The Capitol in Washington, DC: "Despite some mutual disappointments, the parliaments have proven to be crisis-resistant communication channels."
Photo: WIN MCNAMEE / AFP
"We will be back," promised Joe Biden at the Munich Security Conference in early 2019, referring primarily to America's indispensable leadership role in international forums.
Neither transatlantic cooperation nor multilateralism were on Washington’s foreign policy priority list under President Donald Trump.
The withdrawal from the Paris climate summit or the Iran Agreement, doubts about NATO - these were not marginalia, but decisions and statements that revealed both operational disruptions in the transatlantic relationship and fundamentally different orientations.
These differences have also left their mark on public opinion: According to current surveys, only a good 14 out of a hundred respondents in Germany consider the USA to be the only reliable leading power in the world, and even fewer consider America to be Germany's best friend.
About the author
Icon: enlarge Photo: Andreas Chudowski / DER SPIEGEL
Norbert Lammert
, born in 1948, is chairman of the CDU-affiliated Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.
Lammert was previously President of the Bundestag from 2005 to 2017.
The CDU politician was a member of the German parliament for 37 years.
But when the 117th Congress is constituted in Washington today - even before the inauguration of the new US President - the encouraging experience is that the parliaments have proven to be crisis-resistant channels of communication despite some mutual disappointments.
In 2019, the US Congress committed itself to the transatlantic alliance several times and countered the White House's intention to withdraw unilaterally from NATO.
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, led a Congress delegation in Europe in February 2019, reaffirming the US commitment to transatlantic relations.
The House of Representatives demonstratively invited NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in April 2019 to give a speech at a joint meeting of both houses.
Even with the announced withdrawal of US troops from Germany, Congress acts as a corrective in transatlantic relations, as the decision on the defense budget in December 2020 showed, which Congress defended a few days ago with a two-thirds majority against President Trump's veto .
This does not remove the disagreements between the European and American parliaments - especially with regard to the military contribution of the Europeans and the German-Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2. But even on controversial points, the parliamentarians are careful to signal a willingness to compromise.
In December 2020, for example, with reference to the US sanctions in connection with Nord Stream 2, Congress excluded punitive measures against partner countries and called for a consultation with Europeans in the case of sanctions against participating companies.
These examples show how important it is for the German Bundestag and the European Parliament to maintain close relations with the US Congress.
The international exchange between members of parliament is more open, more direct and often also more independent, at least more varied than at government level.
We should therefore give greater importance to this transatlantic communication channel, because it is more than just an accompaniment to the government's foreign policy.
At the end of August 2020, the parliamentarians on both sides of the Atlantic assured as part of the Transatlantic Legislators' Dialogue that, as elected representatives of their countries, they would continue to listen to each other and work together responsibly.
They described themselves as the "glue that holds this important alliance together."
Glue is important;
but it also needs substance to which the glue can adhere.
There must be a recognizable will and interest on both sides of the Atlantic to continue the alliance.
The good news is that it appears to be.
But we cannot avoid a general overhaul of the transatlantic alliance.
It is therefore an encouraging sign that Europe is seriously debating how it intends to position itself in terms of future foreign and security policy.
The German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer recently recommended ending “illusions about European strategic autonomy”.
Because it is obvious: Without the military capabilities of the USA, neither Germany nor Europe can protect themselves effectively in the foreseeable future.
The USA provides the majority of NATO's capabilities, they stretch their nuclear protective shield over Europe and, in an emergency, there are also American armed forces, without which the Baltic states cannot be defended.
The USA is therefore vital and irreplaceable for the security of Europe.
French President Emmanuel Macron rightly emphasizes that the United States will only accept Europe as a partner if it has its own powerful military capabilities.
Resilient security and defense policy autonomy cannot exist in the face of global challenges and threats;
Nevertheless, Macron's argument cannot be dismissed out of hand: Europe is all the more attractive as a partner for the USA, the greater the European means of power - in the economic, but also in the military area.
That is why Germany must invest more in its own military capabilities.
The achievement of NATO's 2 percent target and the way in which it has been declared will play a decisive role in this.
In addition, Germany must maintain and deepen its close cooperation with the US armed forces.
American troops in Germany and Europe as well as nuclear participation are in our strategic interest.
After all, as a foreign and security policy actor, Europe must become more decisive and assertive as quickly as possible.
We must consistently and resolutely press ahead with the EU Defense Initiative for Permanent Structured Cooperation Pesco in order to close military capability gaps, increase European defense budgets and invest in research and development - even if it has not become easier to do so in view of the considerable expenditure on Enforce overcoming the corona pandemic and its consequences.
With a view to budget issues, it is primarily the Bundestag and the other European parliaments that have a duty to make a decisive contribution to a responsible and sustainable foreign and security policy.
It is up to the European governments, but also to the respective parliaments, to overcome the disagreement and thus the lack of European weight in questions of international politics.
That is our responsibility, not the US.
The Trump administration has all too often served as a welcome excuse for some home-made European problem over the past four years.
