Because the New Cold War between the US and China is being played out in the Indo-Pacific

3 December 20203 years ago babelfish

Future transatlantic relations will be more unbalanced in favor of the US than they were in the Cold War with the USSR. In the "new cold war", the main theater of the rivalry between the US and China is the Indo-Pacific. Carlo Jean's analysis

Many speak of the strategic autonomy of Europe. They take for granted its meaning and objectives, without addressing the problem of its compatibility with the means and also with the political will available, nor with its costs, times and international reactions. Upstream, there is the problem of defining a realistic role for Europe in the world. They modestly don't speak of the latter. They aspire to transform Europe from a "normative power", capable of carrying out mediations, which no one requires, and of defining rules, which no one respects, into a geopolitical power, capable of determining its own destiny and influencing the future of the world. The reality is that they are aware of the European decline and of the fact that Europe in 2050 will have only 4% of the population and approximately 10% of the world GDP. Its role will therefore be determined by other geopolitical actors and by forces which it not only does not control, but which it cannot influence if not marginally.

Several European politicians are resigned to this decline. They consider it inevitable. They reject great long-term views. They focus on the present. They limit themselves to policies that preserve as long as possible the current standard of living of the European peoples and their security, achieved under the "US umbrella". Others would like to change the situation. Ursula von der Leyen has called for a “geopolitical” Commission, which aims to promote an active role of the EU within it and of Europe at least in its peripheries. Emmanuel Macron – with his thesis on the "brain death of NATO" – supported the possibility of autonomy and also of European sovereignty in the field of security and defense. Their premise would be a pan-European agreement with Moscow, which would prevent its alliance with Beijing, while keeping alive a transatlantic alliance appropriate to the times, that is, ties with the USA. It is unlikely that the US – especially with Biden who, unlike Trump, considers Moscow the main enemy of Washington – can accept this solution. Should the US withdraw, Europe would quickly be reduced to a mere appendage of a China-dominated Eurasia.

The Commission has planned a “Conference on the future of Europe” for 2022. A draft of the basic document has recently been released and should be discussed there. It deals only marginally with the problem of defense and security. The reason is obvious. Many states, starting with Germany, believe that the only way to avoid the complete decline of Europe is to strengthen transatlantic ties, that is, to rebuild a West under US leadership. They are aware that they will have to support them in their rivalry with Beijing, rather than mediating between Washington and Beijing, as some had fantasized during the Trump presidency. Apart from its costs, the anti-Chinese alignment with the USA will create difficulties and problems in the EU itself, given the difference in economic interests of the various states of the Union with China and the awareness that the fight against global challenges ( pandemics, climate change, etc.) require cooperation with China.

So far the problem has been left out. All European states supported the – politically correct – thesis that economic growth and liberal globalization would have changed China, making it increasingly compatible with Western values. Today it became clear that such optimism was unrealistic. This is not the case. The EU has declared that China is also Europe's "systemic competitor" and that it should be compared with the "League of Democracies" that Biden seems to want to promote against the "autocracies", increasingly led by China. Concern is growing over China's economic and infrastructural penetration and suspicions about the real aims of the "17 + 1" agreement (formerly "16 + 1", to which Greece has been added), with the increasing presence of Beijing in the "Soft underbelly" of Europe. The EU, hit like China by Trump's trade sanctions, has been unable to develop unitary economic and technological policies to coordinate with those of the US. It will certainly have to do so during Biden's presidency.

The term strategic autonomy is ambiguous. Some even try to separate it from foreign and security policy, pretending to ignore that it is no longer multilateral. In the past, compliance with the rules was guaranteed by the USA. Americans today are no longer willing to bear the costs of being the "guardians of history". With the waning of multilateralism, including rhetorical one, foreign policy has returned to being (as in reality it has always been) a politics of power, based on interests, not on values and principles, moreover usually defined on the basis of interests. The fact that international relations, at least in the next two decades – when India becomes a great world power, capable of challenging China in Asia – will also be conditioned by the rivalry between Washington and Beijing is also unquestioned. Even less aware Europeans – enthusiastic about the new American presidency – are that the advent of Joe Biden in the White House, in place of Donald Trump, will cause difficulties for the Union that it had not previously known. With his contempt for Europeans and NATO and his intemperance, Trump united the Europeans. Biden's "velvet glove" and his gentle but firm demands will divide them. They have already provoked a severe controversy between Macron and the German Defense Minister, who does not want to hear about "Europe's strategic autonomy", but only about the "European pillar of NATO".

A rather funny example of the different interpretation of the term "strategic autonomy" was that of an exponent of the Italian government. Full of enthusiasm for "politically correct" he stated that an essential component of "strategic autonomy" is the green economy (as if we had the lithium, cobalt and rare earths necessary for it, and did not have to import them, such as oil and gas). Fortunately, he did not extend it to electric scooters, a nice Italian thought!

The topic of "strategic autonomy" should be the "main course" of the "Conference on the Future of Europe" and of the "Security and Defense Dialogue between the US and the EU". As mentioned, the first is scheduled for 2022. The second is discussed in a draft of the “ EU-US Agenda for the Global Change ” of the European Commission. Diplomatically, the document glosses over the problems of the rivalry between the US and China, as well as the "global NATO", that is, the alliance of American, European and Asian democracies, which should extend to the Indo-Pacific system. The difference in European interests and approaches towards China and Russia is also unquestioned. European economic interests differ greatly from state to state. In the second quarter of 2020, China overtook the US as the top importer of German products. Unlike the Americans, the mass of Europeans do not consider China either a geopolitical competitor or a military threat. Instead, think it's an economic opportunity. That we can do good business with it and also work together to face certain global challenges.

The drafters of the Commission's draft document were induced to ignore these differences because of the persuasion that Europe cannot influence US choices, but only align with them. That is, it cannot mitigate a rivalry that risks further marginalizing it from the “great geopolitical game” of the world. This is a realistic finding. This is confirmed by the demographic and economic decline of Europe. In 2050, no European country will be among the seven richest in the world. The EU will be less and less inclined to use hard power. Its almost exclusive reliance on soft power will marginalize it in the matters that matter. You can already see it with Erdogan. Only with a relaunch of transatlantic cooperation will it be able to maintain a minimum of influence in the world. Perhaps only in this way will he be able to safeguard his current high standard of living.

Future transatlantic relations will be more unbalanced in favor of the US than they were in the Cold War with the USSR. At that time Europe was the main theater of bipolar strategic confrontation and its conventional forces were essential for the USA. In the "new cold war", the main theater of the rivalry between the US and China is the Indo-Pacific. While deeply involved, Europe can do little to influence Washington's policy. It has been marginalized by moving the strategic center of the world from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific. It has no alternatives to aligning with the US "grand strategy" with regard to China, even in the commercial field and, above all, in the sector of the embargo of strategically critical technologies. In this regard, it will have to bear considerable costs, in the name of transatlantic solidarity, the promotion of democracy and multilateralism, that is, of principles that are sometimes conflicting with its particular material interests, without being able to influence, if not marginally, Washington's choices.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/perche-la-nuova-guerra-fredda-fra-usa-e-cina-si-gioca-nellindo-pacifico/ on Thu, 03 Dec 2020 17:57:07 +0000.