Do We Want Relations With Europe to Return to Normal?

I think that if anything Dominic Green understates our issues with Europe in his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

In 1945, most of Europe was nothing but rubble. By 1990 Western Europe had remade itself under American supervision and protection. The EU has since expanded to 27 states and sought to secure a place as an independent node in a multipolar world.

Strategic competition with the U.S. is a natural part of that effort. As Sweden’s then-Prime Minister Goran Persson said in June 2001, the EU is “one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to U.S. world domination.”

To develop that “balance,” France and Germany have cultivated strategic relationships with Russia, Iran and China. Britain has sought to balance its commitments to its European neighbors and its American patron, while being critical of Russia, equivocal on Iran and accommodating to China.

While the U.S. pushes for economic decoupling from China, Germany continues its strategic decoupling from the U.S. Germany, the biggest European investor in China, is open to Chinese 5G technology even though France and Britain have become skeptical. In November Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, was acclaiming Mr. Biden as a “committed transatlanticist.” At the same time, Angela Merkel was promising Xi Jinping that she would complete the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment by the end of the year. Ms. Merkel also remains committed to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia, which is nearly complete and would, a bipartisan consensus in Congress believes, damage Europe’s energy independence.

concluding

The Biden administration will claim that it has restored the old amity with Europe, but the EU’s new world is what it is: a growing strategic problem for the U.S., in which historic partners claim to be allies but act as they choose.

The Europeans, the Germans in particular, are fine with the U. S. as long as the U. S. pursues German and European interests at the expense of its own. Otherwise not so much. How is the euro in U. S. interests? How was German reunification in U. S. interests? How was bombing Serbia in U. S. interests? How was the round of NATO expansion that began during the Clinton Administration and concluded during the George W. Bush administration in U. S. interests? How was Germany’s routinely not living up to its NATO spending commitments in U. S. interests? How was ignoring Germany’s collusion with Iran in Iran’s nuclear development program in U. S. interests? I can see how all of those are in Germany’s interests but not ours or, indeed, in Europe’s.

How was removing Moammar Qaddafi in Libya in U. S. interests? I can see how that was in the UK and France’s interests but not ours. For the last 60 years we have routinely pursued other countries foreign policy interests, frequently at the expense of our own. Of course the Europeans like it that way. Why sh9ould we?

How can we credibly complain about China’s violations of the human rights of the Tibetans, Uyghurs, other ethnic minorities, and even the Han Chinese while the Europeans react to them with a wink and a nod?