Although the Biden administration will bring a change in tone and a less confrontational approach, on the question of defense spending it will expect the same from Europe as its predecessors.

As successive US leaders have emphasized, Europe needs to increase its own contribution to defense, to militate against the perception that America alone is paying for transatlantic security.

Any consolidation of Europe’s security capacity should be pursued within the alliance. Some saw the discussion as an attempt to create alternatives to defense cooperation within the North Atlantic Alliance and some even took it to mean that America’s commitment to Europe had been called into question, and that a greater decoupling might be on the way.īut there is no question that NATO has played an indispensable role in European security. That is why, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel once bluntly put it, “We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands.” We must stand on our own feet.įor a long time, the debate about strategic autonomy focused mainly on security and defense. The EU is facing serious strategic challenges in today’s antagonistic international environment, where geopolitical rivalries and great-power competition are on the rise. The European Union needs to achieve this kind of autonomy, while at the same time strengthening our alliances and preserving our commitments to multilateralism and openness. Rather, it refers to an ability to think for oneself and to act according to one’s own values and interests. There has been much talk of achieving “European strategic autonomy,” but what does that mean in practice? Autonomy should not imply total independence or isolation from the rest of the world. A stronger Europe that shoulders a greater share of global responsibilities can ensure that it does. Facing so many domestic and international challenges, the US will value the transatlantic relationship only insofar as that relationship delivers actual value.

But there can be no simple return to the past. A 'focus group' feature lets you look at individual voters and see exactly how they came to a decision to vote for you (or not!).Joe Biden’s election as the next president of the United States has raised hopes in Europe of putting the transatlantic relationship back on track. Convert your country to religion, or atheism, to capitalism, or socialism by careful and nuanced adjustment of your policies and laws over time. Not only this, but the extent to which they identify each of those groups is both variable, and can be affected by your policies in the long term. They might be a young, wealthy, liberal socialist commuter, or a retired conservative religious capitalist, for example. Your trade policy may affect GDP, which will affect unemployment, which will effect poverty, and thus crime, leading to a change in tourism, which affects GDP.Įach individual voter is a mixture of a subset of the 21 different voter groups represented within the game. A simple iconic-based view of your countries issues allwos you to 'drill-down' through all the relationships between policies and voters to quickly analyse the impacts of your decisions. This is the most sophisticated political strategy game ever created.ĭespite being vastly detailed under-the-hood, Democracy 3 has a unique user interface that makes visualising the connections between laws, policies, voters and situations easy. Each voters income is modelled, along with their levels of complacency and cynicism. A custom-designed neural network is used to model individual voters, each which varying memberships of voting groups, political parties and pressure groups. Have you ever wanted to be president? or prime-minister? Convinced you could do a better job of running the country? Let's face it, you could hardly do a worse job than our current political leaders.Ĭrime, Unemployment, National Debt, Terrorism, Climate Change.Have you got the answers to the problems that face western industrialized nations? Here is your chance to find out.ĭemocracy 3 simulates the motivations, loyalties and desires of everyone in the country.

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