Is the Trans-Atlantic Relationship Over? A Debate.

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0:30Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policy's Editor-in-Chief. This is FP Live.

0:41Is the transatlantic 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.

1:13Here'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.

1:50A 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 behavior, 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.

2:24According 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 halve their oil imports for months on end. China can. And that is because it has immense stockpiles of crude, the world's largest,

2:55but 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.

3:27It 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 move today compared to two decades ago. Maybe that's a good thing. What hasn't quite changed is how wars end.

3:57Once you start them, they're very difficult to stop.

4:02Okay, time now for this week's interview. Is the transatlantic relationship over? In FP's latest print issue as part of a collection of essays about endings, Natalie Totschi 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-Sheffre. She argued that Totschi was hasty in writing the relationship's obituary. It's not over. Instead, she wrote, the relationship has entered a period of geopolitical maturity,

4:37where 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. Natalie Totschi 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-Sheffre is the president of the German Marshall Fund. And here's our discussion.

5:09Welcome to both of you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Natalie, let me start with you. So go ahead, make the case for why you think the transatlantic relationship as we know it is over.

5:24So essentially, the transatlantic relationship and transatlanticism was born in a very specific historical context. And it was a historical context marked by two major wars. There was the Second World War and there was the Cold War. And these were two wars in which the United States fought on the side of liberal powers and liberalism won the day. So it was a relationship that was really embedded within the specific post-war and then post-war context.

6:00And very clearly, that context has gone. So I think there's, on one level, really a story of a broader global context changing. The United States is no longer the liberal Leviathan that it used to be. Neither is it the Leviathan, meaning a single hegemonic force in the international system, nor is it particularly liberal anymore. Which kind of then leads me to the second set of reasons why I think it's over, which really has to do with the U.S. side of the equation.

6:30Basically, the United States has been going through a phase of very profound change. Of course, there will come a day when Donald Trump will no longer be president of the United States. But presumably, some of what he has done and what he represents will continue to live on. And also because it latches on to that non-liberal or illiberal past that is also very present in the United States in the pre-Second World War period. So this is really something that reconnects to a much older history of the United States, which does indeed, as they say, have strands of illiberalism.

7:10And so elements translated in policy that really have to do, for instance, with protectionism are presumably going to live on. And then, of course, there's the societal level. Profound change is happening then, you know, in terms of background, in terms of obviously generational change. So basically, in many respects, I think that Joe Biden was the last transatlanticist president of the United States and who will come after Donald Trump will be someone that, again, will be perhaps different from Trump, but certainly not like Biden.

7:44Last point that I would make as to why it's over really has to do with the Europeans. And of course, there have been moments of political and the policy disagreement across the Atlantic, as there always is within a family. But never has there been such an egregious breach of trust. And when trust is broken, it's extremely difficult to put a genie back in the bottle. So I think of this as a relationship of a couple in which there has been a betrayal.

8:15Now, there can be all sorts of reasons why that couple may decide to stay together, maybe financial difficulties or the children are too young. But once that relationship has had that fundamental breach of trust, it will inevitably be reconstituted as a very different kind of relationship moving forward. Fascinating. Alexandra, I'm going to bring you in. Why is liberalism maybe not so important here? What is your take on why you disagree with Natalie?

8:46Well, the main point of my argument, I think, is quite simple. What we are witnessing is not the death of transatlanticism, but it's a necessary and long overdue adaptation to a new strategic reality. And that's what I call the journey to geopolitical maturity for the transatlantic partnership. The Trump administration, and I agree with Natalie, clearly challenges European allies on both values and interests.

9:20But the current transformation reflects a much deeper structural shift that long predates Trump's. And I would focus mostly on what I've been dealing with over the past 20 years, which is this chronic imbalance in transatlantic security was, in fact, unsustainable. And burden sharing, as we all know, the burden sharing debate has been going on and on since the creation of NATO. The United States today is neither willing nor able to provide the same level of leadership and capabilities, while Europeans are at the same time re-evaluating the strategic cost of their over-reliance on the United States and are seeking to become more responsible geopolitical factors.

