P16 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2020
Election
— especially in the face of a rising
China that is promoting its au-
thoritarian capitalism — as well
as a more unified stance against
Russia.
David O’Sullivan, former Euro-
pean Union ambassador to the
United States, said he looked for-
ward to a renewal of American
leadership — if not the hegemony
of the past, then at least “Ameri-
ca’s role as the convening nation”
for multilateral initiatives and in-
stitutions.
But the world has changed, and
so has the United States, where
the Biden victory was relatively
narrow and not an obvious repudi-
ation of Mr. Trump’s policies. A
fundamental trust has been bro-
ken, and many European diplo-
mats and experts believe that U.S.
foreign policy is no longer biparti-
san, so is no longer reliable.
“What is difficult to repair is the
fear is that this could happen
again,” said Stefano Stefanini, a
former Italian ambassador to
NATO. “If you worry about a one-
term presidency, you hold back a
lot, which is why Congress will
matter. If a Republican Senate
tries, as under Obama, to block ev-
erything Biden does, Europeans
will say, ‘OK, Biden’s fine, but let’s
be careful.’ ”
Clément Beaune, France’s min-
ister for Europe, who is close to
President Emmanuel Macron,
said in a Twitter message, “It’s a
mistake to believe that everything
changes — Europe must above all
count on itself.”
The need for more European
autonomy and initiative — eco-
nomically, politically, militarily —
is a message that Mr. Macron has
been repeating for years now,
even as his own efforts to jolly Mr.
Trump along have been unsuc-
cessful.
A Trump re-election might have
accelerated that trend. But many,BRUSSELS — In the “America
First” landscape that President
Trump created, Joseph R. Biden
Jr. was an outdated romantic
trans-Atlanticist. So there is relief
in Europe about having a well-dis-
posed friend in the White House
who is more likely to support than
to berate, harangue and insult.
A former French ambassador to
Washington, Gérard Araud, said
that “every single European
leader has had an appalling con-
versation with Trump.” Referring
to the German chancellor and the
former British prime minister, Mr.
Araud said: “He insulted Angela
Merkel, he insulted Theresa May.
He attacked them. It was surreal.
And it’s over.”
But there will still be wariness
among European leaders — about
what Mr. Biden may ask of them,
especially in the knowledge that
he may be a one-term president
and that the populist impulse that
animated Trumpism has hardly
gone away.
Dominique Moïsi, a French ana-
lyst with the Paris-based nonprof-
it Institut Montaigne, said, “We
should not underestimate the
sense of relief and we should not
overestimate the sense that
things will change very much.”
Civility will be restored, with Bi-
den planning to rejoin the Paris
climate accord and remain in the
World Health Organization, offer-
ing warm words about NATO and
about allies and probably embark-
ing on early visits to Germany and
possibly to Brussels, analysts
close to the Biden campaign sug-
gest. There will be less confronta-
tion on trade, fewer punitive tar-
iffs and an early effort, Mr. Biden
himself has said, to create a kind
of “global summit for democracy”
like Nathalie Tocci, an adviser to
the European Union’s foreign pol-
icy chief, Josep Borrell Fontelles,
warn that a Biden presidency
“risks Europe reverting back to its
comfort zone.”
“Biden is a comfortable way of
sticking our heads in the sand,”
she said, “but we must realize that
the hard and painful choices
Trump presented us with remain
unchanged.”
The French message may not
carry the day in a divided Europe,
where Ms. Merkel sees NATO and
the relationship with Washington
as vital to German national inter-
ests. Already, the Germans intend
to present Mr. Biden with “con-
crete proposals on how we canclose ranks as a trans-Atlantic
community” on China, climate
and the Covid-19 pandemic, Heiko
Maas, the German foreign min-
ister, said on Saturday.
Mr. Maas did not suggest that
those proposals had been coordi-
nated with Paris or Brussels. And
Berlin is likely to be hoping that
Mr. Biden will let the contentious
Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline,
which is nearly complete, go
ahead, though Congress will most
likely continue to try to stop it with
secondary sanctions.
Europe is also split about Mr.
Trump, where the less liberal
states of Central Europe, in partic-
ular Poland and Hungary, have
been strong supporters of Mr.
