Nathalie Tocci is director of Istituto Affari Internazionali, a special adviser to European High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell, and the author of POLITICO’s World View column. Her opinions are her own.
ROME — Before the coronavirus crisis, the defining words of the EU’s agenda of intent were “sovereignty” and “autonomy.” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged her term would represent a tilt toward the “geopolitical” — by which she meant that Europe would need to learn to stand up for itself in the world.
Today, Europe finds itself forced to reconsider its agenda as it grapples with the socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic. As it does so, it must remember that von der Leyen’s original impulse remains more important than ever.
Gone are the days when the EU could conduct its internal and international policies insulated from geopolitical encroachments. Today, Europe finds itself squeezed between acrimonious rivals: the United States and China.
In this unstable global environment, the EU is increasingly unable to depend on its most powerful ally even as the multilateral order it has championed threatens to unravel. Sovereignty and autonomy are no longer luxuries. They are necessities.
The threat to democracy in the U.S. comes from an administration that sees large swathes of society as enemy combatants rather than fellow citizens.
The U.S.-China rivalry isn’t new. It has surfaced in disputes over trade and technology: a tariff war and the tussle over 5G. It has corroded multilateralism, beginning with the World Trade Organization and the United Nations.
But the pandemic has aggravated the confrontation. And with both Beijing and Washington looking to deflect from domestic troubles, including their handling of the virus, the enmity threatens to turn chronic.
The turmoil caused by the killing of George Floyd and the desire for democracy in Hong Kong might seem to be taking place far from European shores. But they have very real implications for the Continent.
The U.S. is a liberal democracy, of course, but it is one that has long been plagued by racism, inequality and injustice. These traits, engrained in the country’s social fabric, have been unearthed by a president cynically set on securing his grip on power.
American protesters are not attacking public institutions or upending the constitutional order. The threat to democracy in the U.S. comes from an administration that sees large swaths of society as enemy combatants rather than as fellow citizens.
After Floyd’s harrowing death, Donald Trump — far from addressing police bigotry, economic inequality and racial hatred — laid bare his disdain for civil rights. He aired the deployment of military forces on the country’s streets while disregarding both the right to peacefully assemble and the institutional racism that ignited social rage.
With well over than 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, tens of millions unemployed and not a single foreign policy success, fanning the flames of social divisions is the only card Trump can play. His are the desperate actions of a president on a reelection campaign with precious little to show.
On the other side of the world, Chinese President Xi Jinping is faring little better. Unrest in Hong Kong has been sizzling for some time. Last year, protesters had secured a partial victory with the suspension of an extradition bill that would have allowed Hong Kong’s citizens to be tried on the mainland. The issue was anything but solved however, with unrest persisting into 2020.
Then came the coronavirus. As the first country to be hit by the pandemic, China made critical missteps, both domestically and abroad, that will not be forgotten no matter how many millions of protective masks it distributes overseas. Its troubles are likely to be heightened by a worldwide recession that undercuts the benefits of globalization that have served Beijing so well.
The inner workings of the Communist Party are difficult to gauge, but President Xi must be well-aware that unless he continues to deliver prosperity for the middle classes, pressure from the Party would grow. He may be China’s undisputed leader, having secured the abolishment of the two-term constitutional rule on his presidency in 2018, but ultimately power lies in the Party’s hands. Were it to turn against him, his days in office would be numbered — and Xi must know that China’s troubles could add up to a lethal cocktail for a president who is not seen to have done his job well.
China’s increased aggression toward Hong Kong and Taiwan can be read in this light. The national security bill tabled by Beijing goes much further than the extradition bill. It would effectively hollow out Hong Kong’s autonomy altogether, allowing mainland Chinese security forces to be deployed in the territory.
Pro-democracy protesters march in Hong Kong on June 9, 2020 | Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images
The move no doubt resonates among those in Beijing keen to demonstrate to the West that China is no pushover. Likewise, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang’s omission of the adjective “peaceful” in the standard reference to China’s reconciliation with Taiwan, coming alongside the escalating breaches of Taiwan’s airspace, all point in the same ominous direction: the search for external enemies to alleviate domestic pressure.
Washington and Beijing are each trying to exploit their opponent’s fragilities. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has threatened sanctions on China in response to its moves on Hong Kong, while officials in Beijing have reveled in deriding U.S. civil unrest.
So where does Europe stand in all of this? When it comes to Hong Kong, the EU response so far has been characteristically hesitant.
It’s never easy for Europeans to unite behind an assertive stance toward Beijing. China’s economic leverage, notably on member countries like Hungary and Greece, has diluted the EU’s rhetorical punch. Even when the issue falls squarely in the remit of international law, such as the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s 2016 ruling on the South China Sea, the EU has struggled to speak out.
Europeans find themselves exposed — asymmetrically dependent on the U.S. even as they recoil from events there.
And so it’s all the more hard for the bloc when the issue falls under the far “fuzzier” legal realm of self-determination. Indeed, with the exception of High Representative Josep Borrell’s statement of “grave concern,” there has only been deafening silence from Europe.
Sanctions against China are clearly off the EU table, while plans to hold an EU-China summit in Leipzig, Germany, if possible later this year, remain very much on.
When it comes to events in the U.S., the EU’s conundrum runs much deeper. This is not because the U.S.’s violations are graver than China’s; far from it. But it’s precisely because these violations are taking place in the world’s greatest democracy, and not in an authoritarian country, that they are far more unsettling for Europeans.
Amid all this turmoil, Europeans find themselves exposed — asymmetrically dependent on the U.S. even as they recoil from events there.
As difficult as it may be, it’s only by uniting that Europe will be able to stand up to figures like Trump and Xi (and Putin, of course). This will require spending more together on defense, not because the U.S. president bullies us into doing so, but because we care about European security and the transatlantic partnership.
This will entail investing in European economic and digital autonomy, even if it means paying the short-term price of transatlantic friction or Chinese retribution.
It may not be easy. But just as Europe must work together to ensure its internal socioeconomic recovery, it must also learn to stand united during a time of escalating global confrontation.