish autonomy and eventual statehood in northern Syria. Making things worse, the Syrian Kurds that Washington supports are part of a Kurdish rebel group, the PKK, officially designated as a terrorist organization by U.S. law. A reset of Turkish-American relations in Syria will therefore require major diplomatic acrobatics.

The Biden administration should not leave Syria and abandon the Kurds as Trump contemplated. Instead, it should find more convincing ways to prove Ankara that the U.S.-Kurdish military cooperation is about fighting the Islamic State, not pursuing Kurdish independence. In return for a clear Turkish military commitment against ISIS and after making progress towards a trilateral peace understanding between Syrian Kurds, the Assad regime and Turkey, the United States could phase down its security cooperation with Syrian Kurds. Behind the scenes, the Biden administration should also work for a peaceful solution to Turkey’s own Kurdish problem by putting pressure on the PKK to disarm.

With movement on these two issues, we can at least enter a period of successful transactional diplomacy and national security policymaking with Ankara. There will be no close relationship as long as Erdoğan is in power. But there need not, and must not, be anything akin to an adversarial relationship either.

       

Can the pain and destruction, the losses and gains from the recently reignited war over Nagorno-Karabakh be turned into peace?

While the world was fixated on the outcome of the U.S. elections and the ongoing drama of whether U.S. President Donald Trump would concede to President-elect Joe Biden, Russia appears to have achieved the near-impossible by arranging for a ceasefire between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The Kremlin has satisfied Azerbaijani leaders in Baku and their backers in the Turkish capital Ankara, though at the expense of Armenian leaders in Yerevan. The pattern echoes the Treaty of Kars signed almost a century ago, when Soviet Russia in 1921 compelled Armenia to cede territory to Turkey in Eastern Anatolia; this time, Armenia was forced to do the same, to the benefit of Azerbaijan in Karabakh.

Previous ceasefires did not hold, but this one, backed by Russian peacekeepers, appears to stand a chance. Achieving long-term peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia is a tall order. However, the Nov. 9 deal may offer the kind of opportunity the region has not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the conclusion of the initial war over Karabakh in 1994. The stars may be just adequately aligned for such an outcome, though this would require an acceptance that Russia is the dominant player. Nevertheless, a sustainable peace might help make that uncomfortable reality more palatable.

The stability and prosperity that would result from a settlement could help build the kind of mutual trust between the two nations to help them finally bury the hatchet and move on. To achieve this, both sides would have to abandon their maximalist demands driven by nationalism and opt for pragmatism. As unlikely as it may sound, Turkey could actually help.

The Reignited Conflict

The current round of hostilities erupted late in September when the Azerbaijan military went on the offensive with the stated objective of recapturing territories lost to Armenia in 1994, when a ceasefire ended two years of hostilities. At the time, Armenia occupied more than 4,200 square miles of Azerbaijan territory, an area a little smaller than Connecticut. Approximately one-third of this is the Karabakh region, where 150,000 Armenians live. The remaining two thirds of the territory is comprised of seven Azerbaijani regions around Karabakh, from which approximately half a million Azerbaijanis were displaced. Currently, Azerbaijan has one of the highest per capita concentrations of internally displaced people in the world, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

After the war, the Minsk group of countries led by France, Russia, and the United States was established to lead efforts to reach a peaceful solution to the conflict. Long years of negotiations resulted in the adoption of the Madrid principles in 2009 that call for Armenia to return the territories surrounding Karabakh to Azerbaijan in exchange for Baku accepting a referendum on Karabakh’s final political status. Such a peace never materialized. The frustration stemming from the failure to arrive at a settlement has long simmered in Azerbaijan and threatened the credibility of President Ilham Aliyev’s leadership.

Azerbaijan’s Military Offensive and the Russian Ceasefire

Against this backdrop, several additional factors motivated Azerbaijan to launch its offensive. Most important is the investment made in boosting the capabilities of the Azeri military, particularly with technologically advanced weapons, after it had been defeated so miserably in 1994, combined with the Armenian conviction in its invincibility, especially in a defensive war on mountainous terrain.

