‘His words inhabited a no-man’s-land between quality and quantity.” In his generally admiring biography of Joe Biden, Evan Osnos gives plenty of space to his subject’s tendency to run off at the mouth.
It was partly the length of his remarks that people commented upon. When Barack Obama joined the Senate in 2005 and sat through one of his future vice-president’s contributions, he sent an aide a three-word note: “Shoot. Me. Now.”
But it was also Biden’s tendency to make inappropriate or odd comments that became associated with him. When he was vice-president, lists of his “top ten gaffes” were a journalistic staple. Such as the moment when he greeted the taoiseach, talked of the Irishman’s mother, said “God rest her soul” and then added, “although wait, your Mom’s still alive”.
So his most recent error — adding at the end of a speech about Putin, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power” — is not necessarily a sign that the president’s mental faculties are declining. Biden’s tendency to ad lib the first thing that comes into his head is one of the main reasons it took him until he was almost 80 to become president.
Much more worrying is that he became president of a country that is deeply divided and unsure about its role in the world. And this poses a significant challenge to Europe.
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During the 2016 referendum David Cameron gave a speech that was interpreted as a warning that Brexit might be followed by World War Three. It was widely attacked as absurd. Now? Now I don’t think it looks absurd. There were two main criticisms of Cameron’s remarks. The first was simply that they were hysterical. Even though we had not long ago had a war in Europe, over the former Yugoslavia, it was regarded as alarmist to suggest there might be another one any time soon.
Cameron suggested as possible sources of conflict the increased aggressiveness of Russia and the rise of nationalism in Europe. He suggested that if Europe pulled apart, both these things might pose serious security problems to Britain, and we certainly wouldn’t be able to avoid their consequences. Given events not only in Ukraine but also in Hungary, his warning seems obviously correct. And certainly not hysterical. There is now a land war in Europe, one that may last for years and could spread. The idea of a third world war originating in Europe is no less frightening than it was, but it is certainly a great deal more plausible.
The second criticism was of any link between the peace of postwar Europe and the creation of the European Union. It was, Cameron’s critics insisted, Nato and not the EU that was responsible for keeping the peace.
It seems to me obvious that both institutions have been important to the stability of Europe in the postwar era, but what Cameron was mainly considering was the future rather than the past. And it is impossible to be confident that the Atlantic alliance will remain as strong over the next 75 years as it has been since 1945. Or even that it will be reliable over the next ten years.
American support for European democracy and security has been so constant, and has become such an accepted feature, that it is sometimes forgotten how controversial such engagement once was in the United States. Opposition to being embroiled in Europe’s arguments prevented Franklin Roosevelt from committing America fully to the fight against Hitler until after Pearl Harbour. And after the war, Harry Truman faced stiff resistance to his policy of support for Nato and the Marshall Plan.
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The political tradition of isolationism that fuelled this resistance stretches back to the creation of the US and remains strong on left and right. American presidents are often referred to as the leader of the free world. But this title had not only to be proffered to the US commander-in-chief, but also accepted by them. The first US president to even travel abroad was Theodore Roosevelt in the 20th century.
The American right now oscillates between a sneaking admiration for the authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban and a furious insistence that nobody be allowed to push Americans around. Meanwhile the left is committed to the values of liberal democracy but is not at all confident that it wishes to support that militarily. Some parts of the left also wonder whether engagement with Europe offers support for the past and white imperialism.
Between these positions Biden attempts to hold the centre. But it is revealing that to find a candidate able to do that, it was necessary to call on someone as old as Biden and with so many obvious political flaws. Biden wouldn’t have won if he hadn’t been facing an opponent more gaffe-prone and erratic than he was.
It is a source of relief that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did not begin when Donald Trump was president. But it is by no means certain it will be over before, as may very possibly happen, he is president again.
What all this means is that Europe cannot rely on the leadership and support of the US in future as it has done in the past. That leadership and support might be forthcoming. But it also might not. It is no longer something we can take for granted. It is no longer politically dependable.
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Cameron’s warning that we should not leave the EU was ignored and we are not about to revisit the decision. I do not propose having a fruitless argument about the 2016 referendum. But it is perfectly obvious now that we face security challenges in Europe that we must tackle as Europeans.
The most important and difficult thing European nations will have to do is pay more for defence. We cannot rely on Americans to stump up in quite the way they have done. The gulf between how much we need and how much we have been paying may turn out to be vast.
But almost as difficult will be to forge a European defence identity and policy and for Britain to find a way to engage with it from outside the EU.
Nato may still offer a forum for such engagement, provided Britain doesn’t just see it as an American-dominated alliance. We have to use Nato to build common European defence aims and policies that we have so far mainly objected to because they might reduce Britain’s independence. If we do not engage, then these policies will be decided without us.
We have always debated whether Britain is being subservient to the Americans. Now it’s time to debate what we do if they lose interest in us.