Between European sovereignty and false equivalence

The idea of European sovereignty and greater European capacity for action has been growing over the last few years. Initially pushed heavily by Macron after his election, the concept is now becoming more common among pro-European groups and the political mainstream. It is a natural reaction to the increasingly fractious world that we live in, as we move away from the secure international order of the 90s into a more uncertain place where international laws are less able to uphold our values and alliances are more fickle.

Two main actors have driven this new political ambition in Europe. The first is China, which has become increasingly assertive and is seeking to expand its influence in the world, pushing a model that is very different from Europe's. The second is the US, which, following the election of Trump, has become much more critical towards Europe and whose security guarantee and defence of Western values has been thrown into question.

This has allowed for a fairly simple narrative whereby Europe is placed between two extremes: the US on one side and China on the other. Europe's best chance to avoid being caught in the crossfire of these two superpowers is therefore to not only develop greater sovereignty of its own but also to develop pragmatic relations with both sides.

And it is on this second aspect in particular that the danger starts to creep in. Some politicians have decided to become so pragmatic about the issue, have become so enticed with the idea of Europe as a balancing power, that they have started talking of China and the US in almost equal terms. Most recently it was Germany's Economy Minister, Peter Altmaier, that described the US as 'unreliable and untrustworthy'. This has been met with anger from US representatives of course but has also proven to be controversial within Europe. And quite rightly so, as these kinds of comments misunderstand the position Europe is in and the nature of these other global powers.

Yes, we should be pragmatic and yes, we should avoid being naive about the US and about China. But that does not mean that the two are alike. The reality is that we start from very different bases in each case. While the US has been an ally of many decades, China been fairly consistently on the opposite side since the end of WW2. While the US is a democracy, China is a dictatorship.

Of course we have reservations about the US model of capitalism and naturally the arrival of Trump should be a wake-up call with regards to how reliable the US will always be. But to take that and to brand the US as systemically unreliable goes much further. We can be realistic about our relationship with the US without shunning it as an ally. Indeed, if we are to argue that the US is unreliable, then how should we consider China? For all its faults, we are not worried about whether US companies will use our telecomms infrastructure to spy on us on behalf of the US government. Has Trump forced us to reconsider how committed the US will be to Western values? Yes. But the truth remains that our values, in the likes of freedom of thought, freedom of assembly, democracy, remain much closer to the US than to China, where the state operates a system of totalitarian surveillance and repression, currently holding a large minority in concentration camps within its own territory.

And this false equivalence between the US and China is not just theoretically flawed, it is bad politics. There are many strong defenders of the Atlantic alliance and this kind of rhetoric, where the US, a historical ally, is made out to be no different to a dictatorship in the new global rivalry, will only serve to alienate European Atlanticists. If we want the idea of European sovereignty, and the necessary practical measures that could make it real, to gain widespread political support, then this kind of positioning will do us no favours. 

We need European sovereignty but in getting there, we must be careful not to ditch the alliances we already have. There is no future where isolation or total independence will be better for us than by acting through a network of like-minded powers. We may not agree with the US on anything and we could certainly afford to be less dependent on it, but like Canada or Japan, the US should remain a privileged partner - to do otherwise would be more ideological than pragmatic. 

It should be mentioned that most of what I've said here can equally be applied to the practice of false equivalence between the US and Russia, although the pushback from Eastern European countries on this means that this version rarely gets very far. 

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