How Might the Violence in Ukraine Come to an End? - René Pfister, Ann-Dorit Boy, Matthias Gebauer (Der Spiegel)

 A Year After Putin's Invasion

How Might the Violence in Ukraine Come to an End?

Russia's invasion of Ukraine began one year ago. But how might the war end? Russia seems further from victory than ever, but a Ukrainian triumph is also far from a foregone conclusion. What are the possible scenarios for an end to the conflict?

By René Pfister, Ann-Dorit Boy, Matthias Gebauer

Der Spiegel, 10.02.2023, 18.54 Uhr

Starting a war is simple. Ending it, though, is quite a bit more difficult. At the beginning of almost every military conflagration is the illusion that one’s opponent will be relatively easy to defeat.

When German troops headed off to the front in August 1941, they scrawled "Vacation to Paris" on their train cars. Hitler’s "blitzkrieg" ended up lasting six years.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin marched into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he clearly believed that he would be able to conquer Kyiv within just a few days and install a puppet government. It was an illusion that vanished in the smoke from anti-tank rockets shipped to Ukraine by its Western allies. The Russian army, as quickly became clear, isn’t powerful enough to subjugate a people that is prepared to fight for its own freedom. And as the list of Ukrainian military successes has grown longer, their war aims have also shifted. No longer is survival the only goal. Now, they want to win.

War is a monster that ultimately grows over the heads of those who unleashed it. With the invasion, Putin was hoping to fulfill his dream of resurrecting the Soviet Union, but now, he finds himself not only fighting against a powerful Ukrainian army, but also for his own political survival. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on the other hand, who campaigned in the spring of 2019 on his professed hopes of being able to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict with his neighbor, is now determined to liberate all of Ukraine, including the Crimean Peninsula – with military force if necessary.

The upshot is that Ukraine, a country for which nobody in Europe felt a particular responsibility over the past several years, has now become a key crucible of global politics. The outcome of the war will have a significant influence on future developments. "If we turn a blind eye to the war in Ukraine, it will set an example for others," says a senior official in the U.S. State Department.

If Putin is able to swallow up Ukraine, why would he shy away from doing the same to other republics that were once part of the Soviet Union – such as Moldova or the Baltic states? In Washington, meanwhile, the war in Ukraine is seen as one element in a larger conflict. If Putin were victorious in Ukraine, might not Beijing see that as an invitation to conquer Taiwan?

One year after Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the question is now the following: How can this war, the effects of which reach far beyond Russia and Ukraine, be ended? It is a war that has deep consequences for European security and for future relations between the nuclear powers of Russia, the U.S. and China. And the end isn’t yet in sight, it could still continue for quite some time, years even. Nobody knows how it might end. But what are the possible scenarios?

Scenario 1: Ukraine Wins the War

What would even count as a victory for Ukraine? Could a victory involve some losses of territory but survival as an independent country armed by the West to the point that Russia would no longer attack it?

For the Ukrainian president and the vast majority of Ukrainians, there is only one acceptable outcome to the conflict: the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from every square centimeter of Ukrainian territory. Whether or not it is realistic, the aim is clear.

Whereas President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was prepared last spring to negotiate with Putin over the Donbass and the Crimea, he now excludes the possibility of talks with the Russian leader. At the same time, 85 percent of Ukrainians reject making any territorial concessions to a regime that has committed massacres against the civilian population. "

Russia still occupies around one-fifth of the area of Ukraine. The more territory Ukraine can retake, the better are their chances for victory and, over the longer term, their political and economic outlook.

But can Ukraine really defeat Russia militarily?

More than a few Western military experts are cautiously optimistic about the possibility of a Ukrainian victory, not least because Moscow has repeatedly stumbled on the battlefield. The Ukrainian military, by contrast, has managed to win back half of the territory that Russia occupied immediately following the February 24 invasion. The Ukrainian army was able to prevent Putin from taking Kyiv, retook Kherson in southern Ukraine and pushed the Russians back across the Dnieper River, which divides the country from the north to the south.

The two armies now find themselves locked in a static battle across the entire front, one that is reminiscent of World War I. Most of the more than 2,000 Ukrainian villages and cities that are still under Moscow’s control will likely be far more difficult to liberate than those that have thus far been reconquered. Putin’s troops have been digging in for several months, the Kremlin has ratcheted up its war-time economy and Putin mobilized more than 300,000 soldiers last fall, of which only half have actually been sent into battle thus far.