All the same, the launch of such an offensive by Azerbaijan would have been unthinkable without at least the acquiescence of Russia, which had established the Common Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in 1992 to provide collective security for a group of post-Soviet states, including Armenia (Azerbaijan never joined). The Kremlin had made its displeasure known with the increasingly pro-Western leanings of the government of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan that came to power after pro-democracy protests in Yerevan in 2018. Russia’s tacit acceptance of Azerbaijan’s offensive became especially visible when President Vladimir Putin, in the middle of the Azeri military advances, announced that the CSTO would not apply unless Armenia proper were to be threatened.

After several failed attempts at a ceasefire brokered by various members of the Minsk Group, Russia negotiated this deal on the heels of the Azeri military liberating four of the seven regions under Armenian occupation and then pushing on into Karabakh and capturing the historically Azeri town of Shusha, 10 miles from Stepanakert, the administrative center of Armenian-controlled Karabakh. A definitive human toll of the six weeks of heavy fighting has been difficult to establish independently, though Putin said in the aftermath of the deal that more than 4,000 had died, including civilians, and more than 8,000 had been injured.

The deal calls for a corridor linking Karabakh to Armenia proper, the 10-mile-long Lachin corridor, in return for a 30-mile-long corridor through Armenia linking Azerbaijan to the Azeri enclave of Nakhichevan bordering Turkey. The corridors would be policed by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). The agreement, however, is silent on the future status of Karabakh and how a final settlement of the conflict would be reached.

Advancing Peace

The toll of three decades of conflict has been heavy for Armenia. Diplomatic relations with Turkey remain ruptured since 1993, and its borders with both Azerbaijan and Turkey are closed, leaving only narrow stretches of border with Georgia and Iran to access the rest of the world. The economic consequences have been devastating, further deepening its dependence on Russia and complicating its transition towards a more democratic regime. The human cost and civilian suffering on both sides have been tragic.

Indeed, the deal brokered by Russia has been called a “stunted” one. For sure it has serious weaknesses, and it remains far from clear whether Russia has a genuine interest in a real peace between the two countries. The future role of the Minsk Group is unclear as well. Despite these uncertainties, the gloomy picture on the ground, and the deep historical enmities, the ceasefire agreement signed by the conflicting parties is a ray of hope. But for a more promising future to be realized, several conditions would need to be satisfied first.

Armenian leaders should revive the legacy of Levon Ter-Petrosian, the country’s first president after independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He advocated pragmatism and recognized the need to compromise to achieve peace. He was also deeply conscious of the importance of Armenia having good relations with Turkey. To achieve this, he was even willing to see the return of occupied territories. He warned the public in 1997, “The international community will not for long tolerate the situation created around Karabakh because that is threatening regional cooperation and security as well as [the] West’s oil interests … Karabakh has won the battle, not the war.”

Ter-Petrosian faced massive resistance from hardliners and was even accused of treason. He was eventually deposed in 1998. His line of thinking in Armenia continues to face resistance and as late as 2016 was condemned as a harmful “virus.”

Turkey could help manage this resistance and contribute to the creation of a climate that is more conducive to reconciliation. One possible immediate step would be to revive the ill-fated diplomatic accords that were negotiated with Armenia in 2009, especially with regard to the opening of the land border with Armenia. Since Azerbaijan has recovered a good part of its territories and assuming that Armenia does indeed withdraw from the remaining areas in keeping with the terms of the ceasefire, one of the major impediments to the implementation of the protocols will have been removed.

Numerous studies have shown how impactful the opening of the border would be in helping to improve the economic situation in Armenia and its access to the external world. It would also benefit Turkish provinces bordering Armenia where locals have long desired closer relations to boost their local economies. However, Turkey would have to proceed cautiously, recognizing that its unmitigated support of Azerbaijan reduces its credentials as an “honest broker.” To overcome this, Turkish leaders will need to adopt a narrative that is sensitive to how raw and intensely the physical and psychological wounds opened by the recent round of hostilities are felt among the Armenian public.