10:08So what you're seeing live today is an acceleration of all of these deep trends. This is actually reshaping both NATO's software, i.e. its political operating logic, and its hardware as Europe significantly steps up on the fence. So I would say at the end of the day, what I'm seeing is many taboos have fallen. Europeans are seriously stepping up on their defense.

10:40The strategic debates across all European countries have fundamentally changed. And so allies are finally engaging in the hard conversations they have long avoided. Instead of hiding behind the comforting rhetoric of shared values, they're beginning to confront explicitly where their interests converge, where they diverge, and what each side actually needs from the other.

11:11Finally, I'll close by saying, yes, there's a huge challenge ahead of us, but the central challenge for me now is one of sequencing and coordination, which is managing this transformation in an orderly way and ensuring that the political tensions between both sides of the Atlantic, but also within the EU countries, but also within the EU countries, do not derail a necessary geopolitical maturation.

11:42Natalie, let me bring you back in. There was something Alexandra said there about shared values, papering over disagreements. Do you buy that? I mean, was this idea of shared values between Europe and the United States just rhetoric, or was it much more foundational, as you've been arguing, to the nature of the relationship? No, I mean, I think it is, and it was foundational. I mean, I think that that is basically the political basis on which the relationship rested.

12:17Then obviously there's politics and then there's policy. And the policy was not always one of agreement, not just on defense, but on trade. I mean, you know, just think back at the banana wars in the 1990s. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not just what has happened over the last few years or not even over the last decade. Right. So, but in a sense, those policy disagreements were really, you know, I mean, they were the evidence of the closeness of this relationship that indeed rested on those political values.

12:51Now, granted, they were never held by everyone in the United States and in Europe. There have always been illiberal forces in the United States and in Europe. And we are indeed living at a time in which those illiberal forces on both sides of the Atlantic are on the rise. So, there could be, let's say, a very different West emerging. I mean, it would be a pretty horrific one, yeah? But there is an idea of a very different West that does share values.

13:21They just happen to be illiberal values, right? So, in a sense, this is precisely what the project of the U.S. administration today is. Yeah, I mean, the MAGA movement and its support for far-right parties across different European countries, the speech that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, unlike that of J.D. Vance, at the Munich Security Conference, Rubio's speech was one of we the West. It is just we the white and kind of Catholic and illiberal West, right?

13:51I mean, but it is a we the West. So, my bottom line in all of this is that the transatlantic relationship, as we've known it, had a particular value set. It doesn't mean that a transatlantic relationship cannot exist in future, whether it is one which is less sentimental, less value-based, more interest-driven, as Alexandria was pointing to, or a different value, quote-unquote, based relationship that is just based on a very different value set. All these are possibilities, which I think cannot be ruled out.

14:23All I'm saying is that it's a very different story from the one that we've known over the last 80 years. Alexandra, let's take that head on, because you've been arguing in a more realistic manner that without centering values, you could still have a very important relationship between the United States and Europe. But the United States could have many important relationships around the world, and Europe could have many important relationships around the world. What underpins it? If it is not values, if it is not a shared sense of how to govern the world, then what makes this relationship special in the future?

15:02I think what makes this relationship special in the future is that it is based on two intertwined, interlocking pillars. It's shared interests and it's shared values. And we've seen consistently throughout NATO's story, throughout U.S.-European story, that when one of these pillars starts wavering, the second pillar wavers as well. They're intersecting. And so that's really important.

15:33And so the political domestic trends on both sides of the Atlantic will inevitably have an impact on both the U.S. and Europe capacity to cooperate. But let me make a small detour, historical detour, because there has always been a tension within the alliance regarding values and norms. Let us all remember that Portugal was a founding member of NATO when it was still a dictatorship.

16:04And then Portugal started its transition to democracy 20 years later. Turkey and Greece experienced periods of authoritarianism in the 1960s and 70s when they were part of the alliance. And I did my PhD research on the war in Iraq in 2003. The Iraq war was also, to a large extent, a crisis of values. So these trends, these challenges to the values that are the common ground of this alliance are not new.