"The Russian proposition is, to me, straightforward,” says American military expert Michael Kofman. It hinges on grinding down the strong Ukrainian military with wave upon wave of Russian fighters even if they are poorly trained and equipped. For Ukraine to withstand the Russian onslaught, Kyiv badly needs more weapons and munitions. The Ukrainian general staff said in December that they needed 300 tanks in order to launch a counteroffensive. But they won’t be arriving any time soon. The German military, the Bundeswehr, is intending to ship 14 Leopard 2 battle tanks and 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine by the end of March – and the necessary training of Ukrainian soldiers is currently underway near Münster in the German state of Lower Saxony.

But the delivery of older Leopard tank models from Germany will take significantly longer. The German government only authorized their export earlier this week, and because they are from the Cold War era and must first be refurbished, the initial deliveries of 20 Leopard 1 tanks will likely only be possible late this year. The 31 Abrams battle tanks promised by the U.S., meanwhile, are only likely to arrive at the end of 2023 at the earliest – while the bulk of the Leopard 1 tanks from Germany will follow next year.

Given that timeline, the question becomes: Do Ukraine’s supporters really want Kyiv to win? U.S. President Joe Biden has consistently taken a two-pronged approach: Generosity combined with circumspection. He approved the delivery of war materiel worth $30 billion, but he has only gradually ratcheted up the weaponry being sent to Ukraine. Anti-tank missiles were followed by howitzers, which were followed by rocket launchers and now battle tanks. Biden has, for the time being, ruled out the sending of warplanes.

"We are trying to meet the (Ukrainian) needs on the battlefield,” says the U.S. State Department official. But Washington, the official continues, is not at war with Russia. The Biden administration is seeking to help Ukraine without escalating the conflict with the Kremlin. It is essentially the same strategy being pursued by Germany and France, both of which have shown even more hesitancy than the Americans and have supplied far less weaponry.

The perceived foot-dragging by some members of the Western coalition has triggered frustration in Central European countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic countries as well as in Ukraine. Increasingly, that same frustration has been building among Biden’s supporters in Washington. Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, suggested in a late January piece for Foreign Affairs that NATO use the first anniversary of the Russian invasion for a "Big Bang” and announce an extensive package of support, including long-range missiles, armed drones, tanks and warplanes. He also argued that all members of the Russian state apparatus be added to the sanctions list. If we continue with piecemeal military and economic support for Ukraine, we will ensure that the war never ends, McFaul argued. Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of the U.S. forces in Europe, recently made similar comments. In a piece for the Economist, he presented a plan for how Ukraine could reconquer Crimea.

In conclusion, there is a possibility that Ukraine can win this war militarily. But it is a goal that the U.S. and many of Kyiv’s Western European supporters have not made their own. And if Ukraine is to emerge victorious, it will need far more support.

Scenario 2: Russia Wins the War

Nobody knows exactly how Vladimir Putin might define victory in Ukraine. He has never officially stated that his aim is to conquer the entire country including the capital, even if his troops sought to take Kyiv in the early days of the war. Russia’s initial justification for its invasion was that of protecting the population in the Donbass from Ukrainian "neo-Nazis.” Putin has also repeatedly called into question Ukraine’s existence as an independent country. It seems that his war aims are less that of taking over certain regions of the country than of exerting complete political control over all of Ukraine and turning it into a satellite state similar to Belarus.

A victory for Putin in Ukraine would always be a fragile one. Even if Kyiv were to officially submit to a forced peace, partisans and saboteurs would certainly make life difficult for the Russian occupiers. It is hard to imagine a majority of Ukrainians transforming into willing subjects of Vladimir Putin.

The Russian autocrat, though, could also present smaller successes as a victory. If he and his troops were able to regain complete control over the four regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and obtain some form of international recognition, it could be enough for him to save face domestically. But even that would be extremely difficult.

The small and vocal group of nationalist warmongers has been massively strengthened in the last 12 months by the war in Ukraine. These ultra-nationalist circles would hardly be satisfied with a mini-victory, and they present the greatest domestic danger to Putin.

And the president doesn’t have too many options left for transforming the war into a personal success. The West may be concerned about the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, but actually doing so would place Putin at the mercy of numerous virtually incalculable risks – and it wouldn’t necessarily help him on the battlefield either. Ukrainian troops are far too widely deployed for a single detonation to decisively weaken them. The use of a tactical nuclear weapon could trigger a nuclear escalation – or it could result in panic in the West and increase pressure on Western leaders to cease arms shipments.

