Radoslaw Sikorski on #Europe’s role amid American and Chinese tensions
As America focuses on China, Europe must protect its interests and America needs to accept its balancing act, says a European Parliamentarian
AS A YOUNG journalist in September 1986 reporting from Tora Bora on the delivery of Stinger missiles to the battlefield, I could foresee the defeat of the Soviet Union and its withdrawal from Afghanistan—but I could not fathom that America would get mired there for twice as long and that its withdrawal would be more humiliating. The chaotic departure of American troops from Afghanistan raises new questions about American influence in the world.
But step back from the news, and a bigger worry is present: how to handle the rise of China? Under both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, almost the only thing that Democrats and Republicans agree on is the need to prevent China from replacing America at the pinnacle of power. Can they do it—without war? And what should be the position of Europe amid these tense times?
We should begin by admitting that the modern international system has been shaped by Western wishful thinking and hubris. At the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse, America and Europe made a series of assumptions and bets—most of which we lost. We bet that if we help Russia integrate with the West, it would become an ally. We bet that the Arab Spring would do for the Muslim world what 1989-91 did for Eastern Europe. And we bet that if we prematurely granted China the status of a free-market economy and admitted it into the World Trade Organisation, it would eventually liberalise its economy and perhaps its political system too.
America also made one grand miscalculation, spending political capital and trillions of dollars to counter a threat—Islamic fundamentalist terrorism—which in strategic terms was a mere nuisance. Jihadists could kill a lot of innocent people and threaten America’s sense of invulnerability, but they could never hope to dominate the world.
However China has made a strategic error too. The country has put an end to the doctrine of its former leader Deng Xiaoping, to “Hide your strength, play for time” and have replaced it with the ideas of its current leader, Xi Jinping, and his method of threatening, haranguing, wolf-warrior diplomacy. By changing its tone, China has focused American minds, persuaded other countries to seek American protection, thus creating a balancing coalition in Asia.
If China and America were to fall into the “Thucydides trap”—a seemingly inevitable conflict between a rising power and a declining one—the flashpoint of course would be Taiwan. Both countries’ forces war-game the conflict and it looks like an armed confrontation is a real possibility. China’s traditional tactics, derived from the board game Go rather than chess, is to gain so many small advantages as to convince a potential adversary to give up without a fight. China’s credibility depends on regaining Taiwan, America’s on preventing it.
The Thucydides moment arrives precisely at the point when the status-quo power feels that its superiority might imminently be lost. Briefings we have received in the European Parliament suggest that China has already achieved regional military parity with America around Taiwan and that over the next five years it will become even more capable in the area. The trap springs when there is no higher authority to which both powers defer and neither country concedes.
What should Europe do? President Biden’s trip to NATO in June was all about stabilising the eastern flank of the alliance and wooing European allies to the challenges ahead. In fact, leaving Afghanistan was part of America’s reorientation towards new threats. If America is to devote all its attention to China, then Russia should be persuaded to stay on the sidelines and Europe, starting with Germany, brought on board. Perhaps that was America’s logic in lifting sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is being built to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany. It ties Russia economically to Europe and removes an irritant in America’s relations with Germany. Yet removing sanctions is detrimental to the interest of Ukraine and central Europe.
Europe cannot maintain its standard of living without trading with China, its largest economic partner. Our nightmare would be if America forced us to choose, as the Trump administration did over Iran: trade with us, or trade with our enemy—and cut off European companies choosing the latter from the dollar-clearing mechanism in New York. The choice between America and Iran was easy. A choice between trading with America or trading with China would be terrible.
Europe’s military interests are different from America’s as well. The NATO treaty covers the mostly North Atlantic region and its mutual guarantees do not apply in Asia. Nor do we have any interests to protect so far from our shores. I predict that the European Union and its member states will want to collaborate with America on China on almost everything, except in the military sphere. The EU will maintain its arms embargo, it will co-ordinate investment, standard-setting and trade policies through the recently formed Trade and Technology Council, but European voters will not allow the region to get into anything “kinetic” (as military types call live conflict).
Continental Europe will gracefully yield that honour to the British, who happen to actually have some naval hardware to deploy. The trick for the EU will be to remain a good ally of America without getting into a war with China. Wise leadership in America will understand Europe’s predicament and not try to force its leaders to do the impossible.
In the next few years, Europe should also prepare for the possibility that rivalry with China preoccupies America, weakening its traditional security guarantees. Politics aside, America has abandoned its ambition of having a military capable of fighting two wars at the same time. The mess in Afghanistan marked an ignoble departure but America still has the world’s biggest armed forces—though it may be reluctant to use them other than to protect its vital national interests. Hence, Europe needs to build up the capacity to deter Russia on its own. My greatest fear is that it will take another terrible disaster before European leaders get serious about defence.
The Biden administration seems to understand that the EU’s strategic autonomy—that is, the ability to act militarily independent of America—far from being a threat, could free up American resources for its primary challenge. Europe is a regulatory superpower and can be a pillar in the alliance of democracies. Assuming that there is not a return to the nationalism of the past four years after the next American presidential elections, we will be a good ally on most issues.
Personally, having been brought up in Communist Poland during the cold war I am not keen for another one. Our relationship with China is much more complex than the West’s rivalry with the Soviet Union ever was. That is why I have advocated that Europe should adopt a “three Cs” approach: co-operate where possible, compete where needed and confront where necessary. It’s not inevitable that we will fall into the Thucydides trap but it will take a lot of statesmanship to prevent it.
Radoslaw Sikorski is chairman of the EU-USA delegation in the European Parliament. He served as Poland’s minister of foreign affairs in 2007-14, among other roles in government.
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