The truth is, Europe only has itself to blame for the morass. Trump has been harping on about NATO’s laggards for years, but he hardly invented the genre. American presidents going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower have complained about European allies freeloading on American defense.
What Europeans don’t like to hear is that Trump has a point: They have been freeloading. What’s more, it was always unrealistic to expect the U.S. to pick pick up the tab for European security ad infinitum.
After Trump lost to Biden in 2020, its seemed like everything had gone back to normal, however. Biden, a lifelong transatlanticist, sought to repair the damage Trump did to NATO by letting the Europeans slide back into their comfort zone.
Even though overall defense spending has increased in recent years in Europe — as it should have, considering Russia’s war on Ukraine — it’s still nowhere near enough. Only 11 of NATO’s 31 members are expected to meet the spending target in 2023, for example, according to NATO’s own data. Germany, the main target of Trump’s ire, has yet to achieve the 2 percent mark. It’s likely to this year, however, if only because its economy is contracting.
The truth is, Europe was lulled back into a false sense of security by Biden’s warm embrace. Instead of going on a war footing by forcing industry to ramp up armament production and reinstating conscription in countries like Germany where it was phased out, Europe nestled itself in Americas skirts.
This system, which has faced pushback from digital rights organizations and United Nations experts, will get its spotlight moment at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. In July next year, France will deploy large-scale, real-time, algorithm-supportedvideo surveillance cameras — a first in Europe. (Not included in the plan: facial recognition.)
Last month, the French parliament approved a controversial government plan to allow investigators to track suspected criminals in real-time via access to their devices’ geolocation, camera and microphone. Paris also lobbied in Brussels to be allowed to spy on reporters in the name of national security.
Helping France down the path of mass surveillance: a historically strong and centralized state; a powerful law enforcement community; political discourse increasingly focused on law and order; and the terrorist attacks of the 2010s. In the wake of President Emmanuel Macron’s agenda for so-called strategic autonomy, French defense and security giants, as well as innovative tech startups, have also gotten a boost to help them compete globally with American, Israeli and Chinese companies.
“Whenever there’s a security issue, the first reflex is surveillance and repression. There’s no attempt in either words or deeds to address it with a more social angle,” said Alouette, an activist at French digital rights NGO La Quadrature du Net who uses a pseudonym to protect her identity.
As surveillance and security laws have piled up in recent decades, advocates have lined up on opposite sides. Supporters argue law enforcement and intelligence agencies need such powers to fight terrorism and crime. Algorithmic video surveillance would have prevented the 2016 Nice terror attack, claimed Sacha Houlié, a prominent lawmaker from Macron’s Renaissance party.
Opponents point to the laws’ effect on civil liberties and fear France is morphing into a dystopian society. In June, the watchdog in charge of monitoring intelligence services said in a harsh report that French legislation is not compliant with the European Court of Human Rights’ case law, especially when it comes to intelligence-sharing between French and foreign agencies.
“We’re in a polarized debate with good guys and bad guys, where if you oppose mass surveillance, you’re on the bad guys’ side,” said Estelle Massé, Europe legislative manager and global data protection lead at digital rights NGO Access Now.
A history of surveillance
Both the 9/11 and the Paris 2015 terror attacks have accelerated mass surveillance in France, but the country’s tradition of snooping, monitoring and data collection dates way back — to Napoléon Bonaparte in the early 1800s.
“Historically, France has been at the forefront of these issues, in terms of police files and records. During the First Empire, France’s highly centralized government was determined to square the entire territory,” said Olivier Aïm, a lecturer at Sorbonne Université Celsa who authored a book on surveillance theories. Before electronic devices, paper was the main tool of control because identification documents were used to monitor travels, he explained.
The French emperor revived the Paris Police Prefecture — which exists to this day — and tasked law enforcement with new powers to keep political opponents in check.
In the 1880s, Alphonse Bertillon devised a method of identifying suspects and criminals using biometric features | Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
In the 1880s, Alphonse Bertillon, who worked for the Paris Police Prefecture, introduced a new way of identifying suspects and criminals using biometric features — the forerunner of facial recognition. The Bertillon method would then be emulated across the world.
Between 1870 and 1940, under the Third Republic, the police kept a massive file — dubbed the National Security’s Central File — with information about 600,000 people, including anarchists and communists, certain foreigners, criminals, and people who requested identification documents.