16:41But that didn't mean, in all the examples I've shared with you, a collapse of the transatlantic relationship at the time. So I would say in times of tension, and we are in a moment of tension, both in terms of interest and values, I think our first priority should be to ensure that the transatlantic partnership continues to serve interest on both sides. Because values are not just being challenged on the U.S. side, but across all EU member states and NATO European member states as well.

17:17So this is a shared challenge. And what I'm seeing live leading a transatlantic think tank and working closely with both European governments and the U.S. administration is, to a big extent, our ability as partners to focus on joint shared interests. Let me give you one example. Critical minerals today is being a very important challenge shared by both the U.S. and Europe vis-a-vis their relationship with China, and that have ramifications across tech, energy transition, and everything that both the U.S. and Europeans are going through.

17:55So that, to me, is something I've been observing live. Yes, values matter, but values change on both sides. And so how do you become more interest-driven for me is just an existential way forward for the transatlantic alliance. But the question then, Alexandra, if I can just stay with you for a minute, is, you know, for example, with critical minerals, and if you look at Pax Silica, which includes other countries that are not part of the transatlantic relationship, this is not just about the United States and Europe.

18:32It becomes bigger, it becomes bigger, it becomes bigger, it includes, you know, for example, Japan or South Korea or maybe India. So what about the transatlantic relationship then becomes special, or, you know, in particular allows the two of those sort of sides, as it were, to maintain ties? You're absolutely right to anchor our conversation into the broader transformation of the international order or international disorder, by the way, because the transatlantic relationship is absorbing many of these changes, broader geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geotech shifts in the broader geopolitical landscape.

19:20And let me be slightly provocative, I would say, increasingly, the transatlantic relationship is going to become an alliance among many other alliances. And to your point, Ravi, yes, the United States and Europe have been recently learning to think, diversify their strategic partnerships in an unprecedented way. Because when you look at today's global challenges, climate change, health security, economic security, trade, and of course, conflict resolution, when you think of Ukraine and Iran simultaneously,

20:04the response to these crisis or challenges lies less and less in the Euro-Atlantic space, and more and more in the other countries and other powers' capacity to step in. I take the example of Turkey, you know, who just hosted the NATO summit. Turkey is a critical player when it comes to conflict resolution in Ukraine, but also in the Middle East. And so these countries that don't share U.S. or European values and sometimes diverge when it comes to strategic interests are becoming indispensable players when it comes to providing solutions to some of these critical issues,

20:52where the transatlantic solution is not sufficient anymore. And we'll be back in a minute with more of Foreign Policy Live. Remember, you can catch these conversations live and on video on foreignpolicy.com. Subscribers get to send us questions in advance, in addition to a range of other benefits, including our magazine. Sign up. Hi, FP Live listeners.

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23:00influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe. We have this ability to export our story and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive but not well. From the BBC, it's the United States at 250. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or find us on YouTube. Nathalie, I want to address sort of the elephant in the room here. And this is, of course, U.S. President Donald Trump. Alexandra was talking about other periods in history when the relationship was challenged

23:37and other areas of disagreement. The Iraq War is a great example. Afghanistan as well, which is, you know, after 9-11, the only time that Article 5 of NATO was invoked, there have been disagreements before that were not described in the same dire terms as we do right now. Talk a little bit about why this time is that different. What about Trump makes this a rupture that you think will be permanent and then irreparable, crucially?

24:07So, I think, indeed, you know, as Alexandria was saying, there have been moments of value contestation in the past. So, this is not what makes it different now. And as you were saying, Ravi, there have been moments of policy disagreement in the past. In some respects, even more acute than what we're seeing now, right? I mean, just think about the mass mobilizations. You were mentioning Iraq, the European mass mobilizations against the war in Iraq. Actually, we haven't seen anything like that over the last year and a half, right?