Trump’s politics, and not just
grateful for American troops.The prime minister of Slovenia,
Janez Jansa, who is close to Prime
Minister Viktor Orban of Hunga-
ry, even posted an early and now
much-derided tweet congratulat-
ing Mr. Trump on his re-election.
For NATO allies, there will be
no need to hide decisions or to pre-
agree communiqués as they did
with Mr. Trump, sometimes with
the connivance of American offi-
cials. Mr. Biden will not threaten
to leave NATO, as Mr. Trump did,
nor think of it as a club with dues.
And Mr. Biden has expressed no
special affinity with President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia or
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
of Turkey.
There is also some anxiety in
the British government about a
Biden presidency, given Prime
Minister Boris Johnson’s support
of Brexit and close relationship to
Mr. Trump.
Antony Blinken, a senior Biden
adviser, has tried to reassure
British diplomats. He told the
London think tank Chatham
House in April that U.S. leader-
ship would return. “When Joe Bi-
den looks at the world, one thing
stands out,” Mr. Blinken said. “For
75-plus years, the U.S. played the
leading role in working to orga-
nize the world, establishing the in-
stitutions, writing the rules and
setting the norms.”
“If we are not doing that,” Mr.
Blinken added, “then one of two
things happen. Either someone
else is, and probably not in a way
that advances our interest and
values; or no one is, and that can
be even worse. Then you have a
vacuum which tends to be filled by
malevolent things before good
things. So the U.S. has a responsi-
bility and self-interest in leading
with humility.”
But it’s less clear that even
America’s traditional allies will
follow quite as confidently as they
may have done in the past.Elian Peltier contributed reporting
from London.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has offered reassuring words about NATO and about allies.
LAETITIA VANCON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESTRANS-ATLANTIC RELATIONS
Europe Lauds Biden, but Trust in U.S. Is Shaken
By STEVEN ERLANGERBelieving that ‘it’s a
mistake to believe that
everything changes.’
MOSCOW — The morning after
Joseph R. Biden Jr. became presi-
dent-elect of the United States, the
Kremlin published a congratula-
tory message from President Vla-
dimir V. Putin.
It was a happy-60th-birthday
greeting to a Moscow theater di-
rector.
Unlike his Western European
counterparts, who quickly posted
congratulations on Saturday, Mr.
Putin had not issued a statement
on the president-elect even as
night fell in Moscow on Sunday.
Four years earlier, the Kremlin
rushed out a message for Presi-
dent Trump within hours of the
American television networks
calling the race on election night.
“Putin is a good soldier and
does not wag his tail before his en-
emies,” a prominent pro-Kremlin
analyst, Sergei A. Markov, said in
explaining the difference.
The early signs indicate that
Mr. Putin is preparing for a deeply
adversarial relationship with
America’s next president. While
Mr. Trump never delivered on
Russian hopes of rapprochement
between Washington and Mos-
cow, his America-first foreign pol-
icy dovetailed with the Kremlin’s
desire to weaken the Western alli-
ance and to expand Russian influ-
ence around the world.
Mr. Biden, by contrast, is a pres-
ident-elect whom Mr. Putin al-
ready has many reasons to dread.
Mr. Biden sees Russia as one of
America’s biggest security
threats, promises to rebuild
frayed ties with European allies
and, as vice president, worked ac-
tively to support pro-Western poli-
ticians in Ukraine, a country at
war with Russia.
To Russia’s governing class, Mr.
Biden was the preferred candi-
date of an American “deep state”
— a huge network of spies and dip-
lomats that, in the Kremlin’s
telling, worked to undermine Mr.
Trump and his efforts to improve
ties with Russia. And Mr. Biden,
unlike Mr. Trump, seems to many
Russians to be the sort of Ameri-
can politician they detest the
most: someone ready to meddle
around the world in the name of
democratic ideals, rather than re-
specting spheres of influence and
engaging with Moscow in hard-
nosed talks.
“There you have it, the notori-
ous deep state that Trump had
promised to get rid of,” Mikhail V.
Leontyev, a commentator, intoned
on the prime-time news in Russia
on Saturday, describing Mr. Bi-
den. “We wouldn’t give a toss
about this if these guys didn’t try
to get involved in all our business,
and the probable winner has
made it his mission to get involved
in all the world’s business.”
As swing states counted votesin recent days, Russian state tele-
vision increasingly adopted Mr.
