TEHRAN – Head of the Global Actors Programme at the Istituto Affari Internazionali says that the U.S. influence over Europe is strong especially in areas of security.

“U.S. influence over Europe is pretty strong but that doesn’t mean Europe is entirely at the mercy of Washington,” Riccardo Alcaro tells the Tehran Times. 
“There’s a lot in trade, climate regulations, tax laws, and other stuff that Europe does against U.S. wishes,” Alcaro adds.
 
According to the Italian expert, “when it comes to security Europe is more vulnerable, but it is still capable of carving out some room for maneuvers.”
Following is the text of the interview:

Q: How do you see Biden's attitudes towards NATO? Do you think that Biden can re-energize the organization?

A: Biden has made the re-launch of the U.S. alliances a centerpiece of his foreign policy and NATO is crucial to the effort. I think Biden can re-create some goodwill towards the U.S. in Europe – he has done it already – and that will reflect positively on NATO too. The alliance will never be as essential as it used to be when it was created, given that the U.S. is increasingly attracted to the Pacific rather than the Atlantic, but it is today on firmer grounds than it was under Trump. It will remain a framework for organizing transatlantic consensus, especially on Russia but also on other issues (although the farther you go from military-defense policy the less important NATO’s role is). A fully re-energized organization perhaps we’ll not get, but NATO is alive and kicking.

Q: How do you assess the U.S.-Europe alliance when it comes to Afghanistan? Why did they fail to collaborate with their rivals including Russia, China and Iran? 

A: The Europeans never had much of a say over Afghanistan, their presence there should be placed in the context of their alliance with the U.S. They calculated that helping the U.S. in Afghanistan was necessary to sustain the transatlantic alliance over time. Why the U.S. failed to cooperate with China, Russia and Iran has probably to do with the extreme difficulty of the U.S. foreign policy establishment to achieve and sustain consensus on cooperating selectively with countries that are hostile or unfriendly to the U.S., like the three you mention. That’s why the U.S. was incapable of building on the cooperation with Iran on Afghanistan in late 2001-early 2002 and with Russia in 2009-10, notwithstanding the fact that in both cases the results were pretty positive; Iran helped the process that led to the Bonn conference on post-Taliban Afghanistan in late 2001 (or early 2002, I can’t recall) and Russia allowed NATO to use its airspace to supply its troops in Afghanistan. On the other hand, I can’t recall China, Russia, or Iran making big proposals as to the basis on which they’d be willing to cooperate with the Americans in Afghanistan.

Q: Do you confirm that the U.S. is a hegemon that can dictate many of the EU's policies. For example, in the case of the Iran nuclear deal, the EU failed to confront Trump's unilateral sanctions on Iran. 

A: U.S. influence over Europe is pretty strong but that doesn’t mean Europe is entirely at the mercy of Washington. There’s a lot in trade, climate regulations, tax laws, and other stuff that Europe does against U.S. wishes. 
When it comes to security Europe is more vulnerable, but it is still capable of carving out some room for maneuvers. It’s true that the EU failed to protect its companies and banks from U.S. secondary sanctions but so did China, Russia and all other countries in the world. Would you say that the U.S. exerts hegemony over Russia and China too because of that? In fact, the E3/EU was the most outspoken in seeking to defend the JCPOA and they were the ones who save it from the attempt by the Trump administration to derail it in summer 2020 when the U.S. tried to stop the expiration of the UN arms embargo by making use of the snapback mechanism included in the JCPOA/UNSCR 2231. It was the E3 who maneuvered to make the U.S. claim void.  

Q: Is there consensus between the U.S. and the EU when it comes to containing China and Russia?

A: With Biden, there’s more consensus than you’d expect. Both Russia and China pose challenges to the EU and there’s certainly a desire to curb their most damaging practices – unfair economic activities and information warfare to mention a few. But the EU is not as keen on confrontation as the U.S. and will always seek to balance pressure-coercion with diplomacy, dialogue and selective cooperation. 

So, while there isn’t right now the kind of strong convergence of interests the U.S. and Europe enjoyed during the Cold War, there’s certainly a shared understanding that the transatlantic partnership has much beneficial potential – although that may change if Trump’s hostility towards the EU becomes entrenched in the Republican Party.

Q: Don’t you think that America may return to Trump's policies again?

A:  There is the chance that Trump runs again in 2024. Even if he doesn’t, the next Republican candidate is more likely to support his policies than not, although on single issues (trade, for instance) he may take a less sanguine position. If a Republican wins the White House in 2024 however you should expect a return to a confrontational approach towards Iran – that’s a given