24:38So, in many respects, I think there have been moments of more acute and almost more emotional policy disagreement and value contestation in the past. What I think has never happened in the past is a breach of trust, right? Never have we seen a U.S. president directly attack and threaten to militarily invade another European country. Never have we seen a U.S. president side so explicitly with Moscow against a European country,

25:10Ukraine, and obviously backed by the rest of Europe, right? So, I think that you can just say, well, it's just words. Well, I'm not sure it's just words, right? Certainly, those involved don't think it's just words and took it very, very seriously indeed. And even if these threats are actually not enacted, the very fact that that threat happened, as I said, I don't think that you can put the genie back in the bottle. So, if we end up having, as Alexandra was saying a moment ago, in a sense,

25:42a less exclusive transatlantic relationship with different types of strategic ties being built with other countries and other world regions. And if internally, you basically have a post-Trump or post-breach of trust, if you like, transatlantic relationship in which there's going to be, let's say, an element of risk mitigation, reduced dependencies and protection, right? I need to protect myself from you because you may betray me again.

26:14Well, that to me looks like a fundamentally different relationship than the one that we've had over the last 80 years. Alexandra, take that on a bit, because last week at the NATO summit, Trump repeated his claim over Greenland. And it struck me that it wasn't taken as seriously as the first time he made it back in Davos, when all of us felt like the claim kind of blew up the entire summit there. Is it that we're just becoming inured to his words?

26:45Is it that we are way too hopeful? Or is it, as Natalie is suggesting, that a breach of trust has occurred and the relationship is now fundamentally just very different? I think Greenland is an issue that we should definitely not dismiss. And that is just much more serious than what Americans think. In fact, for me, it has the potential to become one of the most serious sources of tension within the transatlantic relationship.

27:16If the United States were to move beyond rhetoric and take concrete steps to challenge Denmark's sovereignty over Greenland, then European governments would have little choice but to respond much more forcefully than they have so far. So I think on the US side, there's really a need to understand that this is not a symbolic issue for Europeans, but it's a true challenge to real strategic interests.

27:48And let me add also an American layer that we've been observing since the beginning of this Greenland episode is that probably the factor that made the Trump administration rewind for now on Greenland was the pressure coming from the US Congress, maybe even more than the European reaction. So my answer to your question would also be, I think we should trust US institutions

28:20in terms also of putting some red lines on some of the American president's policy ideas or decisions that he is willing to take. And we've seen continuously many times where Trump had to rewind because the pressure coming from the US Congress was becoming clear. And I would say even more so within the Republican and the MAGA camp as well.

28:50So that would be my answer to your question. But Greenland for me should not be dismissed at all to the point that Natalie made. I think it was really a turning point, a rupture point when it came to the trust between the US and Europe. And once that trust is broken, and I've seen that live in many other discussions on trade, on tech, this has ramifications across all the other sectors

29:22where both sides of the Atlantic are supposed to cooperate and build a positive agenda. But Alexandra, you're still making the case that despite this rupture of trust, the relationship can endure in, you know, a fashion that is more realistic, you know, infused with realism at the very least than it was before. That's right? Yes, absolutely. Because I've been, you know, working in the transatlantic relationship

29:55for over 20 years now. So both with Democrat and Republican administrations. And so what you see, in fact, is what doesn't change from one administration to the other. And probably for me, the American president that may have been the real turning point for the transatlantic relationship may have been Barack Obama,

30:26the pivot to Asia, the Syrian red line, the U.S. response to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. They were all real strategic shocks for Europeans. And what we see today in many ways is the continuity of this trend. Biden, I think from emotional, from a personality character and personal story, yes, was a real transatlanticist. But when it came to his policies,

30:58he didn't revert that much of Trump's policies, especially in trade, in tariffs. And he didn't consult with European allies when it came to withdrawing from Afghanistan. So I'm trying to put people's radar on the structural trends, on the repetition. And I keep being surprised how Europeans keep being surprised, if I can say. Yes, Trump has, if I can say,

31:29added an additional layer of pain and directness and brutality to the way he is interacting with European allies. But I would say, for example, the Ankara summit of NATO, to me, was a signal of how Europeans now are integrating that it's maybe much less about Trump himself and much more about thinking

32:00and shaping what comes next and taking the long-term horizon, what's in the best long-term interest of Europe and how do we keep the United States engaged where it matters and where do Europeans significantly, and don't just pretend, but significantly step up in key areas where they actually can in a European format, but also with others. You know, I often mention South Korea

32:30now being the second provider of military equipment to Europe after the United States. That's not insignificant. So I think it's important also for us to slightly broaden our vision beyond the pure Euro-Atlantic space and see the transformation of that relationship as just being a reflection of the broader transformation of the geopolitical landscape. Natalie, I'm wondering if you agree

33:00or disagree with that assertion that perhaps we place too much emphasis on Trump the person, whereas, you know, other presidents, for example, Obama, maybe even Biden to a degree, did things that were disagreeable or changed the trajectory of the relationship and in this moment we tend to forget that. Do you agree with all of that?