If deliveries of artillery munitions and anti-tank missiles were to cease as a consequence of evaporating support for Ukraine in the West, it would only be a matter of weeks until Kyiv fell or Zelenskyy would be forced to make far-reaching concessions. For now, though, there are no indications that Biden or Ukraine’s other supporters are beginning to back away.

But Putin can play for time. The Russian leader is betting on the West running out of steam, says William Wechsler, who was a top official in the Pentagon under Barack Obama and now works for the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington, D.C. Putin, he says, has the advantage that he can extend the war and wear down his adversaries. "That is a very Russian way of war,” Wechsler says. "That’s how they beat Napoleon, that’s how they beat Hitler, by outlasting their opponents.”

Putin’s military may not be particularly motivated, but he rules over a population of 143 million people, including 25 million men of military age. Ukraine’s population, by contrast, is just short of 40 million. According to a survey conducted by the independent polling agency Levada Center in Moscow, almost three-quarters of Russians support the "special operation” in Ukraine, as Putin insists it be called. Almost all serious opposition politicians are either dead, in exile or, as is the case with Alexei Navalny, locked away in a penal colony.

In the West, meanwhile, public opinion is far from steadfast. Whereas a clear majority of Germans supported weapons deliveries to Ukraine earlier in the war, only just over half are now in favor of sending tanks.

Bulgarian intellectual Ivan Krastev has said that many wars are not decided on the battlefield or at the negotiating table, but in the voting booth – when a new leader is elected in a key country who has no interest in continuing the war. In theory, such a thing could happen in Russia, even if elections there are neither free nor fair and are hardly the most obvious path to a regime change in the country. Far more likely is that a leadership change in the West could have a significant influence on the war – first and foremost in the U.S., where presidential elections will be held in 2024. If Biden were to lose to a nationalist Republican like Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, American policy on Ukraine would change dramatically. And Europe, which is still militarily dependent on Washington, would almost certainly lack the strength and the willpower to continue supporting Kyiv on its own.

In the U.S., the Ukraine issue is already being pulled into the approaching campaign. Tucker Carlson, one of the most influential right-wing TV personalities in the U.S., has been consistently using his show on Fox News to aggressively go after Biden and those Republicans who are in favor of weapons deliveries to Ukraine. One doesn’t need too much fantasy to imagine Donald Trump frothing at the mouth in the late stages of the campaign as he blasts aid to Ukraine as a waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars. "Through weakness and incompetence, Joe Biden has brought us to the brink of World War III,” Trump said a few days ago. It is crazy, he continued, to now send battle tanks into the warzone. Trump’s affinity for Putin, it should be mentioned, has always been greater than his fondness for America’s NATO allies in Europe.

Scenario 3: A Bloody Stalemate (with or without negotiations)

But what will happen if, as currently seems likely, neither side emerges victorious anytime soon?

There is one scenario for Europe and Ukraine that would likely be almost as distasteful as a Russian victory: a partially frozen conflict, a deep wound in Europe’s side with new skirmishes daily. It is a plight that Ukraine has known since 2014 in the Donbas, but it would be far larger in this instance.

"The Russians still think they can control of all of Ukraine. And the Ukrainians are not willing to give up territory that the Russians have taken since the beginning of the war on February 24, 2022,” says  Russia expert Angela Stent. "In that sense, we are further away from a peace agreement than ever before.” That, in turn, has led many in the West to demand that Ukraine, especially, must be forced into a diplomatic solution. According to one survey, around half of Germans believe that the government in Berlin should be doing more to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, though it isn’t entirely clear what that might actually mean.

The end of the Korean War is seen by many as a model for a frozen conflict. In 1953, the armistice agreement created a 4-kilometer-wide demilitarized zone between the north and the south of the country, across which thousands of soldiers continue to face each other today. Lying between them are around a million landmines.

There are some in the U.S. administration who would like to see just such a solution for Ukraine – an outcome that would, they argue, involve "turning Ukraine into a porcupine.” The concept calls for Ukraine’s defenses to be upgraded to the point that Russia would no longer even dream of calling the country’s national borders into question – borders which will have been drawn as the negotiating table or which run along a cease-fire line.

