BERLIN — Joe Biden took office nearly four years ago on a mission to repair America’s relationship with Europe — and then Vladimir Putin swept in and did it for him.
Biden is due to arrive in Germany on Thursday night for a brief visit to both celebrate the new spirit of transatlantic solidarity and discuss what the West can do to hamper the Russian president’s progress in Ukraine.
Little since World War II has done as much to tighten transatlantic bonds as the Russian leader’s all-out assault on Ukraine. Yet behind the display of transatlantic bonhomie, the real question is whether any of their efforts will matter in a few weeks.
While America’s relationship with Europe might be stronger than ever, it’s also fundamentally at risk. For all the inevitable talk about the importance of the alliance between their two nations, Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have left the world with a frozen conflict in Ukraine. And in less than three weeks, things could look even worse for the Ukrainians.
A victory in the U.S. presidential election by Donald Trump, who has cast doubt on continued American support for Kyiv, and has even refused to say whether he wants Ukraine to win the war, would thrust U.S.-European relations into crisis overnight.
Put simply, Europe lacks both the leadership and the wherewithal to fill the gap a U.S. withdrawal of support for Ukraine would create. What’s more, given the former president’s musings about leaving NATO, a Trump win would prompt countries like Germany to focus more on bolstering their own security instead of continuing to aid Ukraine.
That’s why Biden’s visit to Berlin promises to be more of a counseling session than a valediction. Scholz is already getting out the tissues.
“The American president also stands for an incredible improvement in cooperation in recent years,” Scholz said in parliament on Wednesday. “I am looking forward to his visit and I am grateful for the good cooperation.”
Germans’ collective memory of Trump’s 2016-2020 presidency — and his surprising obsession with their country — is as palpable as ever. Trump regularly clashed with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel over security and trade issues. In one particularly memorable exchange at a G7 meeting in 2018, Trump threw two pieces of candy in Merkel’s direction and said: “Here, Angela, don’t say I never gave you anything.”
In the final stages of his presidency, Trump became so frustrated with the Germans over their lagging defense spending that he ordered the Pentagon to withdraw about 12,000 American troops stationed in Germany, about one-third of the total. Biden later reversed that decision.
It’s little wonder that more than 80 percent of Germans believe a Trump reelection would have a negative impact on transatlantic relations, according to a recent survey by Körber Stiftung, a German foundation.
In contrast to Trump, Biden bent over backwards — long before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — to soothe German fears about Washington’s commitment to their security.
Just a few weeks after taking office in 2021, Biden participated in the Munich Security Conference, albeit virtually from the White House.
“The transatlantic alliance is a strong foundation — the strong foundation — on which our collective security and our shared prosperity are built,” he said in his address. “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.”
In the months that followed, Biden appointed a parade of Germany-friendly officials to key positions on the National Security Council and in the State Department. That group included Julie Smith, the current U.S. ambassador to NATO, who previously lived in Berlin for a year and is well connected in the German power structure.
In early 2022 Biden dispatched Amy Gutmann as his ambassador to Germany. Seeking to draw a sharp contrast between herself and her predecessor, Ric Grenell, Donald Trump’s outspoken envoy, Gutmann never missed an opportunity to praise her hosts.
Gutmann, whose Jewish father was forced to flee the Nazis, regularly lauded the Germans for their public reckoning with their World War II history, a legacy she once compared to that of the U.S.
“We also have a history, a disgraceful history of slavery in our country,” she told reporters after arriving in Berlin. “And it is important that we also show by our actions, not just our words, how much we stand strong for human rights and stand with our Ukrainian sisters and brothers.”
For official Germany, which had spent four years fretting about what special torment Trump might have in store for them next, the rhetoric from Biden and his surrogates was a welcome salve.
Ukraine’s back against the wall
Against that backdrop, the relationship between Biden and Scholz, who took office just weeks before the Russian invasion in February 2022, was close from the get-go.
For Scholz, a Social Democrat whose party had toyed with the idea of ordering the removal of U.S. nukes from German soil, the Russian invasion was a come-to-Jesus moment. Scholz immediately reversed course, setting up a €100 billion special fund to begin the arduous work of rebuilding the German military, which the country’s leaders had let atrophy in the decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Three years later, however, it’s clear that — much like Germany’s efforts to aid Ukraine — the impressive headline figures belie a plodding process that ultimately hasn’t worked.
Germany still hasn’t secured long-term funding for its defense budget, and it will take decades for Germany’s military stocks to reach 2004 levels at the current procurement rate, according to a recent analysis by Bruegel, a Brussels think tank.
At the same time, Germany’s initially sluggish approach to aiding Ukraine with tanks and other key weapons gave Russia the time it needed to regroup from early setbacks.
Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged in an interview this week that the failure by many Western allies to provide Ukraine with the military aid it needed before the invasion had opened the door to Putin.
“Today, I think that the lack of military support made the Russian invasion easier,” he told German weekly Der Spiegel. “Some allies delivered weapons, but in retrospect it wasn’t enough.”
Though he didn’t mention Germany by name, it was the biggest laggard, delivering just €44 million worth of gear from 2014 to 2022, compared to €1.6 billion worth of equipment sent by France.
Even though Scholz, following the U.S. lead, ultimately turned Germany into Europe’s largest contributor of arms to Ukraine — and second overall after the U.S. — it hasn’t been enough for Ukraine to keep Russia on the defensive. (Germany has committed about €11 billion in military aid to Ukraine so far, compared to €57 billion from the U.S.)
While no Western countries have done more to help Ukraine in absolute terms, there are no medals for finishing first if Ukraine loses the grinding fight.
Indeed, in recent months, Russia has made steady progress along the front lines, leaving Ukraine’s back against the wall.
“Scholz and Biden’s strategy of boiling the frog slowly in Ukraine did not really work,” said Jana Puglierin, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “We are now two and half years into the war and we did not manage to change Putin’s mind or enable any concessions. They kept Ukraine in the game, but they might not be around for the final showdown.”
If nothing else, Biden’s visit to Berlin — which was originally scheduled for earlier this month but was delayed due to a hurricane in the U.S. — will offer the two leaders time to reflect on what they should have done differently.
Normally, U.S. presidential visits to Germany are grand, hotly anticipated affairs. Yet Biden’s farewell trip has mostly generated yawns.
That has a lot to do with the fact that both men are lame ducks. Scholz’s three-party coalition has been on the rocks for months, and he’s unlikely to serve another term as chancellor; he might even end up ‘doing a Biden’ before Germany’s 2025 election.
Meanwhile, Biden’s visit, instead of cementing his legacy in Europe, will likely be little more than a reminder of what might have been. Ultimately both he and Scholz will be remembered for doing a lot — but not nearly enough.
