The U.S. - German relations in political and military spheres in 2022: cooperation or competition?

Abstract

Disengagement between the West and the non-West has been becoming more and more noticeable by the early 2020s. The key examples of it are the confrontations between the Euro-Atlantic community and Russia, the USA, its partners and China, degradation of relations between the West and Iran. In such situation cohesion between the liberal democracies should increase. But the Euro-Atlantic faced the phenomena of Trumpism and Brexit. In this regard the article tries to explore the elements of cooperation and competition for the US-German relations in political and military spheres during late February - early November 2022. The article stresses the absence of purely bilateral contacts at the highest level of the dialogue. The determination is shown in the context of the Biden administration’s policy named as «soft hegemony», the US expectations regarding the supply of German weapons to Kyiv. The paper compares the US and German approaches to manning NATO military groupings, especially Forward Presence Force. In 2022 Berlin tries to act symmetrically to the USA. Germany has taken into account the US expectations for growing European member states’ participation in NATO`s activities but at the same time skillfully realized its own ambitions as power. The article also analyses the ratio of approaches on the example of decisions of NATO`s Madrid summit (2022, June) decisions.