After World War II ended, a bruised France moved away from hard-line security discourse until the 1970s. And in the early days of the 21st century, the 9/11 attacks in the United States marked a turning point, ushering in a steady stream of controversial surveillance laws — under both left- and right-wing governments. In the name of national security, lawmakers started giving intelligence services and law enforcement unprecedented powers to snoop on citizens, with limited judiciary oversight.
“Surveillance covers a history of security, a history of the police, a history of intelligence,” Aïm said. “Security issues have intensified with the fight against terrorism, the organization of major events and globalization.”
The rise of technology
In the 1970s, before the era of omnipresent smartphones, French public opinion initially pushed back against using technology to monitor citizens.
In 1974, as ministries started using computers, Le Monde revealed a plan to merge all citizens’ files into a single computerized database, a project known as SAFARI.
The project, abandoned amid the resulting scandal, led lawmakers to adopt robust data protection legislation — creating the country’s privacy regulator CNIL. France then became one of the few European countries with rules to protect civil liberties in the computer age.
However, the mass spread of technology — and more specifically video surveillance cameras in the 1990s — allowed politicians and local officials to come up with new, alluring promises: security in exchange for surveillance tech.
In 2020, there were about 90,000 video surveillance cameras powered by the police and the gendarmerie in France. The state helps local officials finance them via a dedicated public fund. After France’s violent riots in early July — which also saw Macron float social media bans during periods of unrest — Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced he would swiftly allocate €20 million to repair broken video surveillance devices.
In parallel, the rise of tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Apple in everyday life has led to so-called surveillance capitalism. And for French policymakers, U.S. tech giants’ data collection has over the years become an argument to explain why the state, too, should be allowed to gather people’s personal information.
“We give Californian startups our fingerprints, face identification, or access to our privacy from our living room via connected speakers, and we would refuse to let the state protect us in the public space?” Senator Stéphane Le Rudulier from the conservative Les Républicains said in June to justify the use of facial recognition on the street.
Strong state, strong statesmen
Resistance to mass surveillance does exist in France at the local level — especially against the development of so-called safe cities. Digital rights NGOs can boast a few wins: In the south of France, La Quadrature du Net scored a victory in an administrative court, blocking plans to test facial recognition in high schools.
Some grassroots movements have opposed surveillance schemes at the local level, but the nationwide legislative push has continued | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
At the national level, however, security laws are too powerful a force, despite a few ongoing cases before the European Court of Human Rights. For example, France has de facto ignored multiple rulings from the EU top court that deemed mass data retention illegal.
Often at the center of France’s push for more state surveillance: the interior minister. This influential office, whose constituency includes the law enforcement and intelligence community, is described as a “stepping stone” toward the premiership — or even the presidency.
“Interior ministers are often powerful, well-known and hyper-present in the media. Each new minister pushes for new reforms, new powers, leading to the construction of a never-ending security tower,” said Access Now’s Massé.
Under Socialist François Hollande, Manuel Valls and Bernard Cazeneuve both went from interior minister to prime minister in, respectively, 2014 and 2016. Nicolas Sarkozy, Jacques Chirac’s interior minister from 2005 to 2007, was then elected president. All shepherded new surveillance laws under their tenure.
In the past year, Darmanin has been instrumental in pushing for the use of police drones, even going against the CNIL.
For politicians, even at the local level, there is little to gain electorally by arguing against expanded snooping and the monitoring of public space. “Many on the left, especially in complicated cities, feel obliged to go along, fearing accusations of being soft [on crime],” said Noémie Levain, a legal and political analyst at La Quadrature du Net. “The political cost of reversing a security law is too high,” she added.
It’s also the case that there’s often little pushback from the public. In March,on the same day a handful of French MPs voted to allow AI-powered video surveillance cameras at the 2024 Paris Olympics, about 1 million people took to the streets to protest against … Macron’s pension reform.
Sovereign cameras
For politicians, France’s industrial competitiveness is also at stake. The country is home to defense giants that dabble in both the military and civilian sectors, such as Thalès and Safran. Meanwhile, Idemia specializes in biometrics and identification.
“What’s accelerating legislation is also a global industrial and geopolitical context: Surveillance technologies are a Trojan horse for artificial intelligence,” said Caroline Lequesne Rot, an associate professor at the Côte d’Azur University, adding that French policymakers are worried about foreign rivals. “Europe is caught between the stranglehold of China and the U.S. The idea is to give our companies access to markets and allow them to train.”
In 2019, then-Digital Minister Cédric O told Le Monde that experimenting with facial recognition was needed to allow French companies to improve their technology.