Unlikely Broker?

At first glance, expecting such an approach from the Turkish government may not seem realistic. Yet it was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who as prime minister oversaw the negotiation of the 2009 diplomatic protocols. The protocols also broached the very difficult issue of how to address the events leading to deaths and deportations of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Erdoğan also was the leader who took an important step towards reconciliation on that issue in 2014, when he announced in an official statement, published also in Armenian, the Turkish nation’s condolences to the families of Armenians killed during the First World War. Clearly, this falls well short of Armenian demands and expectations, but in the Turkish context, it marked, as one of us co-wrote later, “a fundamental change in the nation’s approach to comprehending and addressing the events of 1915.”

Ter-Petrosian had recognized the challenge. He once noted that adopting “a tough position vis-a-vis Turkey and confront[ing] it with the issues of the recognition of the Genocide… would not bring any advantages to the solution of the Karabakh problem.”

Of course, Turkish politics and foreign policy have become much more nationalistic and confrontational compared with the days when Turkey was hailed as a model for democratization and soft power. Yet, Erdoğan also has a pragmatic streak and recognizes the need to adjust his politics in order to address Turkey’s economic woes and international isolation. He has already signaled his interest in improving relations with the United States under President Biden and recognizes the prestige and leverage that opening borders with Armenia would bring him internationally.

Finally, the performance of the Azerbaijan military and the unequivocal support Erdoğan gave to Aliyev would enable the Turkish leader to placate the more nationalist elements of his power base. That’s especially true of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), led by Devlet Bahçeli, that is particularly closely allied with Erdoğan. Bahçeli represents hardline Turkish nationalism, staunchly pro-Azerbaijan. Yet, the founder of MHP, Alparslan Türkeş, was an avid supporter of better relations with Armenia. The late Türkeş held the first high-level official contact with Armenia when he met Ter-Petrosian in Paris in 1993. At the time, he had even suggested the idea of erecting a statute on the Turkish-Armenian border carrying the words “we are sorry for the sufferings.” This legacy of Türkeş could facilitate Erdoğan’s hand in overcoming potential domestic resistance to opening the border.

Much more challenging to such a Turkish initiative would be the complicated geopolitics of the south Caucasus. Russia has played its hand skillfully and reasserted its role in the region in a decisive manner. How would Russia perceive such an initiative from Turkey? Would Putin be willing to let a Ter-Petrosian legacy supportive of reconciliation with Turkey openly surface in Armenia? How would the thousands of people protesting Prime Minister Pashinyan’s acceptance of the Russian deal be persuaded to give the Turkish initiative a chance? Where would the Armenian diaspora that traditionally has supported maximalist demands come down on responding to such an initiative favorably? Similarly, how would leading Western powers such as the United States and France, as members of the Minsk Group, react?

No matter the answers to these questions, Turkey should seize this opportunity to take a bold diplomatic step in the direction of opening the border. And why not be so bold as to announce it unilaterally?

       

For all of us who care about strong trans-Atlantic relations based on democratic values, a Joe Biden presidency is a welcome change from the past four years. Whereas Donald Trump argued for decades that America’s allies have taken advantage of the country and during his administration even called the European Union a “foe,” Biden spent those years steeped in the conviction that America’s alliances, especially NATO, are one of the country’s greatest strengths.

While we won’t know which party controls the United States Senate until after the runoff elections in the State of Georgia in January, long-standing bipartisan support for NATO on Capitol Hill and among the broader public give the president-elect much more room to maneuver on this issue – unlike on important domestic issues like green energy and health care legislation, over which a Republican-controlled Senate would constrain Biden’s ambitions.

The real question moving forward is not whether a Biden presidency will treat Europe differently, but whether Europeans will have been so scarred by the Trump years that they remain wary of America’s future. The Biden victory, along with European nervousness about American politics, will provide a major opportunity for the U.S. and its European allies to rethink the nature of the trans-Atlantic relationship. Meanwhile, the growing China challenge will loom large over the trans-Atlantic community in the coming years. While there is increasingly a bipartisan consensus in Washington over the threat China poses to American interests, forging trans-Atlantic consensus will require skillful diplomacy.

