Biden team looks to repair US ties with Europe in first NATO meet
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and President Joe Biden bump fists in greeting at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., on Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021. Biden on Wednesday paid tribute to Black Americans serving in the military during his first visit to the Pentagon since taking office, vowing to embrace diversity as a strength at a time of racial reckoning inside the Defense Department. (Oliver Contreras/The New York Times)
US President Joe Biden’s administration will begin the work of renewing the United States’s relationships with its European allies when NATO defence ministers participate in meetings this week.
The two-day meeting, to be held via teleconference on Wednesday and Thursday, is expected to set a more cooperative tone in transatlantic relations as Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin makes his debut.
Biden also will deliver remarks to the annual Munich Security Conference at the end of the week.
“You have such a huge difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in their attitudes towards Europe,” said James Goldgeier, a professor of international relations at American University in Washington, DC.
“It makes a big difference that we now have a president who is committed to transatlantic relations, adding that Biden has been “steeped in these issues for decades so that’s a relief for the Europeans”.
A greater emphasis on working with allies will be a shift from the more confrontational approach of the previous Trump administration.
Trump had repeatedly confronted NATO nations with demands they spend more on defence and further irritated European leaders by repeatedly making unilateral decisions and expecting US allies to agree to them.
“Trump was the most anti-European president of the post-World War II era. He viewed allies as harmful,” Goldgeier said.
Discussions during the NATO defence ministerial meeting are expected to revolve around a set of proposals put forward by a NATO 2030 study group calling for the alliance to adapt to changing security conditions.
