The 7Ds - De-risking Globalisation in Depth: Strengthening Transatlantic Relations

With regard to the US, the goal to de-risk globalisation coalesces around three central issues of the transatlantic relationship. The first is a leadership problem, which has bedevilled relations since the Obama administration. More recently, both the traditional leadership role of the US and Europeans’ willingness to follow its lead have been undermined by shifting geopolitical landscapes and the emergence of new global challenges, such as the energy crisis in Europe, the rise of authoritarianism, the upsurge of populism, threats related to pandemics, vulnerabilities linked to critical infrastructure, pressures stemming from climate change and a general surge in global violence.

This leads to the second issue: capability. The US is currently focusing on security challenges in the Asia–Pacific region, and some US politicians are advocating isolationism. Moreover, new types of security threats are emerging in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the renewed violence in the Middle East.

The third challenge is a solidarity problem. Like the issues already described, it has several sources. The most prominent of these is the growing sense of disillusionment among European leaders and citizens regarding the commitment of the US to the rules-based international order that it built after the Second World War. Certainly, the Trump administration’s ‘America First’ foreign policy and its rejection of multilateralism propelled this disillusionment. However, the Biden administration’s attempt to engineer a comparative advantage through its Inflation Reduction Act, its CHIPS and Science Act, and its Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has given Europeans the feeling that Biden has pulled the rug out from under his promised ‘we’re back’ multilateral foreign policy—at least when it comes to free trade. Other factors that have undermined transatlantic solidarity include divergent views on how to interact with China, how to address climate change and (during the Trump years, in any event) how to deal with Iran. Domestic factors on both sides of the Atlantic, such as the increasing political polarisation, are creating pressures that make it still more difficult to pursue a common transatlantic foreign policy agenda on de-risking globalisation.