France’s surveillance apparatus will be on full display at the 2024 Olympic Games | Patrick Kovarik/AFP via Getty Images
For the video surveillance industry — which made €1.6 billion in France in 2020 — the 2024 Paris Olympics will be a golden opportunity to test their products and services and showcase what they can do in terms of AI-powered surveillance.
XXII — an AI startup with funding from the armed forces ministry and at least some political backing — has already hinted it would be ready to secure the mega sports event.
“If we don’t encourage the development of French and European solutions, we run the risk of later becoming dependent on software developed by foreign powers,” wrote lawmakers Philippe Latombe, from Macron’s allied party Modem, and Philippe Gosselin, from Les Républicains, in a parliamentary report on video surveillance released in April.
“When it comes to artificial intelligence, losing control means undermining our sovereignty,” they added.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba slammed the EU on Thursday for failing to “implement its own decision” to jointly purchase ammunition for Ukraine as the bloc’s members spar over how to enact the plans.
“The inability of the EU to implement its own decision on the joint procurement of ammunition for Ukraine is frustrating,” Kuleba said on Twitter, marking a considerable change in tone from Kyiv toward the club it hopes to join.
EU leaders agreed last month on the idea to band together and draw money from a communal pot to help deliver Kyiv up to 1 million shells in the next 12 months as Ukraine fights off Russia’s invasion. But negotiations have hit an impasse at the ambassador level over how to spend the €1 billion set aside for joint contracts.
Kuleba said this was a test of the EU’s ability to make crucial new security decisions and whether the bloc truly has “strategic autonomy” — echoing the favorite term used by French President Emmanuel Macron when he recently stirred up controversy by saying Europe must not become “America’s followers.”
The main point of contention in the ammunition purchase talks revolves around how much to restrict the money to EU manufacturers, and whether to include companies in places like the U.S. and U.K.
France has been leading the charge to keep the money within the bloc, while others, including Poland, fear that Europe’s defense industry may not be up to the task of delivering 1 million shells to Ukraine in the promised timeframe of 12 months.
Talks will likely continue next week, meaning EU foreign ministers won’t have a deal in hand when they meet on Monday in Luxembourg to discuss the war.
“For Ukraine, the cost of inaction is measured in human lives,” Kuleba said.
Stop driving Europe away from the United States, dismayed central and eastern European officials fumed on Tuesday as French President Emmanuel Macron’s comments continued to ripple across the Continent.
Macron jolted allies in the EU’s eastern half after a visit to China last week when he cautioned the Continent against getting pulled into a U.S.-China dispute over Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own, imploring his neighbors to avoid becoming Washington and Beijing’s “vassals.”
The comments rattled those near the EU’s eastern edge, who have historically favored closer ties with the Americans — especially on defense — and pushed for a hasher approach to Beijing.
“Instead of building strategic autonomy from the United States, I propose a strategic partnership with the United States,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Tuesday before flying off to the U.S., of all places, for a three-day visit.
Privately, diplomats were even franker.
“We cannot understand [Macron’s] position on transatlantic relations during these very challenging times,” said one diplomat from an Eastern European country, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely express themselves. “We, as the EU, should be united. Unfortunately, this visit and French remarks following it are not helpful.”
The reactions reflect the long-simmering divisions within Europe over how to best defend itself. Macron has long argued for Europe to become more autonomous economically and militarily — a push many in Central and Eastern Europe fear could alienate a valuable U.S. helping keep Russia at bay, even if they support boosting the EU’s ability to act independently.
“In the current world of geopolitical shifts, and especially in the face of Russia’s war against Ukraine, it is obvious that democracies have to work closer together than ever before,” said another senior diplomat from Eastern Europe. “We should be all reminded of the wisdom of the first U.S ambassador to France Benjamin Franklin who rightly remarked that either we stick together or we will be hanged separately.”
Macron, a third senior diplomat from the same region huffed, was freelancing yet again: “It is not the first time that Macron has expressed views that are his own and do not represent the EU’s position.”
Walking into controversy
In his interview, Macron touched on a tense subject within Europe: how it should balance itself against the superpower fight between the U.S. and China.
The French president encouraged Europe to chart its own course, cautioning that Europe faces a “great risk” if it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy.”
Macron said he wants Europe to become a “third pole” to counterbalance China and the U.S. in the long term | Pool photo by Jacques Witt/AFP via Getty Images
It’s a stance that has many adherents within Europe — and has even worked its way into official EU policy as officials work to slowly ensure the Continent’s supply lines aren’t fully yoked to China and others on everything from weapons to electric vehicles.
