Is the Trans-Atlantic Relationship Over? A Debate.

**Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer** (0:00)
Introducing Meta Glasses.

**Andrew Solinger** (0:02)
You have questions, they've got answers. Hey Meta, what's the capital of Peru?

**Ravi Agrawal** (0:08)
Lima.

**Andrew Solinger** (0:09)
How do you say, where's the restroom in Spanish?

**Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer** (0:12)
Dónde está el baño?
Hey Meta, is a hot dog a sandwich? Technically, no. Spiritually, yes.

**Ravi Agrawal** (0:20)
Hey Meta, what should I do with my life?

**Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer** (0:23)
That's one of life's biggest questions. What do you think?

**Andrew Solinger** (0:27)
Ask anything with the new Meta Glasses.

**Ravi Agrawal** (0:31)
Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policy's Editor-in-Chief. This is FP Live.
Is the Trans-Atlantic relationship over? This week, we'll debate that. Two essayists in the magazine, both experts on Europe, make the case for and against, in light of US President Donald Trump once again laying claim to Greenland. That's coming up. But first, I want to briefly discuss the ongoing situation in the Gulf. As we tape this on Tuesday, the 7th of July, the United States and Iran have reignited their war over the Strait of Hormuz. The ceasefire deal seems over.
Here's my read on things.
The heart of the current disagreement seems to be about who controls the Strait of Hormuz. The memorandum of understanding that was intended to shed light on this clearly didn't. Now the two sides are not only fighting each other, they're escalating attacks nearly to the level we saw at the height of the conflict back in March. Oil prices have started to soar once more. As of this taping, they are about 17% higher than before the war. And as we all know, very well, this will have a range of ripple effects on other commodities, on inflation and on the entire global economy.
A return to conflict could follow the same pattern as the last one. Both sides impose costs on the other, and when they realize that they aren't fundamentally changing the other side's behaviour, they pull back. Throughout it all, the world suffers, but especially Asian countries. The question now is how quickly we will go through this cycle again. Will it take months, as it did last time? Or will it go faster and save us some of the pain? In thinking about this question, it is worth considering the role of China. According to the New York Times, in the months before the war, China was importing around 12 million barrels of oil a day. As the war began, it pulled back, dropping to about 6 million barrels a day by June.
It's hard for me to overstate how striking that data point is. Few countries can manage to have their oil imports for months on end. China can, and that is because it has immense stockpiles of crude, the world's largest, but also because it can rely to a degree on coal and renewables. For how long exactly? As with all things to do with Beijing, the reality is a bit opaque. As conflict resumes in the Middle East, will China continue to import less oil and draw on its reserves? Or will it decide that it can afford to buy crude at the market price? If it makes that latter choice, the price of oil will rise much faster than it currently is, and that would have immediate impacts on every other country.
It is a reminder of how different the world is today than it was two decades ago, when we had another Middle East war, that time in Iraq. The United States has since become the world's biggest oil and gas producer, and China has developed a form of immunity to global price shocks. That is a huge change, and it is impacting how energy prices moved today compared to two decades ago. Maybe that's a good thing. What hasn't quite changed is how wars end. Once you start them, they're very difficult to stop.
Okay, time now for this week's interview. Is the Trans-Atlantic relationship over? In FP's latest print issue as part of a collection of essays about endings, Nathalie Tocci argued that the US-Europe relationship, at least as we knew it, was over. A few weeks later, we ran a rebuttal by Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer. She argued that Tocci was hasty in writing the relationship's obituary, it's not over. Instead, she wrote, the relationship has entered a period of geopolitical maturity, where the two sides will pick and choose areas of cooperation. Which of the two is correct? I'm not here to adjudicate, but I thought it would be revealing to air out both sides in a debate. So let's dive right in. Nathalie Tocci is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies in Europe. She previously served as special advisor to two EU high representatives. Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer is the president of the German Marshall Fund. And here's our discussion.