2/17/2020 Stuck in the middle - America urges Europe to join forces against China | Europe | The Economist

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Stuck in the middle

America urges Europe to join forces

against China

But European leaders want to stake out an independent position

between the two superpowers

Feb 16th 2020

MUNICH
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MUNICH

HOW SHOULD European countries position themselves in

the growing geopolitical and technological contest
between America and China? As allies of America in a new
cold war? Or as a third force balancing between the two
poles? Such questions hung thick in the air at the
Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich, where world leaders,
diplomats and spies gathered for their yearly security-
policy jamboree, which ended on February 16th.

The conference’s teeming hallways have traditionally been

the place for American and European elites to consult and
hash out their di erences. These days the gathering is a
more global a air. Saudi and Iranian diplomats dodged
one another; European spymasters tried to look
inconspicuous in co ee breaks; and expensively coi ed
congressmen barged their way past obscure central
European prime ministers. Hand-sanitiser was splashed
around liberally, amid the looming threat of the Wuhan
coronavirus.

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Mark Esper, America’s defence secretary, dismissed worries

about Russia in a single line. Instead, he devoted his entire
speech to convincing Europeans that China presents as
serious an economic, security and ideological threat to the
continent as it does to America and Asia. “China’s growth
over the years has been remarkable,” acknowledged Mr
Esper, “but in many ways it is fuelled by theft, coercion and
exploitation of free-market economies, private companies,
and colleges and universities. American and European
institutions and corporations face the brunt of these
malign activities.” Mike Pompeo, America’s secretary of
state, cautioned that China’s meddling in European politics
was tantamount to “assaults on sovereignty”.

For John Chipman, director-general of the International

Institute of Strategic Studies, a think-tank in London,
“Essentially [Mr] Esper used his speech in Munich to
announce the fact of a US-China cold war with
technological competition at its core.” Right now, that

competition is centred on Huawei. Mr Esper warned that if

the Chinese telecoms rm was permitted to build
European 5G networks—as it has been allowed to in
Britain, and is likely to elsewhere—it could “jeopardise our
i i d i lli h i bili i d
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communication and intelligence-sharing capabilities, and

by extension, our alliances.” (British o cials view such
threats as blu s.) But American o cials at the conference
also warned that other emerging technologies—arti cial
intelligence, web-based servers (the “cloud”), quantum
computing and communication—would soon become
fresh battlegrounds, and potentially easy pickings for
Chinese tech giants grown fat on state subsidies and
generous protection.

“They’re very worried on the technology side that there is a

sort of tipping point, that if Europe goes in a certain
direction then it’ll be too late to reverse course,” says
Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank
in Washington, DC. Strikingly, that concern is expressed by
Mr Trump’s administration and its opponents alike. Nancy
Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of
Representatives, noted in Munich that “allowing the
Sini cation of 5G would be to choose autocracy over
democracy,” a rare point of accord with the president
whose state-of-the-union speech she physically tore up
two weeks ago.

In many respects, Europeans are not unsympathetic to

these entreaties. NATO put China formally on its agenda
for the rst time at a leaders’ summit in December.
Alliance o cials note that China is conducting naval
exercises in the Baltic, making strategic investments in
Europe and has declared itself a “near-Arctic” power.
Intelligence o cers across Europe are also increasingly
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Intelligence o cers across Europe are also increasingly

wary of Chinese spying and in uence operations. On
February 12th Estonia’s foreign intelligence service
published an annual report which mentioned China more
than 100 times, noting that Chinese investment and
technological dominance “are increasingly threats to
Estonia’s security”. Many European diplomats point
nervously to Sweden, where China’s ambassador last
month attacked the Swedish press as a “lightweight boxer
who provokes a feud with an 86-kilogram heavyweight
boxer”, part of an increasingly familiar pattern of bullying
and intimidation.