Macron said he wants Europe to become a “third pole” to counterbalance China and the U.S. in the long term. An imminent conflict between Being and Washington, he argued, would put that goal at risk.
Yet out east, officials lamented that the French leader was simply treating the U.S. and China as if they were essentially the same in a global power play.
The comments, the second diplomat said, were “both ill-timed and inappropriate to put both the United States and China on a par and suggest that the EU should keep strategic distance to both of them.”
A Central European diplomat flatly dismissed Macron’s stance as “pretty outrageous,” while another official from the same region chalked it up to an attempt “to distract from other problems and show that France is bigger than what it is” — a reference to the protests roiling France amid Macron’s pension reforms.
The frustration in Central and Eastern Europe stems in part from a feeling that the French president has never made clear who would replace Washington in Europe — especially if Russia expands its war beyond Ukraine, said Kristi Raik, head of the foreign policy program at the International Centre for Defence and Security, a think tank in Estonia, a country of about 1.3 million people that borders Russia.
It’s an emotional point for Europe’s eastern half, where memories of the Soviet era linger.
“We hear Macron talking about European strategic autonomy, and somehow just being completely silent about the issue, which has become so clear in Ukraine, that actually European security and defense depends very strongly on the U.S.,” Raik said.
Raik noted, of course, that European countries, most notably Germany, are scrambling to update their militaries. France has also pledged large increases in its defense budgets.
But these changes, she cautioned, will take a “very long time.”
If Macron “wants to be serious in showing that he really aims at a Europe that is capable of defending itself,” Raik argued, “he also should be showing that France is willing to do much more to defend Europe vis-à-vis Russia.”
There’s an Emmanuel Macron-shaped shadow hovering over this week’s U.S. visit by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
In contrast to the French president — who in an interview with POLITICO tried to put some distance between the U.S. and Europe in any future confrontation with China over Taiwan and called for strengthening the Continent’s “strategic autonomy” — the Polish leader is underlining the critical importance of the alliance between America and Europe, not least because his country is one of Kyiv’s strongest allies in the war with Russia.
“Instead of building strategic autonomy from the United States, I propose a strategic partnership with the United States,” he said before flying to Washington.
In the U.S. capital, Morawiecki continued with his under-the-table kicks at the French president.
“I see no alternative, and we are absolutely on the same wavelength here, to building an even closer alliance with the Americans. If countries to the west of Poland understand this less, it is probably because of historical circumstances,” he said on Tuesday in Washington.
Unlike France, which has spent decades bristling at Europe’s reliance on the U.S. for its security, Poland is one of the Continent’s keenest American allies. Warsaw has pushed hard for years for U.S. troops to be stationed on its territory, and many of its recent arms contracts have gone to American companies. It signed a $1.4 billion deal earlier this year to buy a second batch of Abrams tanks, and has also agreed to spend $4.6 billion on advanced F-35 fighter jets.
“I am glad that this proposal for an even deeper strategic partnership is something that finds such fertile ground here in the United States, because we know that there are various concepts formulated by others in Europe, concepts that create more threats, more question marks, more unknowns,” Morawiecki said. “Poland is trying to maintain the most commonsense policy based on a close alliance with the United States within the framework of the European Union, and this is the best path for Poland.”
Fast friends
Poland has become one of Ukraine’s most important allies, and access to its roads, railways and airports is crucial in funneling weapons, ammunition and other aid to Ukraine.
That’s helped shift perceptions of Poland — seen before the war as an increasingly marginal member of the Western club thanks to its issues with violating the rule of law, into a key country of the NATO alliance.
Warsaw also sees the Russian attack on Ukraine as justifying its long-held suspicion of its historical foe, and it hasn’t been shy in pointing the finger at Paris and Berlin for being wrong about the threat posed by the Kremlin.
“Old Europe believed in an agreement with Russia, and old Europe failed,” Morawiecki said in a joint news conference with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. “But there is a new Europe — Europe that remembers what Russian communism was. And Poland is the leader of this new Europe.”
That’s why Macron’s comments have been seized on by Warsaw.
According to Poland’s PM Mateusz Morawiecki, Emmanuel Macron’s talks of distancing the EU from America “threatens to break up” the block | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
“I absolutely don’t agree with President Macron. We believe that more America is needed in Europe … We want more cooperation with the U.S. on a partnership basis,” Marcin Przydacz, a foreign policy adviser to Polish President Andrzej Duda, told Poland’s Radio Zet, adding that the strategic autonomy idea pushed by Macron “has the goal of cutting links between Europe and the United States.”
