Ties among the EU, US, Russia in focus

MUNICH — The Munich Security Conference was and is a good platform for discussion of the relationship among the European Union, the United States and Russia.

Gu Xuewu, director of the Center for Global Studies at Bonn University said that Europe is becoming more disappointed with the US on the issue of defense. “The sense of security and trust in the US is disappearing,” he said.

Meanwhile, the US only urged the EU to take more responsibility, which has led to a rift between the two sides, Gu said.

Referring to Russia, Gu said that the unity between the EU and the US will cause concerns for Russia over its strategic security.

If the EU really wants to become a global actor, it has to make more decisions in foreign policy, European Commission President JeanClaude Juncker said at the conference.

For the EU, common defense has been a critical theme of the shift away from dependence on the US, with the November 2017 signing and December 2017 launch of the Permanent Structured Cooperation agreement, allowing 25 participating EU member states to pursue greater cooperation on matters of defense and security.

Juncker spoke highly of the progress made last year in this regard. He said that “we want to emancipate ourselves in defense and security policy issues”. But it didn’t mean being against NATO or the US.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that cooperation between Europe and the US is important for maintaining the Western security framework drawn up after World War II.

However, he questioned that “Germans are nowadays not particularly sure whether we still recognize America.

“Is it deeds, words or tweets that we should look to to measure America?”

US National Security Advisor Herbert Raymond McMaster, who spoke at the three-day event, claimed that the evidence that Russia tried to meddle with the 2016 US presidential election was “incontrovertible”.

“As you can see with the FBI indictment, the evidence is now really incontrovertible and available in the public domain, whereas in the past it was difficult to attribute for a couple of reasons,” McMaster said.

The indictment charged 13 Russians with running a huge but hidden social media campaign aimed in part at helping Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.

On the other hand, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “as long as we don’t have facts, all the rest is blabber”.