What Biden Is Likely to Do

It’s no wonder that Europeans breathed a sigh of relief when Joe Biden was officially projected to become the next President of the United States. Over the past four years, the German-American relationship especially has suffered. Trump has dubbed Chancellor Angela Merkel “stupid,” called Germany “very bad” for its U.S. trade surplus, and threatened to punish Berlin for not meeting NATO defense spending targets, all the while cozying up to authoritarian leaders in Europe and its neighborhood.

Joe Biden, by contrast, is a committed internationalist and trans-Atlanticist. Despite the political gridlock he will likely face at home, his victory is, at least in principle, good news for European officials. One who is sure to be relieved is Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who recently stressed the necessity of a European Green Deal. While Biden’s climate plan is not a Green New Deal for the United States, the president-elect has vowed to rejoin the Paris climate accord on his first day in office and (like the EU) to cut U.S. emissions to net zero by 2050. Another reason Biden will be a friendlier face to Europeans is his intention to reset trans-Atlantic trade and economic relations. To avoid further spirals of protectionism, his administration will look for ways to end the “artificial trade war” pursued by President Trump against the EU.

When it comes NATO, Biden considers the alliance essential to American national security and to protecting liberal democracy around the world. For Europeans facing an increasingly aggressive Russia and a more globally assertive China, an American president committed to common defense is a welcome development. Biden has vowed to seek an extension of the New START treaty for strategic arms control with Russia and reduce the role of nuclear weapons, a priority for many Europeans.

The Opportunity for a Rethink of the Trans-atlantic Relationship

The United States remained committed to NATO at the end of the Cold War three decades ago because it believed it needed to remain in charge of European security. U.S. officials saw their dominant role in European security as necessary to keep the peace on the continent and take advantage of the opportunities presented by the collapse of the Soviet Union to help foster a Europe “whole and free,” eliminating the sources of conflict that had bedeviled it during the 20th century.

Europeans generally saw the situation the same way in the early 1990s. The leaders of France, the United Kingdom, and Poland worried about the future course of a united Germany. Europe’s inability to stop the genocide in Bosnia was a reminder of the role the United States still needed to play to keep the peace. The newly free Central and Eastern Europeans feared that their futures would be more uncertain vis-à-vis Russia if the United States decided not to maintain and even enlarge its post-World War II role in Europe.

In the Obama years, Europeans worried about the U.S. commitment to Europe waning as America “pivoted” to Asia. Trump’s attitudes led to fears that the United States would actually leave NATO, something that was likely to happen in a second Trump term. The U.S. recognition that it needs to focus more attention on Asia, compounded by European unease regarding the steadiness of the American commitment, provides a great opportunity in a Biden presidency to rethink the nature of the trans-Atlantic relationship.

The United States no longer has to believe NATO needs to serve as a vehicle for American domination of European security. The United States plays an important role, providing extended nuclear deterrence, lending capabilities when necessary for particular missions, and serving as a coordinator between Asian and European democracies to address the challenge from key authoritarian states. NATO remains important for trans-Atlantic security cooperation, but an overbearing U.S. role in Europe should no longer be necessary.

Reimagining the relationship requires that Europe prioritize building its defense capabilities, as German officials such as Kramp-Karrenbauer are suggesting, and Chancellor Merkel has indicated. The U.S. should encourage those efforts, even if they are primarily achieved through European Union mechanisms rather than NATO. Greater U.S.-EU and EU-NATO coordination is long overdue. As the U.S. continues rebalancing its foreign policy toward Asia, it can only do so successfully with a stronger Europe able to act more independently in its own neighborhood. The U.S.-Europe security relationship should evolve from one of dominance and subordination to one of supportive partners.

Are We All China-Focused Now?

