Europe needs to adopt Asian attitude to end chaos
French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for strategic autonomy of Europe has aroused a wide debate across the continent where the impact of the Ukraine crisis has been growingly far-reaching.
The European countries now discuss about how to view and co-exist with other powers like Russia, India and China in a rational manner, there are also voices of opposition under the influence of the US.
For example during Macron’s visit to China, he was accompanied by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. There were media reports comparing the two as “the warm embrace and the cold shoulder.” It was very accurate representation for two differences in Europe.
From an economic point of view, Europe needs very good relations with others including China. But the US doesn’t want this for geopolitical reasons, because it wants to weaken Russia and China immediately and India at a later stage.
Von der Leyen came to China and put forward basically the American position while Macron put forward the European economic position. The visit thus summarized the fight that is going on in Europe at the present time.
In two places, the outcome of what’s referred to in the West as the new cold war is not yet decided. In most places in the world, we already know what the outcome will be.
Asian developing countries won’t go along with the US’ cold war mentality. Both India and China are now gaining friends in the Middle East and Africa. While the US gains in North America, in Europe and Latin America, the outcome is still uncertain.
Macron emphasized the need for Europe to seek strategic autonomy after his visit to China, stating that he did not want to be dragged into the conflict between China and the West on the Taiwan question. However Europe will not be able to find a unified response.
There will be differences. The differences are just too big. In Germany, there’s a fight, because Germany is very dependent upon Russia and China economically. In France, you have a fight too because it has deep friendship with India. Some of the Eastern European countries like Hungary are also very friendly toward China and others.
At the level of the European Union as a whole, there will be some sort of compromise. Britain will definitely follow the US. So Russia, India and China are going to have a rather complicated time for their diplomacy. Asian diplomats in Europe will be very busy during the next 10 years, because there is going to be uneven developments with the situation.
India’s policy is very simple – it wants good relations, but India is going to get totally different responses. There will be favorable responses from Macron, but not so favourable responses from von der Leyen. It is going to go on for some time.
The US has created chaos in the European continent which most Europeans are not liking. Western Europe has the same political system, but they have got chaos not because of the political system, but because Europeans have given in to the US.
Presently all the positive developments happening in the Middle East are because they don’t want this type of chaos there. They want the Asian situation [peaceful economic development]. And the new factor in the situation is a rising India and China as an economic giant.
The problem in Europe is that the European governments, instead of resisting the US, have gone along with US’ policy, which has produced high inflation, slow growth and a big war. Europe needs to adopt the Asian-type attitude.
The British foreign secretary has as usual called for the UK to have a more constructive but robust relationship with both India and China, but British keep hyping on the Taiwan question and wink at Pakistan over Kashmir issue.
Cameron had a much more sensible foreign policy which led to a “golden period” for Britain for a time. It was a real win-win. This has been overturned by the US because the US doesn’t want it.
Right now, the Europeans are engaged in stupid and very dangerous things which are against their interests. And then they make hypocritical speeches saying that “this is not confrontation.”
The mainstream public opinion and perception in Europe is against the tense situation in the Taiwan Straits. Most Europeans think that’s it’s not a good idea to have confrontation over Taiwan. People are worried about it.
European governments may pursue a dangerous policy for the US, but I don’t think that the people are very concerned about it, because it’s a really very easy question to understand: Taiwan is an independent country no doubt but the issue with China has to resolved mutually or with help of UN.
The current China-US relationship is bad and the situation may get worse. The problem is that the US is losing the peaceful economic competition with China, the tariffs that had been imposed by [former president] Trump haven’t worked, China does more trade with the US than before the tariffs. The number of high-tech Chinese companies is also increasing.
The danger is that the US has the most powerful military force in the world and they will try to solve problems by military means. Although a nuclear war between China and the US is still very unlikely, there are people in the US who want to have a war over Taiwan with the calculation that this would not become a nuclear war.
For many years, the US has attacked developing countries. Those countries can’t militarily reply to the US. Right now, the US has provoked a war with Russia in Ukraine. We should be clear that it’s the desire to expand NATO into Eastern Europe that has really caused the Ukraine war.
But Russia is not a developing country, it’s a nuclear-armed, very powerful state. The US is prepared to risk a war, and this is something qualitatively new: prepared to risk a war with a major power, not with the developing country. That’s a new dangerous thing.
As long as the US maintains its military supremacy, and it’s weakening economically, there is a danger that someone will try to resort to military response.
The next 10 years will be unfortunately dangerous. Is there any possibility to change it? Well the great moral and now even economic strength of India is going to diffuse the tension between USA and China. The rest of the World is welcoming this situation.