While Poland is keen on European countries hitting NATO’s goal of spending at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense — a target that only seven alliance members, including Poland, but not France and Germany, are meeting — and has no problem with them building up military industries, it doesn’t want to weaken ties with the U.S., said Sławomir Dębski, head of the state-financed Polish Institute of International Affairs.
He warned that Macron’s talks of distancing Europe from America in the event of a conflict with China “threatens to break up the EU, which is against the interests not only of Poland, but also of most European countries.”
ABOARD COTAM UNITÉ (FRANCE’S AIR FORCE ONE) — Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States and avoid getting dragged into a confrontation between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on his plane back from a three-day state visit to China.
Speaking with POLITICO and two French journalists after spending around six hours with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his trip, Macron emphasized his pet theory of “strategic autonomy” for Europe, presumably led by France, to become a “third superpower.”
He said “the great risk” Europe faces is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy,” while flying from Beijing to Guangzhou, in southern China, aboard COTAM Unité, France’s Air Force One.
Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party have enthusiastically endorsed Macron’s concept of strategic autonomy and Chinese officials constantly refer to it in their dealings with European countries. Party leaders and theorists in Beijing are convinced the West is in decline and China is on the ascendant and that weakening the transatlantic relationship will help accelerate this trend.
“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron said in the interview. “The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” he said.
Just hours after his flight left Guangzhou headed back to Paris, China launched large military exercises around the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which China claims as its territory but the U.S. has promised to arm and defend.
Those exercises were a response to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen’s 10-day diplomatic tour of Central American countries that included a meeting with Republican U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy while she transited in California. People familiar with Macron’s thinking said he was happy Beijing had at least waited until he was out of Chinese airspace before launching the simulated “Taiwan encirclement” exercise.
Beijing has repeatedly threatened to invade in recent years and has a policy of isolating the democratic island by forcing other countries to recognize it as part of “one China.”
Taiwan talks
Macron and Xi discussed Taiwan “intensely,” according to French officials accompanying the president, who appears to have taken a more conciliatory approach than the U.S. or even the European Union.
“Stability in the Taiwan Strait is of paramount importance,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who accompanied Macron for part of his visit, said she told Xi during their meeting in Beijing last Thursday. “The threat [of] the use of force to change the status quo is unacceptable.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron in Guangdong on April 7, 2023 | Pool Photo by Jacques Witt / AFP via Getty Images
Xi responded by saying anyone who thought they could influence Beijing on Taiwan was deluded.
Macron appears to agree with that assessment.
“Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’? If you really want to increase tensions that’s the way to do it,” he said.
“Europe is more willing to accept a world in which China becomes a regional hegemon,” said Yanmei Xie, a geopolitics analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics. “Some of its leaders even believe such a world order may be more advantageous to Europe.”
In his trilateral meeting with Macron and von der Leyen last Thursday in Beijing, Xi Jinping went off script on only two topics — Ukraine and Taiwan — according to someone who was present in the room.
“Xi was visibly annoyed for being held responsible for the Ukraine conflict and he downplayed his recent visit to Moscow,” this person said. “He was clearly enraged by the U.S. and very upset over Taiwan, by the Taiwanese president’s transit through the U.S. and [the fact that] foreign policy issues were being raised by Europeans.”
In this meeting, Macron and von der Leyen took similar lines on Taiwan, this person said. But Macron subsequently spent more than four hours with the Chinese leader, much of it with only translators present, and his tone was far more conciliatory than von der Leyen’s when speaking with journalists.
‘Vassals’ warning
Macron also argued that Europe had increased its dependency on the U.S. for weapons and energy and must now focus on boosting European defense industries.
He also suggested Europe should reduce its dependence on the “extraterritoriality of the U.S. dollar,” a key policy objective of both Moscow and Beijing.
Macron has long been a proponent of strategic autonomy for Europe | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
“If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up … we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals,” he said.
Russia, China, Iran and other countries have been hit by U.S. sanctions in recent years that are based on denying access to the dominant dollar-denominated global financial system. Some in Europe have complained about “weaponization” of the dollar by Washington, which forces European companies to give up business and cut ties with third countries or face crippling secondary sanctions.
While sitting in the stateroom of his A330 aircraft in a hoodie with the words “French Tech” emblazoned on the chest, Macron claimed to have already “won the ideological battle on strategic autonomy” for Europe.
