The Foreign Service Journal, June 2021

34 JUNE 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Robert E. Hunter served as U.S. ambassador to NATO (1993-1998), director of West European and then Middle East affairs at the National Security Council (1977-1981) and foreign policy adviser to Senator Edward Kennedy (1973-1977), among many other positions in trans-Atlantic relations. Ambassador Hunter is currently a member of the Ambassador Partnership and the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Diplomacy. Hello, Europe— America Is Back The trans-Atlantic agenda goes beyond undoing Trump. Here is a sober look at the issues from a veteran diplomat. BY ROBERT E . HUNTER J oe Biden’s election as U.S. president was greeted with great relief by almost all Europeans. His first major foreign policy speech, at February’s virtual Munich Secu- rity Conference, added to European confi- dence as he declared, “America is back.” There is much to be coming “back” from. Allied concerns about America under President Donald Trump stemmed only in part from his blustering style and retreat from American commitments abroad, including the World Health Organiza- tion, the Paris Climate Accord, the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and work on the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. At least as important, if not more so, “America is back” is welcomed in Europe as repudiating Trump’s refusal to say he ON GREAT POWER COMPETITION TODAY FOCUS would honor the core U.S. commitment to European allies: the Washington Treaty’s Article 5, which declares that an attack on one signatory will be considered an attack on all. Ironically, if any ally had been attacked, it was virtually certain that Trump would have responded militarily, as being in America’s irreduc- ible security interests; uncertainty, however, is the enemy of both confidence and deterrence. Further, Trump had decided to reduce U.S. military forces in Germany. This was not particularly important in terms of com- bat power (given U.S. and other NATO allies’ military deploy- ments in Central Europe), but symbolically it was immense. Biden immediately put that decision on hold. Yet “America is back” only takes the United States, the alli- ance and U.S.-European relations so far. In his Munich speech, Biden said: “We are not looking backward; we are looking forward, together. It comes down to this: The trans-Atlantic alliance is a strong foundation— the strong foundation—on which our collective security and our shared prosperity are built. The partnership between Europe and the United States, in my view, is and must remain the cornerstone of all that we hope to accomplish in the 21st century, just as we did in the 20th century.” An excellent beginning, but only that. There is an extensive trans-Atlantic agenda; meeting it is not just a matter of undoing Trump. The world has moved on.