If the US is – in the words of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright – the "indispensible nation" then the economic, democratic and institutional alliance between the US and the EU is the “essential partnership”. So argues Tony Gardner, Barack Obama’s ambassador to the EU and advisor to Joe Biden’s campaign for president in his new book Stars with Stripes: The Essential Partnership between the European Union and the United States (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020),
The EU-US partnership has its frustrations and failings, he writes, but has quietly delivered on trade liberalization, data management, defense and law enforcement, leverage against Russia and Iran, and energy security. If Biden wins in November, these joint projects will be expanded and the fight against climate change brought to the forefront but “time will be short and pressure will be really high” to prove that working with allies achieves more than unilateralism.
Tony Gardner was US ambassador to the EU from 2014-2017 and a member of Bill Clinton’s National Security Council in 1994-1995. He is now a managing partner at Brookfield Asset Management, a board member of Iberdrola, and senior counsel in the law firm Sidley Austin where he works on trade, data privacy and cybersecurity.
Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Global Advisors.
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Anthony L. Gardner, "Stars with Stripes: The Essential Partnership between the European Union and the United States" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) | New Books in European Politics podcast - Listen or read transcript on Metacast
