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By Abu Naser Al Farabi
The United States has often touted the transatlantic alliance with its European allies as a relationship based on common interest. At times, Washington's policy position and actions have spoken the opposite. The Joe Biden administration promised to reinvigorate the alliance into a strong foundation after it had gone through a precariously trying moment during Donald Trump's tenure. Even it has often been heard that the Russia-Ukraine conflict has patched the alliance into a shape unprecedented in recent history.
But some of the events related to transatlantic interests that have unfolded during Biden's administration so far have questioned the very foundational values the U.S. often preaches as key cornerstones of the transatlantic alliance. Just take two of the very recent events into account: Biden's flagship Inflation Reduction Act and rampant French-bashing in Washington after French President Emanuel Macron's remarks on European strategic vassalage to the U.S.
In the first case, Biden's much-touted $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act is intentionally designed to provide subsidies and tax credits to companies producing in the U.S., while putting Europe-based companies at a disadvantage to U.S. rivals and forcing European companies to prioritize investment in the United States other than in Europe.
"Our concerns are the discriminatory measures in [the] U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, which is discriminating against EU companies," said European Commissioner for Trade Valdis Dombrovskis.
In the second case, the way another round of French bashing has taken on an explosive form in Washington's political and policy circle immediately after President Emmanuel Macron stated that Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States and avoid getting dragged into a confrontation between China and the U.S. over the Taiwan region. He further added that Europe should not become anybody's "vassal."
The rhetorical thumps against Macron's vision of Europe's strategic autonomy have reached such an extent that some in Washington's political circle went into calling for the U.S. to "reassess its posture toward France."
Macron's visionary remarks on greater European strategic independence across the spectrum of the economy, foreign policy, and defense are in no way surprising. This is not the first time the French president invoked the idea of greater European autonomy. Since he assumed office in 2017, Macron, along with other EU leaders, has extolled the need for Europe to strategically decouple the bloc from the U.S., at least in the fields of foreign policy, and industrial and defense policy.
Furthermore, Macron's remarks on Europe's strategic future carry substantial weight, as he speaks as the leader of a major European country, which is in a unique position to be the only EU member of the United Nations Security Council, the EU's only nuclear power and one of the engines of the world's largest trade bloc.
So, the flurry of consistent basing on Macron for his visionary outlook on Europe has only put one of the key transatlantic relational aspects of "mutual respect" into question. Rather those rhetorical backlashes against France have only exposed Washington's long-standing absolutist knack to remain hegemonic in deciding Europe's future and to subjugate evolving European aspiration for broader political and policy sovereignty.
For at least two reasons, it has increasingly become essential for Europe to pursue a greater form of strategic decoupling from the U.S. Firstly, in an emerging era of multilateralism and in the reality of complex and dynamic national interests across the 27 member states in the EU club, it is utterly infeasible to be driven by a particular superpower's agenda fixated on its strategic priorities other than ones on the bloc's own interests.
Besides, Macron's call for reducing dependence on the U.S. could befittingly reduce future uncertainty, given the precarious political reality in the U.S. Both the increasingly polarized political atmosphere and the already-entrenched bipartisan consensus on containing China are threatening to the future of Europe.
Concerning the risk that the current devastating bipartisan consensus on China posed, European governments should hark back to a similar U.S. political episode back in early 2003. The world at that time tragically experienced how sweeping bipartisan consensus in Washington on the George W. Bush administration's manufactured threat from Saddam Hussain's Iraq led to an illegal and one of the most destructive wars in human history.
The transatlantic dogma prevalent at that time had dragged down a number of European countries into a war, not in any way in their own interest, only fed the U.S. hubristic instinct. A similar strategic endeavor is seen across Washington's bipartisan policy establishment to portray its primacy-driven containment struggle against China as a transatlantic tension.
If Europe continues to be dependent on the U.S. and follows through on its hegemonic strategic agenda under the platform of the transatlantic alliance, Europe's strategic relevance as a unique entity to the rest of the world will further be weakened, eventually putting its collective political survival at risk.
Abu Naser Al Farabi is a Dhaka-based columnist and analyst focusing on international politics, especially Asian affairs.