He did not address the question of ongoing U.S. security guarantees for the Continent, which relies heavily on American defense assistance amid the first major land war in Europe since World War II.
As one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and the only nuclear power in the EU, France is in a unique position militarily. However, the country has contributed far less to the defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion than many other countries.
As is common in France and many other European countries, the French President’s office, known as the Elysée Palace, insisted on checking and “proofreading” all the president’s quotes to be published in this article as a condition of granting the interview. This violates POLITICO’s editorial standards and policy, but we agreed to the terms in order to speak directly with the French president. POLITICO insisted that it cannot deceive its readers and would not publish anything the president did not say. The quotes in this article were all actually said by the president, but some parts of the interview in which the president spoke even more frankly about Taiwan and Europe’s strategic autonomy were cut out by the Elysée.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping had one overriding message for his visiting French counterpart Emmanuel Macron this week: Don’t let Europe get sucked into playing America’s game.
Beijing is eager to avoid the EU falling further under U.S. influence, at a time when the White House is pursuing a more assertive policy to counter China’s geopolitical and military strength.
Russia’s yearlong war against Ukraine has strengthened the alliance between Europe and the U.S., shaken up global trade, reinvigorated NATO and forced governments to look at what else could suddenly go wrong in world affairs. That’s not welcome in Beijing, which still views Washington as its strategic nemesis.
This week, China’s counter-offensive stepped up a gear, turning on the charm. Xi welcomed Macron into the grandest of settings at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, along with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. This was in sharp contrast to China’s current efforts to keep senior American officials at arm’s length, especially since U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called off a trip to Beijing during the spy balloon drama earlier this year.
Both American and Chinese officials know Europe’s policy toward Beijing is far from settled. That’s an opportunity, and a risk for both sides. In recent months, U.S. officials have warned of China’s willingness to send weapons to Russia and talked up the dangers of allowing Chinese tech companies unfettered access to European markets, with some success.
TikTok, which is ultimately Chinese owned, has been banned from government and administrative phones in a number of locations in Europe, including in the EU institutions in Brussels. American pressure also led the Dutch to put new export controls on sales of advanced semiconductor equipment to China.
Yet even the hawkish von der Leyen, a former German defense minister, has dismissed the notion of decoupling Europe from China’s economy altogether. From Beijing’s perspective, this is yet another significant difference from the hostile commercial environment being promoted by the U.S.
Just this week, 36 Chinese and French businesses signed new deals in front of Macron and Xi, in what Chinese state media said was a sign of “the not declining confidence in the Chinese market of European businesses.” While hardly a statement brimming with confidence, it could have been worse.
For the last couple of years European leaders have grown more skeptical of China’s trajectory, voicing dismay at Beijing’s way of handling the coronavirus pandemic, the treatment of protesters in Hong Kong and Xinjiang’s Uyghur Muslims, as well as China’s sanctions on European politicians and military threats against Taiwan.
Then, Xi and Vladimir Putin hailed a “no limits” partnership just days before Russia invaded Ukraine. While the West rolled out tough sanctions on Moscow, China became the last major economy still interested in maintaining — and expanding — trade ties with Russia. That shocked many Western officials and provoked a fierce debate in Europe over how to punish Beijing and how far to pull out of Chinese commerce.
Beijing saw Macron as the natural partner to help avoid a nosedive in EU-China relations, especially since Angela Merkel — its previous favorite — was no longer German chancellor.
Macron’s willingness to engage with anyone — including his much-criticized contacts with Putin ahead of his war on Ukraine — made him especially appealing as Beijing sought to drive a wedge between European and American strategies on China.
Xi Jinping sees Macron as the natural to Angela Merkel, his previous partner in the West who helped avoid a nosedive in EU-China relations | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Not taking sides
“I’m very glad we share many identical or similar views on Sino-French, Sino-EU, international and regional issues,” Xi told Macron over tea on Friday, in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, according to Chinese state media Xinhua.
Strategic autonomy, a French foreign policy focus, is a favorite for China, which sees the notion as proof of Europe’s distance from the U.S. For his part, Macron told Xi a day earlier that France promotes “European strategic autonomy,” doesn’t like “bloc confrontation” and believes in doing its own thing. “France does not pick sides,” he said.
The French position is challenged by some in Europe who see it as an urgent task to take a tougher approach toward Beijing.
