Home » The NATO Summit, Blinken to the allies: “Nord Stream 2 is a bad idea”

The NATO Summit, Blinken to the allies: “Nord Stream 2 is a bad idea”

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NEW YORK – This is the NATO summit of the relaunch. But in the new climate of rediscovered friendship, the Americans immediately proceed to the collection, pressing the Europeans on the most controversial dossiers: “President Joe Biden was clear – says his secretary of state, Antony Blinken – the Russian-German pipeline is a bad idea, bad for Europe, bad for the United States, in contradiction with the same security objectives of the European Union. It has the potential to damage Ukraine, Poland and other allies ». It has also put pressure on Turkey, whose ties with NATO have loosened following the purchase of arms from Russia.

In Brussels, Blinken was the first member of the new Biden administration to attend a meeting of foreign ministers. It was also the first meeting between Blinken and Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, with an agenda that included Libya and Afghanistan. “Italy is a key ally and friend to the United States as we address global challenges,” said Blinken.

The NATO summit represents “a new chapter”, underlined Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The break with the Trump administration is clear: the Republican president has spent four years scolding his allies and threatening an American disengagement. His grievances were not unfounded, and took up a theme already raised by Barack Obama: Europe deludes itself that it can be a “herbivorous power” and invests little in defense, most allies do not even reach 2% of GDP agreed at NATO headquarters for military expenses.

But Trump added a real contempt for alliances of his own and this weighed on us. Biden is an Atlanticist and Europe knows it has a friend in Washington. This does not mean that the “new chapter” is all roses. The themes on the mat are challenging. In the first place there is the common commitment in Afghanistan, where the deadline of May 1 for the withdrawal will be postponed once again: on the ground there do not seem to be the conditions for a departure of NATO troops that does not consign the country to violence. Then there are the “new challenges that require NATO to rethink its security,” as Blinken says. Among these: climate change and China.

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On the first point, there is little room for disputes between allies. But with regard to the two great strategic rivals, China and Russia, there are distances. The most conspicuous dissension opposes Germany to the US, on both dossiers. Germany is closely associated with the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Germany is also the EU economy that has captured the largest trade shares in China, and is reluctant to antagonize Beijing. Merkel and Von der Leyen played a major role in reaching the EU-China bilateral agreement on investments, announced before Christmas to irritation in the Biden team. Trade and investment are not of NATO competence, of course.

But the “second cold war”, unlike the first, affects the economic, financial and technological spheres. The distances between the two sides of the Atlantic are not easy to bridge. There is also a structural distance: to equip itself against cyber-attacks and new forms of conflict, America starts from the strength of its Silicon Valley and now with the second maneuver Biden will set up an industrial policy for 5G telecoms; Europe is a conquering market rather than a superpower in advanced technologies. But equipping against the Chinese challenge involves painful choices, on issues such as 5G and the embargo against Huawei on which there is substantial continuity between Trump and Biden.

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