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Digitally there: US President Joe Biden
Photo: Sepp Spiegl / imago images / sepp spiegl
Even the boards with the logo of the Munich Security Conference had made it into the White House.
When Joe Biden tuned in as a guest on Friday afternoon to assert that "America was back", the lectern with the presidential seal stood in front of him and the boards with the abbreviation "MSC" behind him.
That was certainly no coincidence: Biden had been to Munich again and again since the 1980s, three times as Vice President alone.
The fact that conference leader Wolfgang Ischinger managed to bring the boards to the White House says something about the tenacity of the host as well as about the commitment of the new US president to this conference.
And maybe also about Biden's will to create a good mood in Europe after the Trump years at any price.
The security conference, which took place virtually this year, brought together an all-star team from transatlanticism: In addition to Biden, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson took part, as did EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council President Charles Michel.
The West held a zoom call.
Trump is gone, the problems remain
But there was something nostalgic about the occasion: for a long time it looked like a celebration of bygone times that will not come back despite Donald Trump being voted out of office.
A celebration of the old west.
The answers to the challenges of the future, on the other hand, were rather rare.
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Conference leader Wolfgang Ischinger with his star guests Joe Biden, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron
Photo: Benoit Tessier / AP
This also applies to the short speech that Biden gave at the beginning.
It was his first message that he addressed directly to Europeans.
In it, Biden invoked the transatlantic relationship, which ex-President Donald Trump no longer wanted to hear.
He committed himself to NATO, to the obligation to provide assistance in Article 5 ("this is our unbreakable pledge").
The plans of ex-President Trump, who wanted to withdraw US troops from Germany, should be stopped.
If someone had been teleported straight from 2015 to 2021 and heard the speech from Biden, it would have seemed completely irrelevant to him or her - because Biden primarily reinforced alliances and values that were once self-evident.
After four years of Donald Trump, who was hostile to Europe and more sympathetic to some dictators than to allied democracies, Biden's words took on a different meaning.
They were certainly beneficial for many of the listeners.
They should read: Everything will be fine between us.
Biden pats Europe on the back
So Biden gave exactly the speech that many Europeans would certainly like to hear: An America that pats on the shoulders, that does not criticize, does not demand.
Will it stay that way?
For the moment it was certainly the right speech: it was primarily intended to cover up the injuries of the Trump years.
Biden consistently avoided addressing any of the many problems that do exist between the US and Germany or the US and the EU.
Neither the American anger about the Russian-German gas pipeline "Nord Stream 2", against which US sanctions were decided, nor the German defense spending, which is still too low - on the contrary, he praised the fact that spending in Europe had recently increased.
The new US president certainly knows that the challenges in relation to the EU and NATO are still to come - especially when it comes to China.
But he did not even mention what Washington sees as the biggest annoyance: it is the investment agreement that the EU has negotiated with China, although Washington actually wants the Europeans to be firmly by their side in the conflict with China.
Biden only attached importance to the fact that the same rules would have to apply to Chinese companies in the future as to European and American companies.
And he called on the Europeans to "long-term strategic competition" with China.
Merkel calls China a "strategic competitor"
But perhaps the greatest difficulty for the future relationship lies in dealing with China.
Many Europeans - and especially many Germans - do not want to position themselves as clearly on the American side against China as the USA would like.
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Angela Merkel in the Munich security video conference
Photo: BPA / REUTERS
In her own speech, Chancellor Angela Merkel herself pointed out that it is more difficult to find a common stance between the EU and the US on China than on Russia.
She called China a "systemic competitor", not a rival, and pointed out that the country was needed to solve "global problems."
The contradiction could already be felt here, to which none of the heads of state addressed directly.
Merkel, too, conjured up "a new chapter in the transatlantic partnership" in her speech.
She also left out almost all conflicts.
She gave a speech in which she circumnavigated all the contradictions of German foreign policy: The Chancellor, who criticizes Russia but holds on to the controversial “Nord Stream 2” pipeline project.
The European leading nation that does not want to lead.
Who wants to spend more on defense, but not as much as the US wants.
And which is verbally firmly committed to transatlantic relations, but does not want to take a very clear course between the USA, China and Russia.
Macron praises France's defense spending
French President Emmanuel Macron was more ruthless in his speech, as we know from him.
He talked very extensively about vaccination, otherwise he brought up the strategic issues that have preoccupied him for years and with which he has repeatedly caused discussions in Europe.
Although he did not repeat his old statement in which he attested NATO "brain death", he emphasized that everything he said at the time was still valid.
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French President Emmanuel Macron as a conference participant in the Elysée
Photo: BENOIT TESSIER / POOL / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
Macron has long been campaigning for more European sovereignty and strategic autonomy.
He reaffirmed that European strength does not conflict with NATO membership.
For the French president, functioning European defense structures are a complement to NATO, not competition.
As if to prove it, he of all people increased the pressure on Germany to achieve NATO's spending target: France would soon achieve the agreed target of spending two percent of its economic output on defense, he said, that this was important for balancing the transatlantic relationship and »um to show our American friends that we are a reliable and responsible partner «.
That sat.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson from Great Britain joined in - and he too extensively praised the British’s high defense spending.
He acknowledged the European security architecture and emphasized that Great Britain is currently doing what Germany does not want to do at all: showing China its forehead.
Johnson fights against pessimism
Johnson did what he does best: to spread an irrepressible, not always clearly justified optimism.
He flattered the US by saying it was back as the undisputed leader of the world.
He was also the only one who enthusiastically accepted Biden's offer to offer Europe a "new partnership."
And Johnson criticized the "pessismism industry," which is devoted to the alleged decline of the West, because it is doing very well.
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Conference participant Boris Johnson with moderator Wolfgang Ischinger and moderator Natalie Amiri
Photo: MUELLER / MSC / HANDOUT / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
Does it do that
The virtual Munich meeting showed a West in recovery and discovery mode.
After the trauma of the Trump years, you get back together, first make sure of what you have in common and try to process what you have experienced.
But new ideas for the present and the future were rare.
The big topic of the next few years is the further rise of China.
It weathered the pandemic better than the West.
It continues to gain economic strength, it is expanding its claim to power in the Pacific - and the dispute over Hong Kong is only a harbinger of further conflicts: over the South China Sea, over Taiwan.
How to deal with this challenge and how much the West can still hold together in the face of this strong rival, the high-ranking participants at the Munich Security Conference had little more to offer than platitudes.
The good news is: It's great that everyone gets along so well again.
Let's see how long.
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