How Ukraine is Impacting the Transatlantic Relationship

by GILES MERRITT

As spring turned to summer this year, Europe’s leaders were undergoing a significant mind shift. Their longstanding concerns over internal wrangling in the European Union were replaced by fears over Europeans’ increased vulnerability to external threats.

Europeans are worried, of course, about Russia’s ability to do them harm. But they are also unsure of America. Decades of unquestioning reliance on U.S. cooperation and support are giving way to doubt and suspicion.

Transatlantic relations are nothing if not resilient, but they now require careful nursing. Russia’s war in Ukraine is transforming Europe’s neglect of energy and defense policies into a dangerous wedge dividing the United States from the European Union.

Europe has — understandably, but also unforgivably — been sleepwalking towards disaster in both of these areas. Its priorities have been the complex economic and political integration of so many different cultures. “A horse and rabbit stew” is how the EU was sometimes described, even before the Berlin Wall fell and its ‘Big Bang’ enlargement to almost 30 members made it more heterogeneous still.

Europe’s awakening has been shocking and sudden. “How could we,” ask politicians and business leaders,”have allowed ourselves to depend for energy on an unreliable Russia led by a hostile Vladimir Putin?” As they scramble to design emergency oil and gas strategies, Europeans also cast envious looks across the Atlantic.

“Could America’s commitment to NATO’s collective security extend to energy?” ask some politicians. With major U.S. oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil “making more money than God,” as President Joe Biden reportedly put it, and with winter looming, these politicians wonder if transatlantic solidarity might somehow come to Europe’s rescue.

In the face of irresistible energy market forces, it is hard to see how this will occur. As Europeans shiver and see their industries collapse, the reality will be that they will also be treated to the spectacle of near-normality across the pond in America. The fact that Europeans’ otherwise admirable environmental policies have compounded their energy problems won’t diminish their resentment. The widening transatlantic “energy gap” will need delicate handling in Washington and Brussels. Relatively cosseted societies in the EU and U.S. have scarcely given a thought to energy other than over climate change, But that’s about to change. It is going to vex EU cohesion, but also Europe’s links with the U.S. There will, though, be the countervailing force of mutual security in response to Putin’s aggression. It may be that the need to Giles Merritt show strength through unity within NATO will compensate for tensions

Russia’s war over energy and other economic in Ukraine is issues dividing the U.S. and EU. But it is a hugely unbalanced relationship, transforming Europe’s with Europe’s defense shortcomings a neglect of energy and constant U.S. irritation. “Ukraine fatigue” could, defense policies into meanwhile, spread in Europe if a dangerous wedge Putin were to unblock grain exports dividing the United and slow his army’s advance in the Donbas region. The arrival of millions

States from the of fleeing Ukrainians is already

European Union. giving rise to discontent. Germany, threatened by recession and its first trade deficit in living memory, has identified the arrival of 700,000 refugees from Ukraine as a factor in its rising unemployment levels. Eight million newcomers whose length of stay cannot be determined are weighing heavily on social security and housing arrangements across Europe, and in Poland most of all. Warm-hearted initial responses are cooling now that the influx is twice that of initial estimates. Despite valiant

efforts by UN agencies and the EU, burden-sharing tensions epoch-changing pledge to abandon its pacifist leanings and are beginning to sour intra-European relations. spend €100 billion on its armed services is important, but

No one can say how effectively Europeans will handle will probably take 20 years to bear fruit. The same goes for Putin’s long-term threat to their security. The upbeat talk in all except France and Britain. Madrid at NATO’s annual summit could not disguise the The bottom line on the challenges now facing Europe is years of penny-pinching that they demand a degree on defense. By way of contrast, the U.S. has It may be that the need to show of sympathy and support from the United States that almost doubled to 100,000 strength through unity within NATO has not lately been much its troop levels in Europe, will compensate for tensions over in evidence. American and now accounts for twothirds of the forces along energy and other economic issues public opinion has become more isolationist, yet the NATO’s eastern flank. dividing the U.S. and EU. deepening global contest

This uncomfortable between democracies and reliance on U.S. military autocracies clearly points power is complicated by lingering doubts in Europe as to to where U.S. self-interest lies. RF America’s reliability. President Donald J. Trump’s cavalier attitude to the alliance — indeed, his implicit suggestion Giles Merritt has reported and commented from Brussels the U.S. should withdraw from it — is not forgotten. The on European affairs since 1978, first as a Financial Times possibility that some future U.S. administration might tear staff correspondent and then as an Op-Ed contributor to up the hitherto sacrosanct Washington Treaty lurks at the the International Herald Tribune. He is the founder of the back of many Europeans’ minds. prominent EU policies think tank Friends of Europe and

There will certainly be a drive on defense spending author of the ‘Slippery Slope: Europe’s Troubled Future’ within Europe, but there can be no quick fix. Germany’s (Oxford University Press 2016).