More than anything, the Biden administration’s overarching priority beginning in January 2021 will be to rehabilitate American leadership through a renewed focus on democracy – at home and abroad. The president-elect has pledged to organize a global Summit for Democracy during his first year in office to “strengthen our democratic institutions, honestly confront nations that are backsliding, and forge a common agenda.” For Biden, such groupings will be a first line of defense against the challenge posed by China, not only in creating a united front against the Chinese Communist Party’s egregious human rights violations, but also in developing alternatives to Huawei.

Both domestically and internationally, the president-elect is in luck on this part of his agenda. In Washington, no foreign policy issue has more bipartisan support than getting tough on China. Given the likelihood that Biden’s most ambitious efforts on domestic policy will be stymied if the GOP maintains control of the Senate, seeking agreement on China policy, and particularly on trade, may be the place to start. When it comes to trans-Atlantic priorities too, Europeans are more prepared to get tough on China than ever before. And Biden actually borrows a line from the European playbook vis-à-vis China, suggesting that he recognizes that the threat it poses is disanalogous to that posed by the USSR during the Cold War. In an echo of the March 2019 EU-China Strategic Outlook, which described China as a “negotiating partner,” “economic competitor,” and “systemic rival,” Biden argues that the U.S. must both “get tough on China” and find ways to cooperate with it on transnational crises like climate and health.

Europeans and Americans alike know that balancing toughness and cooperation with China is an easier task to accomplish jointly than separately. But Europeans are likely to remain at arm’s length of the United States even under the Biden administration. Despite the Republican loss of the White House, strong turnout for Trump confirmed that his presidency was no aberration. Although Trump will be out of the Oval Office on January 20, Trumpism in the GOP – the Grand Old Party, the Republicans – is here to stay. Nonetheless, Biden’s win is a much-needed reminder to trans-Atlantic allies that close relations are back at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy. While there is no guarantee that the collaboration we will see in the Biden years will continue after 2025, the agenda for the near future is clear: reimagining the U.S. security relationship with Europe from domination toward more equal partnership, coordinating as Europe seeks to develop greater defense capacities, and seeking consensus in the face of the rise of China.

       

After several anxiety-filled rollercoaster days following the recent U.S. presidential election, it is now all but certain that Joe Biden will become America’s next president on January 20, 2021. Whether Democrats also take control of the Senate depends on the outcome of two crucial runoff votes in Georgia on January 5. The more erratic and outrageous President Donald Trump’s behavior is in the coming weeks, the greater the chances of the Democrats flipping those seats.

But whatever happens in Georgia, Europe and much of the world have breathed a sigh of relief at Biden’s victory. The dominant global narrative in recent years has been the inexorable retreat of multilateralism and the rise of dangerous forms of great-power rivalry, even as huge challenges such as climate change, possible new pandemics, cyberattacks, and the misuse of new technologies require a coordinated global response. But this mismatch isn’t inevitable. Biden’s triumph at least creates the possibility of much greater international cooperation to confront these threats—and Europe needs to play a prominent role.

The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, has previously outlined the bloc’s global strategy. It involves increasing Europe’s geostrategic cohesion and strategic autonomy, while reaching out to others and supporting universal principles, plurilaterally if necessary and multilaterally whenever possible. These two pillars are complementary but also reinforcing. A more cohesive and strategically autonomous EU can be more effective in seeking multilateral solutions, while a more cooperative world order would help to boost the bloc’s influence and vindicate its raison d’être.

A key question now is how Europe can work with the Biden administration to advance such cooperation by example, through initiatives that would crowd in support for multilateralism in the United States and elsewhere. Several possibilities stand out.

For starters, the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging on both sides of the Atlantic, and threatens the economic recovery. Notwithstanding recent encouraging news on the vaccine front, supporting the global economy will remain an immediate priority, together with making vaccines available worldwide.

To raise more resources on a global scale, the EU could propose a new $500 billion issuance of Special Drawing Rights (the International Monetary Fund’s global reserve asset) with the provision that rich countries make a portion of their new SDRs available to less developed countries, as Joseph Stiglitz and others have long argued. This would help the poorest countries while increasing the IMF’s overall lending capacity, notably to emerging-market economies hit hard by the crisis. Preventing an emerging-market debt crisis is important for the overall global recovery, including for more robust growth in the U.S. and Europe.