For the time being, the political line adhered to by politicians in both Berlin and Washington continues to be that it is completely up to Ukraine to decide when the time for diplomacy has come. "We have to put the Ukrainians in the best possible position at the negotiating table,” says the senior State Department official. But a halfway serious offer from Putin would almost certainly unleash a debate in many countries that currently support Kyiv. "The challenge yet to come is: What happens if, at a later point, the Russian leadership chooses to offer some kind of cease-fire?” asks military expert Kofman. "That is when we will find out who is who.”

Putin could, for example, put forth a plan aimed at international recognition for the "people’s republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk, and which delays any decision on the status of Crimea. There is nothing currently indicating that Kyiv would show interest in such an offer. But what if the war is still raging in fall 2024? And if the fate of a second Biden term in the White House hinges on his ability to obtain a cease-fire?

After all, one element of the logic of war is that the price of peace continues to go up the longer the conflict continues.

If a cease-fire agreement is reached, the result would likely be far from stable. And Ukraine would certainly demand far-reaching security guarantees from the West for any territory it might renounce. And even that would be difficult for Zelenskyy to sell as a victory. Under such a scenario, it would be virtually impossible for Ukraine to be accepted into NATO or the European Union.

The Minsk agreements of 2015 – mediated by the West – proved unable to calm the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, with the deal never being fully accepted. And nobody in Ukraine is interested in another Minsk agreement, says Ukrainian political scientist Fesenko, as it carries the risk of a never-ending war. Yet exactly that scenario could be the most attractive from Putin’s perspective.

The Question Remains: How Should the West Approach Putin?

A negotiated solution would be fragile at best. And it also wouldn’t address the core issue: Once the war is over, how should an aggressive Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin be dealt with?

Though erstwhile imperial powers in Europe like France and Britain seem to have come to terms with the loss of their former influence, imperial reflexes in many parts of Russian society appear to be alive and well, and not just because of Putin.

As such, Europe has to get used to the idea of having a hostile power on its eastern flank for the extended future. In Putin’s narrative, Russia is fighting a courageous defensive battle against Western imperialism. During the celebrations to mark the 80th anniversary of the siege of Stalingrad last week, the Russian president held forth on the "Nazi ideology” in modern guise that is threatening his country. As is so often the case, the climax of his speech was a barely disguised threat to deploy nuclear weapons.

In many ways, Putin is less predictable than the Soviet leaders who ruled the USSR in the second half of the 20th century. Men like Leonid Brezhnev waged proxy wars in Asia and Africa and armed the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons. But in Europe, the Soviet Union was a status-quo power. Putin’s Russia, by contrast, is interested in redrawing the borders of the old continent.

Putin is 70 years old. Rumors have repeatedly made the rounds that he is suffering from cancer. But would Putinism disappear if the Russian leader were suddenly absent from the stage? Russian political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann, who works as a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, doesn’t believe that is terribly likely. The war against Ukraine may be Putin’s private obsession and only tolerated by the Russian elite out of opportunism, she says. But, she adds, even without Putin, "there would quite probably be an autocratic, resource-based government in Russia.”

 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken interviewed by René Pfister (Der Spiegel)

 Der Spiegel, Hamburgo – 26.6.2021

Interview with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken

"We Need To Stand for Freedom and Openness – And Do It Together"

In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken discusses the simmering dispute with Germany over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, provocations from Moscow, the trade dispute with Beijing and America’s role in the fight against autocrats.

Interview Conducted By René Pfister

 

Antony Blinken, 59, is one of U.S. President Joe Biden’s closest confidants. He first worked for Biden as a Senate staffer and then rose to become deputy national security adviser and deputy secretary of state in Barack Obama’s administration. Blinken is considered a proponent of an active U.S. foreign policy and believes his country has a mandate to strengthen multilateral organizations and defend democracies against authoritarian regimes like Russia or China.

The dispute over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline currently being built between Russia and Germany overshadowed his visit to Berlin this week. In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, Blinken makes it clear that sanctions relating to the project aren’t off the table yet.

 

DER SPIEGEL: Secretary Blinken, many German and European politicians appreciate the fact that the U.S. is returning to the world stage, but there is also great concern that Donald Trump or a similar populist will take over the White House in 2025. Do you share the concern that U.S. democracy is still in a fragile condition and that Europe should, therefore, try to stand on its own two feet?

