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Remember when Donald Trump was “upsetting the established international order”? He’s got nothing on Joe Biden.
Back when the Bad Orange Man challenged European nations to start pulling their weight in NATO, or the US would walk, the Euro elite lost their minds. Pay for their own defence? Mon dieu!
The EU nations were ecstatic when Biden was installed in the White House. No more of that terrible orange fellow upsetting their cosy little club. As for that awful nation of shopkeepers across the Channel, they were going to get their comeuppance for Brexit. Boris Johnson, supposedly Trump in miniature, would be put in his place by the new president.
Then AUKUS happened.
To the astonishment of not just China but the Euro elite, Biden has sided not just with Britain, but, sacre bleu! Australia.
Flanked by video screens in the White House East Room beaming images of Mr Johnson in London and Scott Morrison (or “that fellow down under” as Mr Biden called the Australian prime minister) in Canberra, the president announced the formation of a new strategic alliance: AUKUS — a tripartite security, technology and intelligence-sharing arrangement among the three countries.
As if to rub the EU’s nose in it, the deal specifically gazumps France’s contract to build Australia’s next fleet of submarines. But the AUKUS announcement was only the culmination of long-standing Australian doubts over the French deal. Not only were the French subs inferior and over-priced but France itself, and the EU generally, are seen to be discomfitingly inclined to have an each-way bet over the catalyst for AUKUS: China.
The one positive thing that can be said about the Biden administration is that, despite concerns over “China Joe’s” alleged family ties to Beijing, the administration has finally woken up to what his Democrat predecessor, Barack Obama, could not (or would not) see: the threat from China to American interests.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan was catastrophically clumsy and disastrous but at least it has cleared the foreign policy decks for a pivot away from the always-doomed “War on Terror”, to face up to the rise of China.
To its credit, the Biden administration has largely signed on to the idea that the defining issue of the 21st century will be the strategic rivalry between the US and China. It came into office, however, spouting the usual Democratic bromides that containing China’s rise could best be done multilaterally, with allies in Europe especially.
But Europe has made clear it doesn’t want to join that rivalry. Even France, which uniquely now since the UK left the bloc has the military capabilities to project power globally, has indicated its reluctance. Condemning the US this weekend, the French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said: “We see the rise of an Indo-Pacific strategy launched by the United States that is militarily confrontational. That is not our position.”
That’s because the EU continues to decline to take any serious responsibility for global peace and security, preferring to see the economic and commercial opportunities in the relationship with China, rather than the threat the Chinese Communist Party represents.
Given the history of the last century or so in Europe, we perhaps shouldn’t be surprised to see who in Europe is most comfortable with dealing with a brutal authoritarian regime.
Germany, the economic behemoth in the EU, is the main driver behind this. It recently led the bloc’s effort to sign an investment deal with China. It has resisted US attempts to restrict the Chinese telecom giant Huawei from developing its 5G network.
Biden’s signing of AUKUS only puts into concrete terms what Trump had already undiplomatically blurted out loud: the EU has, for the last 70 years, grown fat by hiding behind America’s apron. For nearly all that time, America reaped little in return but European disdain.
Through its history, the EU has prioritised—to great success—its economic interest, safe in the knowledge that the US security umbrella was there to protect it. Now that the US really needs it to share some of the costs of that umbrella, the EU is missing in action.
The Australian
As Field Marshal Montgomery said, the great evils of the 20th century – Fascism, Nazism and Communism – all arose within Europe. The salvation from those evils always came from outwith Europe – Britain and America.
Well, now Europe is going to have to deal with the consequences of its greed and duplicity on its own. Good luck with that.
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