EU-US cooperation is irreparably destroyed---China focus, Afghanistan, and AUKUS. AI cooperation doesn’t solve.

“There were lofty expectations, especially among [American] Europhiles, that Europe would be more of a priority in overall Biden foreign policy,” remembered a foreign policy analyst at a Washington think tank. “There was this sense we would see a new day in the partnership.” But 2021 was also a year marred by friction: Afghanistan, the AUKUS defense pact, the challenges posed by Russia and China, as well as political developments in the U.S. have all “fed a conclusion in Europe that the relationship with the U.S. will never go back to 2016,” said a former U.S. ambassador to NATO — whether former President Donald Trump returns or not. And now the challenge facing the Biden administration is to prove such concerns wrong. “You have to know that you have no other friends than Europe,” warned a Polish foreign policy expert. “If you screw up talking with us, that undermines the U.S. system of alliances and that is not useful for the U.S.” And when it comes to the looming confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, Europeans worry the U.S. has not yet learned this lesson, and there is fear, especially among Poles, that a deal affecting their futures will be made over their heads. Moreover, as observed by a former U.S. ambassador to the EU, AUKUS openly said to Europeans that “the China folks in the White House are driving the bus. And they don’t have an appreciation of the EU as a useful partner on things that matter to the U.S.” As a result, quipped a Berlin-based analyst: “Anxiety, skepticism and bad juju around the pivot to Asia is prevalent everywhere in Europe. The fear is that it will lead to transatlantic decoupling.” And as Washington’s attention progressively shifts to Asia, more incidents sparking Europeans’ sense of abandonment or betrayal may be inevitable. The first test of this could be Taiwan, which has opened a representative office in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Beijing has imposed economic sanctions on the Baltic nation and threatened to deny multinational firms exporting from Lithuania access to China’s market in retaliation. If Washington stands idly by while Beijing coerces individual EU member countries and corporations in this manner, much-vaunted transatlantic cooperation on China could prove to be a paper tiger.