Blinken: I think we all have to deal with the here and now and the challenges – both the problems and opportunities – that our citizens are facing together around the world. And what I have seen in just the last few months as we have been working closely with Germany, with other allies and partners, is that we are producing meaningful results for our own people and for people around the world. Ultimately, that's what matters. If we continue to do that, if we demonstrate that our democracies can deliver effectively for people, then I think the approach that we're taking will be sustained. Our obligation is to actually deliver results.

What we've seen, working together – at the G-7, the NATO summit and the U.S.‑EU summit – is exactly that. At the G-7, with our commitments together to deliver a billion doses of the COVID vaccine, with more on top of that; the commitment to stop financing coal‑fired plants so that we can really get at climate change – it's the single biggest source of emissions; the program to, as we call it, "Build Back Better" for the world, investments we're making together in infrastructure, in low‑ and mid‑income countries, with a race to the top in terms of the standards of investment; the work that we did at the U.S.‑EU summit to end or at least put on pause trade disputes that had been lingering for years, in the case of Airbus and Boeing for 17 years; the steel tariffs; working together on trade and technology, setting standards, setting norms. All of these things are concrete manifestations of the proposition that we not only can, but have to work together to deal with the challenges that are actually having an impact on the lives of our people.

Again, if we do that, if we show success, I think people will sustain that approach to policy and to international collaboration.

DER SPIEGEL: The most difficult issue between Berlin and Washington at the moment is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. President Biden has made it clear that he opposes the project, yet his administration has waived sanctions against Nord Stream’s operating company as well as its CEO. Why?

Blinken: First, as you know, construction on the pipeline began in 2018. By the time we took office in January of this year, the physical construction of the pipeline was more than 90 percent complete. We went ahead and sanctioned more entities under our law than had ever been sanctioned before, but the reality of the physical completion of the pipeline was such that we looked to see, can we make something out of a very bad hand that we inherited? Because, yes, President Biden has long said that the pipeline is a bad idea, that it will potentially be a tool of Russian economic coercion and strategic coercion, a tool that can be used not only against Ukraine but indeed Europe as a whole to the extent it increases dependence on Russian gas. But the question before us is what to actually do to mitigate or prevent the damage that the pipeline could do if used in the wrong way by President Putin and by Russia, and that's exactly the conversation we're now engaged in with Germany. It is going to be very important to show by concrete actions that we will agree together – and potentially with others – that we can prevent or mitigate damage that can be done by the pipeline.

DER SPIEGEL: You are paying a big political price domestically for not imposing sanctions on Nord Stream 2. What does the U.S. government expect from the German government in return?

Blinken: We are in very active discussions with the German government right now, looking at a series of possible steps, actions and measures that we can take to make sure that the pipeline is not used for negative purposes, as a tool of coercion or blackmail, and that the interests of countries like Ukraine are protected, both economically and strategically. There are a series of very practical things that we are talking about, and my expectation is that we will agree on important measures that, again, can mitigate any damage that could be done.

The sanctions that we waived, those waivers can be rescinded. We have to report again to our Congress in about a month's time. So I ho pe and expect that we will show real results from these conversations.

DER SPIEGEL: If you look at the Ukraine crisis, it is very clear that the Normandy Format talks, which include France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia, have brought little to no progress at all. Was it a mistake on the part of former U.S. President Barack Obama to basically leave the conflict to the Europeans?

Blinken: The U.S. was very engaged in Ukraine in 2015 and 2016. We respected the proposition that the Normandy Format would be the central vehicle for trying to advance the Minsk process – the agreements that were reached, which unfortunately have largely not been implemented by Russia over many years – and that this was the best way forward. But we were working as well to try to advance that process. President Biden discussed this with President Putin and, of course, he has discussed it with Chancellor Merkel, with President Macron and others. And what we have said is: Look, if Russia is serious about implementing Minsk and we can be helpful, we are fully prepared to do that, but it really starts with the basic question of whether Russia is serious about it or not or whether it prefers this frozen conflict where it can turn up the heat whenever it feels like it, as it did recently by amassing the largest number of troops on Ukraine's border since 2014. The real test is whether Russia is serious or not.

Irrespective of that, we are committed to Ukraine's sovereignty, its territorial integrity, its independence and to making sure that it has the means to defend itself from Russian aggression as well as supporting its efforts to deal with the internal aggression posed by corruption and other democratic deficiencies. So, we are there for Ukraine.

