The Importance of Euro-American Cooperation on China
Europe’s investment deal with China may serve to benefit them economically, but brings significant socio-political implications (Image Credit: Shutterstock as used in Sondland, 2019)
In early January of 2021, during the Trump administration's dying days, the European Union (EU) and Beijing had signed an investment deal that allowed European firms to operate easily in China's over-protectionist markets. While the economic benefits of the agreement on the EU are yet to take effect, the political impacts were immediate. Jake Sullivan, the then-incoming US National Security Advisor, had said that the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, or CAI as it is more formally known, will damage transatlantic relations between Washington and Brussels. Beijing had not only secured further cooperation in a bloc that was known to criticize China’s human rights breaches and abusive labor practices, but managed to split Euro-American efforts to isolate China, after much resistance and stalling from the former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that would have urged China to comply by conventions of the International Labor Organization before signing the agreement.
This phenomenon of America’s traditional allies pursuing closer ties to America’s adversaries is nothing new. In November of last year, the largest free trade agreement in history, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, was signed between China and fourteen other Asia-Pacific states, including American allies, such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea. Donald Trump’s often erratic and inconsistent foreign policy has clearly demonstrated the rotten fruits it bore. As previously illustrated, the former president’s assault on multilateralism has alienated America’s allies on the international stage and risks pushing them closer to American rivals, which are as active as ever and dedicated to undermining international laws and conventions conceived to assure political and civil rights and liberties. Such instances include the events in early June last year, when the Trump administration had planned to pull 12,000 American troops out of Germany, claiming that Berlin refused to pay its fair share in the NATO alliance. Officials in Berlin were surprised that the Cold War era alliance's bedrock had shattered. Although President Biden has reversed these decisions, it will continue to leave a scar on Europe-America relations.
Sometimes, it might even be because America’s allies have no clear signals on what the Leader of the Free World demands from rogue states. An instance of this was when Trump’s initial tolerance and morbid encouragement of the construction of Uyghur re-education camps, as revealed by former National Security Advisor John Bolton in his book, took an immediate shift to denunciation and imposition of sanctions on China’s actions. These massive political flip-flops cannot simply morally exist in an effective and efficient foreign policy.
America’s foreign policy is largely dependent on whoever is at the helm of the ship elected by one of the most divisive electorates. Based on the Trump administration's foreign policy decisions, the NATO alliance may be damaged if Mr. Trump were to run successfully in 2024 because certain swing states, be it Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Florida, decided to vote Republican Red on their ballots. Such a unipolar foreign policy decision-making model that is entirely dependent on a few individuals' actions in certain regions is quite unreliable and serves to the inconvenience and misfortune of the individuals and institutions mostly protected by Western foreign policy – those unfairly persecuted by authoritarian regimes, be it Alexei Navalny in Russia, the Hong Kong protestors, or the Uyghur Muslims. After all, American foreign policy had largely pressured the decisions of morally reprehensible regimes in the past, such as when the United States imposed sanctions on South Africa’s Apartheid Regime, which had undoubtedly aided in the collapse of the government and the flourishing of democracy in the country. With historical precedent and a clear role of America and the West in the world, China’s draconian actions in the Hong Kong protests and the persecution of Uyghurs must not go unanswered. To the fullest degree, American policy has mostly discouraged any resolve among America’s allies in Europe and the Asia-Pacific of combatting China on the international stage or even in their own backyards where there is significant control of trade, such as the case of the EU-China investment deal.
Conclusively, it is clear that Euro-American cooperation is quite important in pressuring China to heed international laws and conventions. The European Union should be more cautious in approaching Chinese relations and should better consider the human rights abuses occurring within the country. As a result of America’s dynamic internal politics that then affects foreign policy, there have been talks of achieving “Open Strategic Autonomy” among European policy circles, which was defined by the EU Strategic Agenda 2019-2024 as to “act autonomously to safeguard its interests, uphold its values and way of life, and help shape the global future” or to independently act on political, economic, and military issues by building up short and long-term capabilities. These strategies should be pursued, for it would make Europe much more politically, economically, and militarily independent to be less reliant on the dynamics of American politics and at liberty to pursue their interests as liberal actors of international relations and bulwarks for civil and political freedoms and rights.
The current Biden administration must continue undoing the faulty foreign policies left by the preceding government. It should reassert its presence in regions where China has begun to exert its influence, such as Myanmar that had recently undergone a coup d’etat and whose current military establishment has historically close ties to China. Concurrently, the Chinese refused to denounce the coup and ultimately led to the demise of a United Nations Security Council joint statement on the events that had transpired. With the rise of authoritarianism itself in the West, the United States and the European Union must act to correct the injustices to the rule of law and human rights and uphold the values that it has continuously stood for before the corruption of authoritarian rogue states challenges the survival of their very own way of life.
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