By Scott Cullinane & Ryan Meilak
Friday, January 03, 2020
Anniversaries and new years are always a good time to
take stock of one’s blessings and make favorable resolutions for the months to
come. At the start of 2020 and a new decade, the transatlantic relationship is
changing, but it remains as indispensable as ever.
In Brussels a new European Commission, led by President
Ursula von der Leyen, is beginning to hit its stride. In Washington, attention
is turning toward the elections coming in the fall. Amid all this, officials on
both sides of the Atlantic should take the time to make one key resolution for
the year ahead: The U.S. and Europe will not make each other into strategic
competitors.
The United States and Europe are longtime allies and
friends, but today, as global economies realign and adjust to the business,
security, and moral challenges posed by the Chinese government, leaders must
guard against gaps and divisions that threaten to separate the United States
from Europe.
Over the past three years, the U.S. government has
affirmed that the world is once again in a period of sustained big-power
competition. In the words of the U.S. National Security Strategy, this requires
“the United States to rethink the policies of the past two decades,” especially
regarding international actors such as China. While an increasing number of
officials in Washington have articulated the view that Europe is becoming a
battlefield in this competition, one on which Europeans themselves should lead,
too many European leaders have responded with hedges and half statements.
Equally unfortunate, within the U.S., too many politicians continue to view
Europe as a post-historical region for which Brussels can manage lingering
trouble spots without active American diplomacy.
The potential danger for the U.S.–Europe partnership
stems from the changing nature of the U.S.–China economic relationship. Despite
the large volume of trade between the U.S. and China, leaders in both countries
see benefit not in further economic interdependence but in selective decoupling
— particularly in areas of advanced and emerging information technologies.
Trade and investment between the two countries has contracted, and
disagreements over security risks posed by Chinese technology have risen to
become priority areas in American foreign policy.
America’s increasingly blunt warnings about Chinese
investment have met with a mixture of reactions across Europe. What’s troubling
for the U.S. is that China is using its version of state-led mercantilism to
target strategic loans and investments toward Europe. China has established a
“17-plus-1” format between itself and cooperating central and southern European
states to facilitate its political influence in the region and expand its Belt
and Road project to increasingly connect Chinese exporters to European
consumers.
For the transatlantic relationship to continue
maintaining strategic cohesion, the U.S. and Europe cannot move in different
directions on China. Much of the responsibility for leading on this question
will fall to European Commission president von der Leyen and her
self-proclaimed “geopolitical” commission. Von der Leyen is a committed
Atlanticist, but she is faced with a number of competing priorities — both in
EU foreign policy and on issues of internal cohesion.
The commission, including the newly elevated vice
president “for the Digital Age,” Margrethe Vestager, and Thierry Breton with
his super-portfolio covering European industrial and internal market policy,
will face pressure to support EU “super companies” that will compete not only
against Chinese industry but against American businesses as well. If European
leaders cannot distinguish between genuine market-based competition from across
the Atlantic and state-connected Chinese business, with its many examples of
rule-breaking, the U.S. and Europe will be taking the first step down a pathway
of strategic divergence that will serve neither party well.
Likewise, American observers have been too quick to
dismiss new efforts to promote joint European defense procurement and develop
an open European defense market, with new regulations helping European
companies cooperate across borders. Through such efforts Europe can address the
inefficiencies that result from having different military organizations,
reducing duplication and waste while gaining value. Such efforts at the
European level can help NATO member states reach their defense-investment
pledges and be more capable partners for the U.S., so long as these new
regulations do not raise new barriers that exclude U.S. companies.
Unfortunately, the knee-jerk reaction from too many in
Washington was a negative one. Recent U.S. administrations all shared a key
point of contention with Europe: lack of defense spending and the perception of
free riding off the U.S. It is ironic that the U.S. is crying foul now that
Europe is trying to act to spend more on defense.
If U.S. leaders cannot accept Europeans’ desire for a
commonsense defense-funding approach, this will be another blow to the
transatlantic alliance, just as we enter a time when the stakes for this
alliance couldn’t be any higher.
Concern about a strategic rupture in the transatlantic
relationship isn’t confined to elected officials or business executives. Such a
divergence appeared in a public poll conducted by the European Council on
Foreign Relations earlier this year. The results were alarming. It found that
if the U.S. and Russia or China were to enter a conflict, majorities in
European countries would choose to support neither side. The poll found support
for a strong Europe, but those respondents defined a strong Europe as a Europe
strong enough not to take sides. This trend is, in turn, being perpetuated by
the widening partisan gap in the U.S. on how the European Union is perceived.
According to a recent Pew Research study, while Democrats maintain a constant
65 percent positive rating of the European bloc, Republicans viewing the EU
positively are at 39 percent, just a couple of points above the historic lows
following the 2003 Iraq invasion.
These signs of a possible divergence remain, for now,
warnings of a road neither the U.S. nor Europe wishes to go down. Still, the
new year presents an opportunity for leaders on both continents to reaffirm the
enduring partnership, find common ground, and unify the transatlantic approach
toward China and the other challenges that loom in the decade ahead.
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