My hope would be that Russia would actually be serious about the Minsk process. In that case, I think Normandy can continue to play a central role. We are also prepared to be engaged and to try to move it forward. But the question is really with Moscow.

"We are committed to Ukraine's sovereignty, its territorial integrity, its independence and to making sure that it has the means to defend itself from Russian aggression."

DER SPIEGEL: Are you considering naming a special envoy for Ukraine?

Blinken: We will look to see how we can best be helpful if there is actually work to be done and whether that is through an envoy, whether that is through the very experienced and very senior team that we are putting together, including people who have deep experience with Ukraine. For example, one of our most senior officials – Victoria Nuland, our under secretary of state for political affairs – is someone who has deep experience in Ukraine. Our incoming assistant secretary of state for Europe, when approved by Congress, is also someone with deep experience. So, how we do it matters less than whether there is an opportunity to really help move something forward and do it in very close collaboration with Germany, with France, with our partners.

DER SPIEGEL: Just before Joe Biden took office, the EU and China agreed on a trade deal that should create new investment opportunities for European companies in China. Did you consider to be an unfriendly gesture on the part of the EU?

Blinken: Look, we are not on trying to contain China or holding China back. We are focused on trying to hold up the free and open rules-based international system that the U.S. and Germany have helped build together and have invested so much in over so many decades. If different aspects of that free and open rules-based system are being challenged by anyone, whether it is China or any other country, then we think it is important to stand up and defend what we built because it has delivered very important results for all of our citizens and can continue to do so. That is the basic approach.

We also recognize that we all have very complicated relationships with China that cannot be summed up in one word or, as we like to say, on a bumper sticker. There are adversarial aspects, competitive ones, cooperative ones, but whether it is any of those three, our proposition is that we are much better off engaging China together. We are going to be much more effective in any of those areas if we are doing it together. That is what we are looking toward.

We want to make sure in any of our engagements with China that we are upholding the basic norms and standards that bring us together, that if we are in a race, it is a race to the top, not a race to the bottom. That goes for the commercial relationship. That goes for the relationship on political and diplomatic issues and so on.

When it comes to something like the agreement that was reached – no, the question is not a hostile action. We just want to make sure that we all have in mind some of the potential challenges that China poses; for example, when it comes to information technology that is so significant in all our lives. Unfortunately, if you are doing business with a so‑called "private company" from China, there is actually no distinction between private and the government. The government has the ability to control and to elicit information from any of these companies. And, unfortunately, right now, when it comes to norms and standards of human rights, of privacy, of intellectual property, the government in Beijing does not meet the standards that we have all set. I think we have to be careful. That is all that we are saying.

I think we are seeing – especially if you look at the last two weeks – a convergence of views on the best ways to engage China. The last time the G-7 leaders met in 2018, China was not even mentioned in the communiqué. In this case, the leaders agreed to important things when it comes to dealing with China. A similar thing happened at NATO just a couple of days later. The last time NATO wrote a Strategic Concept back in 2010, China was not mentioned. Now, there is focus on China in NATO as well. And when we got to the U.S.‑EU summit, agreed to establish a trade and technology council between the United States and the EU that is going to make sure that when it comes to trade and technology, we are working together on the norms, on the standards, on the rules in ways that reflect our values. We reestablished the U.S.‑EU dialogue on China that had been dormant.

So, what I am increasingly seeing is a shared viewpoint, but one that recognizes the complexity of the relationships, the fact that they are consequential for all of us, and we are not asking people to choose between the United States and China. We are simply saying we have a common set of values and interests that have helped shape the international system for almost eight decades, and we need to continue to stand for freedom and for openness when it comes to that system and to do it together.

DER SPIEGEL: As of a few days ago, American citizens are allowed to travel to Europe, but the travel ban for people who want to travel to the U.S. is still in place. Can you give us a timeline for when the ban will be lifted? And why aren’t Europeans who have been vaccinated allowed to travel to the U.S.?

Blinken: We are following the science and the recommendations of our health authorities, principally the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). That is where we are looking for the best information possible upon which to make policy decisions. We are very anxious to have travel resume as robustly, as completely, as possible. We have a working group with the European Union right now on this. I can't put a date on it. I can tell you we are working very, very actively on it because we would like nothing better than to see travel pick up. We have to all be deliberate about it and, again, make these decisions based on our best assessment of the science, our best assessment of health conditions. That is what we are doing, but we are doing it with the EU.

DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Secretary, we thank you for this interview.