- While there is common history, values and interests across the Atlantic, Europe is diverse and will not blindly follow America’s lead
- Europeans merely want to trade and invest and are not bothered that much by China’s eventual rise to dominance
The advent of the Biden administration has put one issue into sharper focus: Europe has to decide where to position itself between the United States and China. Geographically, that is clear: in the middle, and closer to Washington than to Beijing. But politically and economically?
Europe is diverse. Germany is the European Union’s strongest country, its China policy is decisive for Brussels. France is a close second. The UK has left the union and is still looking for its place in the sun as “Global Britain”. The EU High Representative can only do what the 27 member governments permit him to do.
European media and think tanks regard German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s China policy as primarily geared towards economic issues and too China-friendly. They assume that a new, post-Merkel government should and will stand up to China.
After Donald Trump’s electoral defeat, transatlanticists in Europe proclaimed that good cooperation with the US was again possible and President Joe Biden’s outstretched hand must courageously be grasped.
Just one month after the US presidential elections, the EU presented a “new transatlantic agenda for global change” which focused on the common history, values and interests of the EU and the US.
Merkel did not join this chorus. Undeterred by alarm bells and a hint from Biden’s future security adviser, she succeeded in sealing the political accord on the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment before the end of 2020.
The video conferences between Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Chinese President Xi Jinping in April and July showed that the chancellor hopes to pass the baton of her pragmatic China policy to the French president.
Since Biden took office, Merkel has stated repeatedly that she does not want to take sides in a dispute between Washington and Beijing. In a January conversation with the chairman of the World Economic Forum, she pointed out that Europe and the US each had their own interests and that she was against decoupling.
In a press conference after the European Council’s video conference with Biden in March, she said European sovereignty had to be taken seriously. Europe shared common values with the US, but each side had its own interests. A European China policy would have a lot in common with the US’, but there could be no shared identity.
It is widely expected that Merkel’s probable successor – the current minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet – will also focus on the economy in relations with China. But he might head a coalition that includes parties that are more critical of Beijing, such as the Greens and the Liberals.
A poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations at the end of 2020 – after the US presidential election – found that a third of the Europeans felt that the US could no longer be trusted; in Germany, more than half the respondents held this view. The majority assumed China would overtake the US as the world’s strongest nation by the end of the 2020s.
It would, however, be wrong to infer from this that China is popular in Europe or Germany. A survey by the Pew Research Centre last autumn found that 71 per cent of Germans had a negative view of China and only 25 per cent a positive view. In France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the numbers differed only slightly.
For the time being, the US has resumed its position in global politics. Biden could hardly have expressed his commitment to multilateralism, Nato and the EU more clearly.
Many of his European partners are aware that there may never again be a US president who understands foreign policy, disarmament and European sensitivities as well as he does. At the same time, there is a lingering fear that, in 2024, Trump or someone like him might be elected. What if Trump was not the aberration in modern US politics, but Biden?
At the June summits of the Group of 7, Nato and the EU, Biden confirmed that he views China as a secular challenge and expects his partners to support him. In the three concluding documents, they have largely gone along with this.
But they have also introduced their own views – cooperation in the G7 communique, constructive dialogue and engagement with China in the Nato declaration and coordination and constructive engagement in the EU-US statement. When it comes to shaping future policies, they will remind the US of this.
There is an important difference in the attitudes of Washington and Brussels towards Beijing. In the US, both sides of Congress are alarmed that China could overtake the US economically – and perhaps also politically and militarily.
In Europe, most governments as well as the people take the view that the rise of China, at least economically, will happen anyway and that it should therefore be seen as an opportunity as well as a challenge. Decoupling would bring serious losses in prosperity for both sides. The EU countries are not prepared for this.
What bothers the US above all about China is not what it does but what it is. It is a serious competitor for the US that traditionally sees itself as the “exceptional country” and has difficulties coming to terms with the fact that a state ruled by a communist party could overtake it economically.
This does not bother the Europeans that much. They have, for a long time, not seen themselves as a great power called upon to exert global influence. Above all, they want to trade and invest – but they also want to work with governments that respect human rights and international agreements, uphold the rule of law and are supported by most of their citizens.
What is a difficult challenge for Washington in a part of the world where it has – or at least claims to have – important strategic interests is worth little more than a shrug to most Europeans.