Trump’s assertion that the Demo-
crats had stolen the election. A re-
porter in Washington for Russia’s
state-run Channel 1 ridiculed the
street celebrations of Mr. Biden’s
victory as those of people “crying,
hopping around and getting
drunk.”
The vitriol on Kremlin-con-
trolled television, and the lack of a
quick congratulations for Mr. Bi-
den, was notable given that Mr.
Putin appeared to be trying to dis-
tance himself from Mr. Trump as
Mr. Biden emerged as the clear fa-vorite in recent months. Some
Russian analysts and politicians
had even speculated that new
leadership in Washington could
be a good thing for Moscow.
“There are increasingly few
within the Russian elite who see
Trump as an objective in himself,”
Tatiana Stanovaya, a political
commentator, wrote in an essay ti-
tled “A Farewell to Trump?” She
added that there was “also a feel-
ing of Trump fatigue,” even in the
Kremlin.
Indeed, Mr. Putin chose this fall
not to give Mr. Trump what would
have been a prized foreign policyvictory: a renegotiated New Start
nuclear arms deal, the last re-
maining major arms control
agreement between the countries.
Mr. Trump’s lead negotiator,
Marshall Billingslea, went so far
as to announce that the two lead-
ers had a “gentleman’s agree-
ment” for a renegotiated deal. Yet,
within hours, a deputy foreign
minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov,
called the Trump administration
delusional. “Washington is de-
scribing what is desired, not what
is real,” he said.
Instead, in a television inter-
view last month, Mr. Putin lauded
Mr. Biden as being prepared to ex-
tend the treaty. And in what may
have been a backhanded compli-
ment, he praised the Democrats
as sharing leftist ideals with a
party of which Mr. Putin was once
a member: the Communists.
The C.I.A. said earlier this year
that Mr. Putin appeared to be in-
terfering in the election on behalf
of Mr. Trump. The Kremlin has de-
nied meddling in American poli-
tics, and many analysts in Mos-
cow noted that no fresh, substanti-
ated allegations of Russian inter-
ference had emerged from the
United States since Election Day.
Indeed, the notion that Mr.
Trump’s departure from the White
House could reduce American an-
ger about Russian interference in
the 2016 election appeared to be
the biggest silver lining of Mr. Bi-den’s victory, some politicians and
analysts said.
“It’s not that we believe in a so-
bering-up in Washington, but the
key irritant might go away,” Kon-
stantin Kosachev, the head of the
Foreign Affairs Committee in the
upper house of the Russian Parlia-
ment, wrote on Facebook.
“Wouldn’t that be a reason to re-
sume talks on arms control, for in-
stance? We are definitely ready.”
Mr. Biden could also benefit
Russia by bringing the United
States back into the nuclear deal
with Iran, an agreement to which
Moscow is a party, another Rus-
sian lawmaker, Leonid E. Slutsky,
said. In 2018 Mr. Trump withdrew
the United States from the deal,
which President Barack Obama
had helped broker among world
powers to halt Iran’s nuclear
weapons program.
Even as the Kremlin stayed
mum on Sunday, Mr. Putin’s
staunchest domestic opponent —
the opposition leader Aleksei A.
Navalny — offered well-wishes on
Twitter to Mr. Biden and Kamala
Harris, the vice president-elect.
He also congratulated Americans
on holding “a free and fair elec-
tion,” an indirect sideswipe at the
Putin government.
“This is a privilege which is not
available to all countries,” Mr. Na-
valny, who is recovering after be-
ing attacked with a nerve agent in
Siberia, wrote.RUSSIA
The Kremlin Remains Mum on Biden’s Victory, Foreshadowing Tense Years Ahead
Vladimir Putin, with President Trump at the G20 summit in
2019, has yet to send congratulations to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMESBy ANTON TROIANOVSKI
and ANDREW E. KRAMERHONG KONG — The Chinese
state news media reacted with
cautious optimism to former Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s
victory in the United States presi-
dential election, expressing hope
that he would stabilize the fast-de-
teriorating relations between the
two countries.
But many outlets also contin-
ued to warn of future tensions be-
tween the superpowers, and to
suggest that American democra-
cy was in decline.
Under President Trump, trust
and cooperation between the
United States and China ebbed to
their lowest levels in recent his-
tory, as a trade war raged and offi-
cials on both sides hurled recrimi-
nations about espionage, protest
movements and the coronavirus
pandemic. China’s state-con-
trolled news outlets criticized Mr.