Although a new issuance of SDRs may receive some bipartisan U.S. support, the Biden administration could vote for it at the IMF in its first 100 days without explicit Senate consent. Such an early win for transatlantic cooperation could then open the door to other initiatives.

Moreover, such a proposal could be accompanied by France and Germany giving up one percentage point of their combined IMF quota of 9.84 percent and agreeing to a single joint executive director on the boards of the Fund and the World Bank, without waiting for the protracted negotiations on quota reform to conclude. This would demonstrate their sincere commitment to renewed and reformed multilateralism.

On trade and taxation, the EU could urge the U.S. to support and reform the World Trade Organization and seek common ground on digital trade issues within the WTO framework. The bloc could take the lead in settling its dispute with America over state subsidies to Boeing and Airbus. It could also commit to refraining from unilateral taxation of digital services, provided the U.S. joins the OECD-led global negotiations, and, more broadly, seek to persuade the U.S. to cooperate on global corporate-taxation rules.

On the big issue of climate change, Biden has already promised to rejoin the 2015 Paris agreement immediately, and he favors introducing carbon border taxes. The EU could declare that it wants to coordinate such a border adjustment tax with the U.S., which would in effect establish a sort of customs union. By its economic pull alone, such an arrangement would compel other countries to join an environmental “race to the top,” although less developed countries would need transitional support.

On defense, most of the EU’s 21 NATO members should increase their financial contributions to the alliance and coordinate a common strategic approach that emphasizes emerging needs linked to cybersecurity and biosecurity. Seeing Europeans become more invested in their own defense will make America more comfortable with military burden sharing.

To encourage much-needed reform of the United Nations Security Council, France could declare its readiness to use its veto only if it reflects the wish of a double majority in the EU, representing at least half the bloc’s members and 60 percent of its total population. Although France would keep its permanent seat on the Security Council, such a bold move would create a de facto EU seat. And rather than being a merely symbolic act, it could help spur progress on the formation of a new council reflecting today’s geopolitical, economic, and demographic realities.

Both the U.S. and the EU will need to pay sustained attention to the very difficult issues in their relations with China and Russia. In particular, their approach to China should recognize the country’s growing capabilities and give it the option of being part of a new multilateral order, provided it respects a rules-based system.

Europe will welcome a stronger and more sincere U.S. stance on human rights. It should also engage with the U.S. regarding Biden’s proposed summit of a “coalition of democracies,” but urge caution in view of the difficulty of deciding whom to invite. A too-inclusive list would signal a lack of sincerity, while an overly restrictive one would risk antagonizing all excluded countries. It would be better to invite a large number of countries to a summit to discuss progress on human rights and democratic freedoms rather than launch a formal new coalition of democracies.

European initiatives of the type suggested above would help the Biden administration. They could also strengthen the position and resolve of those in America who want to help build a new, open, and more equitable international order fit for the 21st century.

       

The U.S. election was watched closely around the world, with foreign leaders acutely aware that in some ways, the result of the presidential campaign could have major impacts on their future relations with the United States.

As Joe Biden prepares to enter the White House in January, what questions or concerns is he likely to hear from his counterparts in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America, as well as officials from international institutions? Below, Brookings Foreign Policy experts channel the priorities — and in many cases anxieties — of foreign capitals as Washington approaches a leadership change.

       

On Monday, November 16, Foreign Policy at Brookings hosted a conference to consider these questions and other implications of the next U.S. administration for the future of the international order and trans-Atlantic cooperation. Questions from the audience followed the discussion.

Viewers submitted questions via email to events@brookings.edu or on Twitter using #BBTI.

This event was part of the Brookings – Robert Bosch Foundation Transatlantic Initiative, which aims to build up and expand resilient networks and trans-Atlantic activities to analyze and work on issues concerning trans-Atlantic relations and social cohesion in Europe and the United States.