“Macron could have easily avoided the dismal picture of European and transatlantic disunity,” said Thorsten Benner, director of the Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute. “Nobody forced Macron to show up with a huge business delegation, repeating disproven illusions of reciprocity and deluding himself about working his personal magic on Xi to get the Chinese leader to turn against Putin.”
Holger Hestermeyer, a professor of EU law at King’s College London, said Beijing will struggle to split the transatlantic alliance.
“If China wants to succeed with building a new world order, separating the EU from the U.S. — even a little bit — would be a prized goal — and mind you, probably an elusive one,” Hestermeyer said. “Right now the EU is strengthening its defenses specifically because China tried to play divide and conquer with the EU in the past.”
Xi’s focus on America was unmistakable when he veered into a topic that was a long way from Europe’s top priority, during his three-way meeting with Macron and von der Leyen. A week earlier the Biden administration had held its second Summit for Democracy, in which Russia and China were portrayed as the main threats.
“Spreading the so-called ‘democracy versus authoritarianism’ [narrative],” Xi told his European guests on Thursday, “would only bring division and confrontation to the world.”
MUNICH — Cut through the haze of hoary proclamations emanating from the main stage of the Munich Security Conference about Western solidarity and common purpose this weekend, and one can’t help but notice more than a hint of foreboding just beneath the surface.
Even as Western leaders congratulate themselves for their generosity toward Ukraine, the country’s armed forces are running low on ammunition, equipment and even men. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who opened the conference from Kyiv on Friday, urged the free world to send more help — and fast. “We need speed,” he said.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris turned the heat up on Russia on another front, accusing the country of “crimes against humanity.” “Let us all agree. On behalf of all the victims, both known and unknown: justice must be served,” she said.
In other words, Russian leaders could be looking at Nuremberg 2.0. That’s bound to make a few people in Moscow nervous, especially those old enough to remember what happened to Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milošević and his entourage.
The outlook in Asia is no less fraught. Taiwan remains on edge, as the country tries to guess China’s next move. Here too, the news from Munich wasn’t reassuring.
“What is happening in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi did nothing to contradict that narrative. “Let me assure the audience that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory,” Wang told the conference when asked about Beijing’s designs on the self-governed island. Taiwan “has never been a country and it will never be a country in the future.”
For some attendees, the vibe in the crowded Bayerischer Hof hotel where the gathering takes place carried echoes of 1938. That year, the Bavarian capital hosted a conference that resulted in the infamous Munich Agreement, in which European powers ceded the Sudetenland to Germany in a misguided effort they believed could preserve peace.
“We all know that there is a storm brewing outside, but here inside the Bayerischer Hof all seems normal,” wrote Andrew Michta, dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the Germany-based Marshall Center. “It all seems so routine, and yet it all changes suddenly when a Ukrainian parliamentarian pointedly tells the audience we are failing to act fast enough.”
The only people smiling at this year’s security conference are the defense contractors. Arms sales are booming by all accounts.
Even Germany, which in recent years perfected the art of explaining away its failure to meet its NATO defense spending commitment, promised to reverse course. Indeed, German officials appeared to be trying to outdo one another to prove just how hawkish they’ve become.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to “permanently” meet NATO’s defense spending goal for individual members of two percent of GDP.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to “permanently” meet NATO’s defense spending goal for individual members | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
Germany’s new defense minister, Boris Pistorius, a Social Democrat like Scholz, called for even more, saying that “it will not be possible to fulfill the tasks that lie ahead of us with barely two percent.”
Keep in mind that at the beginning of last year, leading Social Democrats were still calling on the U.S. to remove all of its nuclear warheads from German soil.
In other words, if even the Germans have woken up to the perils of the world’s current geopolitical state, this could well be the moment to really start worrying.
CORRECTION: Jens Stoltenberg’s reference to Asia has been updated.
MUNICH — China is trying to drive a fresh wedge between Europe and the United States as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine trudges past its one-year mark.
Such was the motif of China’s newly promoted foreign policy chief Wang Yi when he broke the news at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that President Xi Jinping would soon present a “peace proposal” to resolve what Beijing calls a conflict — not a war — between Moscow and Kyiv. And he pointedly urged his European audience to get on board and shun the Americans.
In a major speech, Wang appealed specifically to the European leaders gathered in the room.
“We need to think calmly, especially our friends in Europe, about what efforts should be made to stop the warfare; what framework should there be to bring lasting peace to Europe; what role should Europe play to manifest its strategic autonomy,” said Wang, who will continue his Europe tour with a stop in Moscow.