Trump and the United States with
increasing stridence in recent
months.
But the immediate reaction to
Mr. Biden’s victory on Sunday was
measured, indicating that China
was willing to attempt, and indeed
was eager for, a thaw.
“The outcome could usher in a
‘buffering period’ for already-
tense China-U.S. relations, and of-
fer an opportunity for break-
throughs in resuming high-level
communication and rebuilding
mutual strategic trust,” Global
Times, a fiercely nationalistic tab-
loid, wrote in an article, citing Chi-
nese experts.
The article suggested that the
two countries could work together
on combating climate change,
containing the coronavirus and
developing vaccines, saying that
Mr. Biden would be “more moder-
ate and mature” than Mr. Trump
on foreign affairs.
That echoed the response in
much of the rest of the world,
where many world leaders
breathed sighs of relief at the elec-
tion’s outcome. Mr. Biden has
promised a restoration of nor-
malcy and a renewed commit-
ment to multilateralism.
Global Times noted that inter-
national sense of relief in a tweet,
pointing out that the leaders of
Canada, Britain, France, India
and Germany had already con-
gratulated Mr. Biden. “The Trump
era is seemingly over,” it said.
But even as Chinese propagan-
da signaled a new phase in U.S.-
China relations, it also continued
to push a narrative of American
decline — a constant refrain in re-
cent months, as an increasingly
wealthy and confident China has
tried to market itself to the rest of
the world as a viable alternative
for global leadership.
In particular, the state media
has fixated on protests in Ameri-
can cities — starting this summer
with the Black Lives Matter dem-
onstrations, through the protests
surrounding the election — as
proof that American democracy is
chaotic.
After Mr. Biden won Pennsylva-
nia, and thus the presidency,
CCTV, the state broadcaster, aired
videos of large crowds in Philadel-
phia on Saturday evening and a
heavy police presence. An anchor
declared that there had been “not
only verbal attacks but also evenphysical clashes” between Trump
and Biden supporters. (In reality,
there were few reports of violent
confrontations.)
Hu Xijin, the editor of Global
Times, pointed to Mr. Trump’s re-
fusal to concede, writing on
Weibo, a Twitter-like platform,
that “American society is now
highly divided, which creates the
soil for further political derail-
ment.”
The outlets had been emphasiz-
ing the potential for political vio-
lence all week as the vote counts
trickled in. Since Election Day, the
Chinese state media had shared
photos of boarded-up businesses
and police officers on watch at poll
sites.
At the time the race was called,
the second top trending topic on
Weibo was the drive-by shooting
of two people attending a pro-
Trump rally in Florida on Friday.
Few posts mentioned that the
shots fired were pellet rounds, or
that the two people were treated
for minor injuries and released.
Some state-controlled outlets
had seemed to revel in the insta-
bility. Just minutes before the race
was called for Mr. Biden on Satur-
day, People’s Daily, the official
mouthpiece of the Chinese Com-
munist Party, had mocked Mr.
Trump’s declared refusal to ac-
cept the election results. Mr.
Trump, about an hour earlier, had
tweeted, falsely, that he had wonthe election. The People’s Daily
account retweeted that post, add-
ing the comment, “HaHa” and a
laughing emoji.
That provocative language had
largely ebbed by Sunday, in a re-
flection of the hopes for a reset.
Many major state-controlled out-
lets offered straight news cover-
age of Mr. Biden’s victory speech
in Delaware. And People’s Daily
deleted its tweet.
Still, those that did venture opti-
mism also warned against exces-
sive expectations. Though Mr.
Trump made demonizing China
central plank to his campaign
rhetoric, public opinion toward
China in both parties has increas-
ingly soured.
Southern Daily, an official
newspaper for the southern prov-
ince of Guangdong, wrote on
Weibo that while Mr. Biden would
most likely treat Russia, not
China, as the biggest foreign
threat to the United States, “we
don’t have to have illusions.”
“One thing is for sure, things
will never return to the way they
were before,” the post continued.
“The world is not the world it was
before.”CHINESE REACTION
State Media Hope Biden
Can Help Heal Relations
A barber in Beijing watching
Joseph R. Biden Jr, on Sunday.
TINGSHU WANG/REUTERSBy VIVIAN WANG