oe Biden’s defeat of Donald Trump caused widespread relief in European capitals.
Berlin was particularly relieved after four years in which relations with the US badly deteriorated.
However, Trump’s legacy has accelerated trends in the transatlantic relationship which means that transatlantic relations will likely never be the same again.
There was a huge collective sigh of relief in Berlin when it became clear that Joe Biden had beaten Donald Trump in the presidential election earlier this month.
“People were so relieved that Biden won because there was not really a plan B in case Trump won,” said Jana Puglierin, head of the Berlin office for the European Council on Foreign Relations. “I cannot think of anybody who was not relieved in political Berlin.”
There is a widespread consensus in European capitals that the Democratic challenger’s victory will be a good thing for the transatlantic relationship, and the prospect of a president in the White House who supports rather than attacks multilateral institutions like NATO and the EU is a welcome one.
Nonetheless, there is also a recognition that Biden’s presidency will not return to that of the Obama years, or those before. The sheer force of Trump’s legacy has accelerated slow-moving trends in the transatlantic relationship, which means that relations will likely never be the same again.
Firstly, there is the issue that Trump secured more votes in 2016 than he did in 2020. In Germany, where the US president is deeply unpopular and widely disliked, it was a sign that Biden’s presidency had not fixed the underlying surge of populism that saw him installed in the White House in the first place.
“This is all taken with a bit of a grain of salt,” said Puglierin, “because many people think Biden is a president of transition — that he won’t do a second term, and that the election of Donald Trump and this election has shown that another Trump figure — or Trump again — can win in four years.”
Source: Business Insider’s