In contrast, Wang launched a vociferous attack on “weak” Washington’s “near-hysterical” reaction to Chinese balloons over U.S. airspace, portraying the country as warmongering.
“Some forces might not want to see peace talks to materialize,” he said, widely interpreted as a reference to the U.S. “They don’t care about the life and death of Ukrainians, [nor] the harms on Europe. They might have strategic goals larger than Ukraine itself. This warfare must not continue.”
Yet at the conference, Europe showed no signs of distancing itself from the U.S. nor pulling back on military support for Ukraine. The once-hesitant German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged Europe to give Ukraine even more modern tanks. And French President Emmanuel Macron shot down the idea of immediate peace talks with the Kremlin.
And, predictably, there was widespread skepticism that China’s idea of “peace” will match that of Europe.
“China has not been able to condemn the invasion,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a group of reporters. Beijing’s peace plan, he added, “is quite vague.” Peace, the NATO chief emphasized, is only possible if Russia respects Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Europe watches with caution
Wang’s overtures illustrate the delicate dance China has been trying to pull off since the war began.
Keen to ensure Russia is not weakened in the long run, Beijing has offered Vladimir Putin much-needed diplomatic support, while steering clear of any direct military assistance that would attract Western sanctions against its economic and trade relations with the world.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Wang while in Munich | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
“We will put forward China’s position on the political settlement on the Ukraine crisis, and stay firm on the side of peace and dialogue,” Wang said. “We do not add fuel to the fire, and we are against reaping benefit from this crisis.”
According to Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who met Wang earlier this week, Xi will make his “peace proposal” on the first anniversary of the war, which is Friday.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Wang while in Munich. He said he hoped to have a “frank” conversation with the Beijing envoy.
“We believe that compliance with the principle of territorial integrity is China’s fundamental interest in the international arena,” Kuleba told journalists in Munich. “And that commitment to the observance and protection of this principle is a driving force for China, greater than other arguments offered by Ukraine, the United States, or any other country.”
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell met Wang later on Saturday and called on him to “use [China’s] closeness to convince Russia to engage in real peace efforts. Borrell expressed hope that Wang’s visit to Moscow could be used to convince Russia to stop its brutal war,” according to an EU official familiar with the talks, adding the EU chief told Wang Russia conducted “gross violation of the letter and spirit of the U.N. Charter.”
Many in Munich were wary of the upcoming Chinese plan.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock welcomed China’s effort to use its influence to foster peace but told reporters she had “talked intensively” with Wang during a bilateral meeting on Friday about “what a just peace means: not rewarding the attacker, the aggressor, but standing up for international law and for those who have been attacked.”
“A just peace,” she added, “presupposes that the party that has violated territorial integrity — meaning Russia — withdraws its troops from the occupied country.”
One reason for Europe’s concerns is the Chinese peace plan could undermine an effort at the United Nations to rally support for a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which will be on the U.N.’s General Assembly agenda next week, according to three European officials and diplomats.
Taiwan issue stokes up US-China tension
If China was keen to talk about peace in Ukraine, it’s more reluctant to do so in a case closer to home.
When Wolfgang Ischinger, the veteran German diplomat behind the conference, asked Wang if he could reassure the audience Beijing was not planning an imminent military escalation against Taiwan, the Chinese envoy was non-committal.
Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said “what is happening in Europe today could happen in east Asia tomorrow” | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
“Let me assure the audience that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory. It has never been a country and it will never be a country in the future,” Wang said.
The worry over Taiwan resonated in a speech from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said “what is happening in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow.” Reminding the audience of the painful experience of relying on Russia’s energy supply, he said: “We should not make the same mistakes with China and other authoritarian regimes.”
But China’s most forceful attack was reserved for the U.S. Calling its decision to shoot down Chinese and other balloons “absurd” and “near-hysterical,” Wang said: “It does not show the U.S. is strong; on the contrary, it shows it is weak.
Wang also amplified the message in other bilateral meetings, including one with Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. “U.S. bias and ignorance against China has reached a ridiculous level,” he said. “The U.S. … has to stop this kind of absurd nonsense out of domestic political needs.”
It remains unclear if Wang will hold a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken while in Germany, as has been discussed.
Hans von der Burchard and Lili Bayer reported from Munich, and Stuart Lau reported from Brussels.
This article was updated to include details of the meeting between Wang and Borrell.
CORRECTION: Jens Stoltenberg’s reference to Asia has been updated.