33:22I mean, I agree that the structural shift started with Obama and here is where I come back to trust. I don't think that there was a breach of trust with Obama. I don't think that there's ever been a breach of trust, not even in Trump 1 was there a breach of trust like the one that we've seen in Trump 2. And this is why I think that this is a turning point. I don't think that it ever crossed European minds how do we protect ourselves against the United States,

33:53right? It was, you know, you have discussions about whatever, you know, does an F-35 have a kill switch? This was completely off the radar, right? There would have never been the level of intimacy, the level of dependence, right, that there has been on the United States had there not been that basis of trust. I've asked myself, for example, you know, let's take the US-Latin American relationship. Why is it that at the beginning of Trump 2, when of course, you know, the Don Roe Doctrine

34:24and all the rest of it, why is it that we saw Latin American countries in many respects react with greater dignity compared to many of the European peers? And I asked some of my Latin American colleagues and their answer was, well, because we have a history there. It's not the first time, right, that the United States actually represents a threat to us. Well, it's the first time that the United States represents a potential threat to Europe, right? This is unheard of,

34:55right? This has never happened before, which is why, yes, indeed, a structural shift. And there, I completely agree with what Alexandria was saying. Yes, indeed, there may still be mutual interests across the Atlantic, but that breach of trust is just categorically different from anything that we've seen before. And yes, of course, it's embodied by President Trump, but it's his administration, right? And so, he is, let's not forget, a president that has not just

35:26been elected out of fluke, he's been elected twice, so he represents something. It's not just words being said by some kind of, you know, random person. Nathalie, you know, I promised to take some subscriber questions and just to broaden this a little bit, here's one from David Litt who wants to know about the role of Canada in the evolution and transformation of the transatlantic alliance. Canada is, of course, a NATO member and we've been using the word rupture. Rupture is indeed the term that Prime Minister Mark Carney

35:56famously used in his speech earlier this year in which he said there's a rupture in world order. Where do you think Canada fits into this? Canada is becoming an honorary European country, right? I mean, you basically see Canada that participated in the European Political Community Summit only a couple of weeks ago. So, I think Canada is on the one hand in a very similar predicament as European countries

36:27and therefore that relationship. Canada is really, I think, pushing in many respects Europe to take on those responsibilities and lead a little bit more, both within that transatlantic framework but as Alexandra was saying, also moving beyond it. And in the moving beyond it, Canada and Carney's pitched for the middle powers in a fundamentally different way from the way in which we used to talk about middle powers prior to the Carney speech. Prior to the Carney speech,

36:57the middle powers were the cynical, slightly opportunistic, multi-aligned. all of a sudden the middle powers become basically our key to save the rules-based order, right? And Canada presenting itself as the potential connector, particularly between Europe and some of these middle powers. Think about the push that Canada's making for relations between the European Union and the CPTPP countries, right? So, I think, you know, Canada, an honorary European country in a very

37:27similar predicament that shares the line of thinking that Alexandra was mentioning of, in a sense, this more global understanding of what the transatlantic relationship is and used to be about. And maybe two fingers on that. What's really interesting is that this is not just rhetoric. It actually translates into real cooperation, including in the defence, in the energy sector. You've especially seen a

37:57rapprochement between Germany and Canada on defence industry a lot. And Carney, on his way to the NATO Ankara summit, purposely announced that Germany and Canada were going to deepen their defence industrial cooperation. So, it really translates into concrete cooperation. And for me, that's just a very healthy evolution for both Europeans and Canadians as well.

