In his latest Wall Street Journal column Walter Russell Mead muses about the implications for our alliance with the countries of Western Europe of the U. S.’s inevitable refocusing of interest on the countries of the Pacific:
What will the trans-Atlantic alliance look like in a world focused on the Indo-Pacific? That, more than President Trump’s unpredictable diplomacy, is the question that haunts Europe. During the Cold War, protecting Europe from Soviet aggression was Washington’s highest foreign-policy priority. That didn’t only mean that the U.S. put troops in Europe. Washington took European opinions seriously, engaged with Europeans, cut deals with them and was willing to make concessions to preserve alliance unity.
Clearly, some of that has changed. The next U.S. president may not share Mr. Trump’s undiplomatic instincts or his affinity for Brexiteers such as Nigel Farage and anti-Brussels figures like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. But will he or she engage in the ritualistic ceremonies of diplomatic consultation with the various chancellors, presidents, commissioners and high representatives that Europeans so love? When America’s most urgent foreign policy worries involve smoothing over Japanese-Korean spats or facing down China in the Taiwan Strait, just how relevant will Europe be? When Europe calls Washington, will anybody answer the phone?
I think his assessment of the relationship between Europe and the United States is, flatly, wrong. I think that the trans-Atlantic alliance is just fine when we bear the cost of defending Europe or pursue European interests, particularly Germany’s, and becomes “braindead” when we pursue our own. I can think of any number of instances over the last 30 years when we have pursued European interests that didn’t advance ours and one instance over the last 30 years in which the countries of Europe pursued our interest in something that was of little interest to them. “Be reasonable; do it my way” has always been their primary operating principle.
Unlike the countries of Europe we have not only trans-Atlantic interests but trans-Pacific ones and, even more, purely American interests. Our biggest trading partners are China, Canada, Mexico, and Japan. Our aggregate trade with European countries is just about the same as our trade with Mexico and, let’s face reality, our interest in Mexican security is a lot greater than our interest in Italy’s.
The nations of Europe are in the midst of an identity crisis like nothing they’ve experienced in almost two millennia and which they must solve without our help. We can only get in the way. They will be so absorbed by that for the foreseeable future that they will have little helpful to contribute to our trans-Pacific or American interests.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia lost not only all its allies, and their population and industry, but half its own population and industry and one fourth of its territory. The rump state that is Russia. is not a threat to anyone, and Europe’s defense spending reflects that fact. The chaos in Ukraine was created by us when we engineered a coup to overthrow Ukraine’s only legitimate, democratically elected president. Without that coup, Ukraine would be a peace, intact, and sort of prosperous. We did that. Putin merely accepted the gift of Crimea.
China is a whole different matter. The fact that Japan and Korea, our main allies in Asia, are enemies does not help our position there, either. China’s industrial sector is much larger than ours (it used to be ours), much more diversified, and much more modern. Basically we are in the same position v.v. China as 1940’s Japan was v.v. us. Right now, China is completing the construction of a new shipyard that will be dedicated to building large, Nimitz-class carriers, and heavy cruisers. We urgently need Obama’s Pacific Pivot, but the lunatic neocons keep screaming Russia, Russia, Russia, or Iran, Iran, Iran.
Russia is still very much a threat to his neighbors because (A) a lot of its neighbors, notably Germany, deliberately chose to become energy-depending on Russia, (B) Russia still has a formidable land army (compared to Europe’s) and Putin isn’t shy about using it to further his interests, (C) Vladimir Putin himself, who would like to recreate the Soviet Empire, is easily insulted, and holds grudges, and (D) nukes.
Bob Sykes: I agree with you on your Han Empire vs US Empire is similar to Nippon Empire versus US Empire, but in different ways. The Nippon empire was both territorially aggressive and at the same time extremely depending on raw materials from overseas notably steel, oil, and rubber. When Roosevelt cut off scrap steel shipments and persuaded the Netherlands East Indies to cut off oil and rubber shipments to try and force the Japanese to withdraw from China, he made war inevitable (IMO probably the right thing geopolitically, but very dirty pool that likely today would have ended in his removal from office). Today’s Han Empire is not quite as dependent on raw materials, but it extremely dependent on flouting trade agreements and engaging in wholesale intellectual theft. Trump’s attempts to force the Han to live up to agreements and stop stealing may very convince Xi or a successor to launch a war to solve their problems despite the absolute chaos it would cause their economy.