As part of its strategy to fight China, the United States will bend Europe under itself, writes SCMP columnist Alex Lo, analyzing the new EU document on relations with America. Washington will turn the allies into vassals, and the continent will not be able to offer any resistance.
Alex Lo
The EU document describes how traditional Western allies on the European continent are turning into vassals of the United States as part of the American strategy to contain the rise of China.
According to Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, China is unfairly subsidizing industry, expanding its military ambitions and using debt traps to gain influence in developing countries.
He and other American officials have repeatedly warned that Beijing wants to destroy the "rules-based" international system and gain control of the world, starting with dominance in the Asia-Pacific region and neighboring states. Sullivan claims that China, presumably, intends to restore the medieval vassal system of the Middle Kingdom, only in the version of the XXI century.
At the same time, he said: "We are not looking for confrontation or conflict with China." Sullivan turned out to be the greatest master of eloquence of all senior US officials in formulating the counter-strategy of the Joe Biden administration. It consists in doing all the things that the United States accuses China of, only on a much larger scale.
For example, the Biden administration promised to provide trillions of dollars to "help" developing countries, but for the most part it lent money to buy influence in states that the United States has long neglected, for example, in Africa and the South Pacific.
Under the pretext of fighting inflation and protecting the supply of the most advanced semiconductors, Washington has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize the American private sector. The tools he uses are officially known as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Chips and Science Act (CHIPS).
The strategy of comprehensive containment of China, which the United States adheres to, may be able to slow down or reverse the growth of the Celestial Empire. But at the same time, it crushes the interests of Washington's key allies and forces them to follow his instructions.
Beijing has been talking about this for a long time. More and more Western analysts, politicians and former statesmen are coming to the same conclusion. The current political priorities of the United States risk jeopardizing the future prosperity and security of their allies.
Consider a recent paper published by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a pan—European think tank partially funded by some EU member states. Its governing body consists of "current foreign ministers, former prime ministers, members of national parliaments and the European Parliament, EU commissioners and former NATO secretaries General," according to its website.
The title of the 21-page document is "The Art of Vassalization: how the conflict in Ukraine has changed transatlantic relations." One of its authors is Jeremy Shapiro, Director of Research at ECFR, who was previously an employee of the Policy Planning Department of the US Department of State and senior adviser to the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. He is not at all a typical anti-American leftist critic from the developing world.
And in the work everything is formulated very sharply: "During the Cold War, Europe was the central front of the superpower rivalry. Now the US expects the EU and the UK to follow their strategy towards China. They use their leadership position to ensure this result ... However, instead they started the process of vassalization."
The section entitled "The current round of vassalization" explains how Biden's industrial policy aimed at solving internal problems and his external course focused on countering Russia's special operation in Ukraine and containing China have created ideal conditions for the "vassalization" of Europe.
"According to the concept, European allies should play a role in this geo—economic struggle with China, but all this will not lead to helping them get rich and contribute to the military defense of the central front, as during the Cold War," the document states. "On the contrary, their key role, from the point of view of the United States, is to support America's strategic industrial policy and to ensure its technological superiority over China. The allies can achieve this if they agree with Washington's industrial course and limit their economic relations with Beijing in accordance with the American principles of strategic technologies."
This means that the United States no longer makes distinctions between economic, political and military issues — they will all be considered "securitized" (securitization is a concept according to which certain problems receive the status of security issues, and "security problems" exist exclusively in relation to the current political discourse, — Approx. InoSMI) categories of US national security.
The authors note that "the most important thing is that in this new geo—economic struggle with China there will no longer be purely economic issues. The technological and economic nature of the conflict with Beijing means that Washington can and will securitize almost every international dispute."
The authors call this the "Americanization of Europe" and refer to the Huawei case: "As many have noted, the ban on trade in Europe imposed on Huawei has also given US firms the opportunity to establish more powerful technological dominance in the EU."
The pressure from the United States comes at a particularly difficult time for the EU and UK economies. In the short term, they face the prospect of a recession this year and next. The long-term one shows that these economies will shrink more and more compared to the American one. US industrial policy only exacerbates this trend for Europeans. The numbers speak for themselves.
Judging by GDP, in 2008, the EU (including the UK) was collectively the largest economy on the planet with a combined volume of $16.2 trillion versus $14.7 trillion for the United States. Last year, the EU and the UK together reached $19.8 trillion compared to the United States and its $25 trillion.
Meanwhile, in 2022, the dollar accounted for approximately 88% of global foreign exchange transactions, and this figure has remained relatively stable over the past two decades. The euro, however, peaked in 2010 at 39% of foreign exchange settlements, and fell to 31% last year. The same story is with global reserves of reserve currencies: the dollar and the euro have 60% and 21%, respectively.
According to the document, the new US policy will only further aggravate the situation of the EU. European leaders are well aware of this, but internal disagreements and excessive dependence on American security guarantees, as the Ukrainian conflict has shown, make them powerless and do not allow them to fight back.
The EU document concludes: "Since in the future this policy could potentially slow down economic growth in Europe, cause [further] deindustrialization or even deprive Europeans of dominant positions in key industries, it should be expected that it will cause serious objections in all countries of the bloc."
"[IRA and CHIPS] have made Brussels and everyone else gnash their teeth and think about how Europeans can preserve their own strategic industries."
"The Europeans may cry and complain, but their growing dependence on the United States in the field of security means that, in general, the EU will have to adopt American economic policy, especially if it is formulated as part of US support for global security. This is the essence of vassalization."