38:29Alexandra, I'm going to take another subscriber question. This one's from Ronald Linden. And he points to how Europeans already face a very high tax burden compared to the rest of the world. Many Europeans opposed spending more in defence. There were huge demonstrations in Rome. After the last NATO summit produced pledges for more spending. When you look at that kind of public pushback on some of the things Europe needs to do to fix the burden-sharing question that's come up a fair number of times in this conversation, when you look at that public

38:59pushback, you add in the fact that Europe has all these other pressures, whether it is energy and its relationship with Russia that has transformed in the last five years, whether it is China and whether it seriously sees China as a threat or a challenge, and then you add in the fact that in Trump right now you have a leader who often is seen as someone who only likes to back winners, and if he sees Europe as being in a tough predicament, he's going to want to take advantage of that.

39:30When you add all of that up, Alexandra, what is your sense of Europe's cards when it comes to this relationship? I would say Europe has a lot of cards, a lot. It's just not using it. It's just not using all of the cards it has. It has economy cards, political, diplomatic cards, military, and of course, financial cards. So that's number one. Number two, to the first

40:01part of your question, which I think is critical on the European public opinion, not understanding or not buying the idea that Europe needs to seriously step up to provide its own security and defense. I think the responsibility relies on political leaders, not being able or not willing to explain to their citizens why at that particular moment it is critical to not only

40:31sustain support to Ukraine, but scale up because the winds of turning and it's the moment to lean in even more and why at a time where the United States is very clearly recalibrating its military presence, the military equipment it is providing to Europe, it is therefore important for Europeans to step up where they can and step up in a speedy, speedy way.

41:02So I think there is these two parts that are two parts of the same coin. And yes, to the second part of your question, Europe to a big extent always fails to be a responsible geopolitical or geo-economic actor because it is fragmented. It is because Europeans have a fragmented defense industrial base

41:32that they are hyper-dependent on the U.S. defense industry. It is because Europeans don't have the same approach to energy transition or climate change, and you see that namely between France and Germany, that Europeans are 99% dependent on Chinese tech when it comes to implementing their energy transition. So when you take these two critical

42:02sectors, defense and tech, and you couple that with energy, I think this is the triangle that Europeans need to succeed operationalizing in terms of building their sovereignty, and that means reducing their dependencies vis-a-vis the United States and China. And that's, again, not a bad thing at all. I think it was long overdue that Europeans reassess the

42:33strategic costs of their hyper-dependencies regarding others and start thinking more diverse in terms of the countries with whom they partner with. And, you know, to your Canada question, it's also interesting to see how Kearney has been traveling a lot to the Middle Eastern countries and also trying to diversify LNG and the energy model of Canada away from the United States. And I would say, Europe

43:03at the end of the day, needs to do three things simultaneously. One, do more among Europeans, that's for sure. Continue to build and deepen its strategic partnership with the United States when necessary and needed. And then third, work and build other strategic partnerships and alliances with other countries. India, on tech, on space, on defense, the Middle Eastern countries are

43:33becoming giant tech and innovators as well. Turkey, on drones, I mean, you can have a full array of a list of countries that today have become an indispensable part of Europe's alliance ecosystem. And that's not something to be seen as against the United States. It's actually strategic complementarity. And that, for me, is just a natural and healthy thing to do.

44:03Natalie, I'm going to give you the last word. There is so much that the two of you actually agree on. But I think the area where there is the main disagreement is the importance not just of values, because I'm still lingering on how you said that the transatlantic relationship could continue as an alliance of values, just not the values we think, because it could easily be an alliance of right-wing values. But the key bit here is liberalism, really. That is the thing that you see as

44:33having been breached and being irrecoverable. Talk a little bit about that just to close us out.

44:41Yeah, I mean, I think, well, there's part of it, which is indeed this broader global story, as in liberalism as a universal ideology, and we're living in times of pluralist values, right? So I think there's a sort of big question which actually goes well beyond Europe or the United States of how does liberalism sit in an international environment in which indeed there's value contestation.

45:11I think that the liberalism that is contested within the United States and within Europe, I mean, I kind of, you know, put out there the sort of horror scenario of a kind of transatlantic relationship sort of remodeled on right-wing values.