Because to blame the American president, that was the lowest common denominator on which the Europeans were mostly able to agree, although it is the USA that finances a worldwide operational military that protects global trade routes, from which Europe and the German economy in particular has benefited for decades.
If Europe does not soon find common answers to a whole series of questions, the continent will no longer be a creative actor, but only a venue for international politics.
Russia intervenes in elections - not only in Europe - and conducts an unabashed power politics on our borders.
The civil wars in Syria and Libya are still unresolved crises in the immediate vicinity.
China is expanding militarily and economically, investing in European infrastructure and trying to drive a wedge between the member states of the EU and the USA.
With Russia's aggressive foreign policy and the rise of China, the Western alliance is once again faced with strategic challengers;
we have long been in geopolitical competition.
There can be no equidistance to China or Russia and the USA.
The US is our ally, China and Russia are not.
Together with the USA we must therefore find instruments and ways to deal with both without slamming the door for reliable cooperation.
That requires more cohesion and better coordination from Europe and the Western alliance.
A softening of the unanimity principle in NATO or the possibility of increased cooperation among some members can also contribute to this, as was recently called for in a US-German reform paper chaired by the former US diplomat Wess Mitchell and the former Federal Minister of Defense Thomas de Maizière.
Europe's capitals, Brussels and Washington need to work more closely together in more areas and form a common front - this applies to both governments and parliaments: from climate protection and respect for human rights to data protection, digitization and the fight against pandemics we coordinate, show consideration for each other and develop common solutions.
Last but not least, the resumption of the TTIP negotiations and the overdue conclusion of a transatlantic trade agreement would send a clear signal - especially against the background of the world's largest free trade area, initiated by China with 14 Asian countries, which has more members but less ambitious agreements than ours Expectations of a liberal trade order.
The Baltic Sea pipeline Nord Stream 2 is even more urgent on the transatlantic agenda;
the grave US concerns about the German-Russian project are shared by many of our European partners.
There is nothing to suggest that the new American Congress, Senate and House of Representatives, will take a different position on this matter, and if Europeans are right to refuse extraterritorial intervention by the United States, they should make every effort to finally find a friendly solution to find this question.
A stable relationship includes reciprocity.
Militarily, we can relieve the United States in the medium and long term, but our options are limited.
Europe must therefore concentrate on its strengths and use its economic power more strategically in the form of trade agreements and development aid, in order to bind states in our neighborhood to us and not to leave it to Chinese influence.
The corona pandemic has just shown how China is promoting a fight of narratives in order to discredit democracies with their supposedly hindering fundamental rights and pluralistic societies.
In order to consolidate Europe's reputation in the world, the national European representative bodies and the European Parliament can and should act more self-confidently: Yes, there is doubt, argument and debate in parliamentary democracies;
decisions are made and compromises are made.
But sooner or later parliamentary decision-making is superior in crisis management, not because in democracies all decisions are always correct and immediately expedient;
but to formulate jointly binding decisions on the basis of different insights and interests, which can be legitimized by majorities and corrected by new majorities, prevents hasty decisions and lasting errors more reliably than authoritarian procedures.
This is an achievement of western civilization, which connects Europe and the USA, and which should therefore be given much more emphasis and much more often.
more on the subject
»Strategic Autonomy« of Europe: Toxic quibblingA guest contribution by Claudia Major and Christian Mölling
»Strategic Sovereignty« of the EU: We must be able to actA guest contribution by Franziska Brantner, Die Grünen
Compromise with Poland and Hungary: Europe's OssisA comment by Jan Puhl
At the same time, it is important to impregnate civil society against foreign influence that undermines our democracies.
In this context, political education will also become even more important.
The German political foundations can also play an important role in this.
With their extensive network of international offices, they also contribute to civil society links on both sides of the Atlantic.
The world still needs a reliable and effective Western alliance to ensure peace and freedom, security and prosperity.
American and European interests are not always the same, but our political cultures are congruent and our shared values are solid.
"As we know, there are differences of opinion in every partnership," the European and American parliamentarians declared at their digital meeting in August 2020.
“When that happens, we work hard to resolve our differences, and sometimes we have to agree not to agree.
But our friendship, our shared history and our values are the basis of this partnership, which is like no other alliance in the world. "
Therefore we must now work hard to lead the most successful alliance in modern history into the future.
We can certainly trust the respective parliaments on both sides of the Atlantic more and should involve them even more than before in the maintenance and further development of the transatlantic partnership.
Earlier, some observers would have liked the self-confident demeanor of the American Congress towards its own government.
And also from the German Bundestag, not a few voters expect a stronger creative will.
Overcoming the challenges and seizing the opportunities for European-American relations is a joint task of governments and parliaments.
Even more than the governments, the parliaments can and must take up the range of expectations in their respective countries and lead to binding results in public debate - and beyond the indispensable rivalry between competing parties against executive arrogance and against extremists, populists and fundamentalists from the right and left demonstrate the solidarity of all Democrats.
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