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What is less clear is how to respond. Some European

diplomats and lawmakers want their countries to heed
America’s warnings. In Britain, which said last month that
it would allow Huawei a limited role in less sensitive parts
of its 5G network, in uential Conservative MPs have
revolted against their government’s decision. In Germany,
which is moving in a similar direction, conservative
lawmakers have joined with other parties in doing the
same. “But many don’t share the threat perception and
think that China, Russia and America are all problems for
Europeans,” says Thorsten Benner, director of the Global
Public Policy Institute, a think-tank in Berlin.

They would seem to include Frank-Walter Steinmeier,

Germany’s (largely ceremonial) president, who opened the

conference with a call for Europe to “invent its own answer
to the seminal shift in spheres of power and in uence”.
The continent “must nd its own balance with China,
nding an equilibrium between increasing inter-system
competition and the necessary co-operation,” said Mr
Steinmeier, spurning Mr Pompeo’s stark choice between “a
free West” and “illiberal alternatives”. Germany, which is
preparing to host a major EU China leaders’ summit in
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preparing to host a major EU-China leaders summit in

September, hopes to co-operate with China on issues
including trade rules and climate change, even as it
competes in other areas.

The suspicion runs especially deep on technology. Mr

Esper urged American and European rms to work
together “to develop alternative 5G solutions”, but many
Europeans see this as a cynical e ort by America to buy
itself into the lead in an area where two European rms,
Nokia and Ericsson, are world leaders, says Mr Benner. On
February 6th William Barr, America’s attorney-general,
proposed that America buy controlling stakes in both
companies. That suggestion prompted both mirth and eye-
rolling. Europeans note that America has not made similar
o ers in areas where American rms are ahead, such as
cloud computing.

Some former German diplomats suggest that Europe might

mediate between America and China, in order to soothe

tensions. Others want Europe to turn itself into a third
force that can stand up to both powers. Emmanuel Macron,
France’s president, is the standard-bearer for this
approach. In a freewheeling question-and-answer session,
he repudiated Mr Pompeo’s insistence that the West was
“winning”, declared that “the era of omnipresent American
global policemen is over” and renewed his longstanding
call for “a Europe that can protect the basis of its
sovereignty”
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sovereignty .

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Protection from whom? From China, yes. Mr Macron

framed his controversial outreach to Russia in part as an
e ort to peel Vladimir Putin, its president, away from
“Chinese hegemony”. But Mr Macron also wants protection
from what he sees as the whimsy and predations of Mr
Trump’s America. “The Americans are investing much
faster in the choices of the future, the Chinese, too,”
warned Mr Macron. “If they are right, in ten years or 15
years, they will have the industries, the standards...where
we will have fallen behind.”

American o cials see this as a woefully false equivalence

between a democratic ally and despotic rival. Mr Macron’s
European allies tend to nod at the general idea, though
disagree on the details. “France is ahead of Germany in
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being comfortable with the notion of European

sovereignty vis-à-vis all external major powers, ie, US,
China, Russia,” says Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of the
Foundation for Strategic Research, a French think-tank.
“Several allies are uncomfortable with the notion that we
put all three in the same basket.” That is not least because
American tanks and troops remain vital for defending
Europe’s physical frontiers. Exercise Defender Europe 20, a
huge US Army drill to practise the reinforcement of the
continent—and the largest such exercise in 25 years—is
currently under way.

The result can be compromises, like partial bans on

Huawei, that satisfy nobody. “The minimum consensus
could be to invest in European technological capabilities to
achieve greater sovereignty,” says Mr Benner, “but even on
softball issues of 5G, where Europeans lead, there’s no real
consensus because [the German chancellor Angela] Merkel
wants to continue to keep the door open to Huawei. I don’t
see a clear path to unity.” Few want to be caught in the
Sino-American cross- re, especially if it delays technology
projects or costs money. “This is not seen in Europe as a
new Cold War,” concludes Mr Tertrais. “And if this is one,
Europe wants no part of it.”

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