BERLIN — President Joe Biden leaves Thursday for what is likely to be his final trip as president to Europe, where Germany will bestow its highest honor on him for spearheading global efforts to protect Ukraine as European leaders strategize for a potential future in which the United States could be less engaged in the transatlantic alliance.
Biden had initially planned to visit Germany last week to take part in a multinational summit focused on Ukraine, but the trip was scrapped as Hurricane Milton barreled toward Florida. The president is returning to a Europe where diplomats are anxiously waiting to see whether they will confront modest shifts under a Kamala Harris presidency or a dramatic upheaval of global alliances if Donald Trump prevails.
Biden will meet Friday with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer about Western efforts to bolster Ukraine’s defenses, White House officials told reporters Wednesday. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is set to award Biden the country’s highest honor, the Special Class of the Grand Cross, which is reserved for heads of state.
“I have no doubt that the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine, the trajectory of the war, how allies can best support Ukraine will be a subject of conversation,” said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under the ground rules of a call with reporters. “The bottom line for the United States and for President Joe Biden is that we want to put Ukraine in a position of strength.”
The official added: “We want it to prevail in this war, and we need to give it the capabilities that it needs to do that. But we cannot do that alone — we need to do that with our partners and allies.”
Before last week’s trip was postponed, Biden had been planning to follow his visit to Germany with a stop in Angola, fulfilling a long-standing promise that he would visit Africa as president. On Wednesday, the White House announced that the president will visit Angola in December.
Bolstering the NATO alliance in defense of Ukraine has been a hallmark of Biden’s foreign policy, and the Berlin trip offers him an opportunity to push for whatever incremental gains he can in the final days of his presidency and cement his legacy as a leader who led a coalition of democracies battling the creep of authoritarianism. Biden last year defiantly traveled to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in the middle of a full-scale Russian invasion and declared in Poland a short time later that the world “would not look the other way” in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression.
“When Russia invaded, it wasn’t just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages,” Biden said in Poland. “Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO is being tested. All democracies are being tested. And the questions we face are as simple as they are profound: Would we respond, or would we look the other way?”
Biden is a president who until recently was hoping for an additional four years in the world’s most powerful position. Hanging over his remaining tenure is the prospect that Trump, a man he views as a threat to American democracy and the Western alliance, could retake the office from which Biden ousted him four years ago.
That has put enormous pressure on the president to simultaneously burnish his legacy and, to the extent he can, take practical steps to prevent Trump from undoing it if he wins.
Biden has framed Ukraine as a crucial front in the global clash between democracy and totalitarianism. Some analysts attribute this worldview in part to Biden’s experience during the Cold War, contending that America’s Eurocentric approach may diminish in the face of China’s rising power.
“His entire political life, professional life, the alliance with Europe generally and the alliance with NATO specifically has been at the core of his foreign policy outlook,” said Ivo Daalder, chief executive of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the U.S. ambassador to NATO under former president Barack Obama. “He’s probably the last truly Atlanticist president born before the Cold War. And even though alliances in Asia … are important, on foreign policy, for Joe Biden, the first thought comes from across the Atlantic, not across the Pacific.”
Diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic see the trip to Germany in part as an effort by Biden to use what remains of his bully pulpit to advocate for more support for Ukraine before someone else occupies the Oval Office.
Trump, who has summed up his approach to foreign policy as “America First,” has a starkly different outlook on America’s role in European affairs, one that is friendlier to Putin and more adversarial toward other NATO members. He has suggested that the United States should not defend allies that do not pay their fair share of NATO dues, while his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), is a sharp critic of U.S. support for Ukraine. According to a recent book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, Trump may have spoken with Putin as many as seven times since leaving office.
If many European allies see Trump as a threat, they view Harris as a relative unknown. As Biden’s No. 2, she has been a spokeswoman for his foreign policy, expressing support for NATO and meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a half-dozen times. But while Biden had decades of experience with global diplomacy, Harris has put little emphasis on foreign policy during her compressed campaign for the White House.
European officials say they expect a Harris presidency to largely maintain the status quo, but they worry she will not have Biden’s substantive and emotional attachment to NATO.
“If we get Kamala Harris, it’s going to be very interesting, because we don’t know at all what her compass is when it comes to foreign policy. We have no idea,” a senior NATO official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues. “All we can expect is it will be a continuation of the Biden foreign policy. That’s as much as we can prepare for.”
Ukrainian officials have been hopeful that Biden would use his last months in office to secure long-term American support for their war effort more than two years after Russian tanks crossed into their country. Ukrainian officials are focusing their lobbying efforts on the lame-duck months of Biden’s presidency — after Election Day in November, but before a new president takes office in January — hoping Biden will be focused on his legacy and less concerned about domestic politics.
Zelensky and his team have told Biden’s advisers that putting Ukraine on more solid footing, including pushing for its admission to NATO, would cement his place in history as the leader who saved Ukraine from Russian conquest. Zelensky unveiled a “Victory Plan” to Biden during a meeting in Washington last month, saying that more U.S. help would allow Ukraine to end the war next year. He spoke again with Biden on Wednesday, the senior administration official said.
The U.S. reaction to Zelensky’s push has been lukewarm so far. Ukrainian officials had hoped that the White House, for example, would have already granted Kyiv permission to launch attacks deeper into Russian territory using American-made weapons, but Biden has so far rebuffed that request.
European leaders have made it clear they were disappointed by the scuttling of last week’s planned summit on Ukraine, especially because a potential second Trump presidency could bring greater uncertainty. Few European policymakers say they believe Trump would formally withdraw from NATO, but many fear a more transactional approach to the alliance and dwindling U.S. support for Ukraine.
NATO and European policymakers have sought to push through aid packages, sign defense pledges and bring key elements of Ukrainian aid under the NATO umbrella before the Nov. 5 election. Working groups in Berlin have been mapping out plans for different scenarios, but efforts to game plan for Trump have been stymied by the former president’s unpredictability. And given the size of the U.S. share of funding for Ukraine, there may be little they could do if a U.S. president turns off the tap.
“No matter what happens in November, we must be prepared for the fact that the demands on Germany and the E.U. for more responsibility will increase,” the German government’s transatlantic cooperation coordinator, Michael Link, told German media in July.
So with Biden making perhaps his final visit to Germany, the nation’s leaders are trying to celebrate their mutual strides while also trying to figure out what else can be accomplished.
Beyond that, the trip is in part a goodbye, as Biden and Scholz have for the most part worked hand-in-glove.
“I think this is also a farewell gift in a way, just to say, ‘Thanks for keeping us as your main partner in Europe,’ so to speak,” said Jackson Janes, a resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. “We hope that we can continue to have the relationship we had with you, regardless of who wins.”
Wootson reported from Washington. Brady reported from Berlin. Francis reported from Brussels.