gros129_Thierry Monassepicture alliance via Getty Images_ursulavonderleyenEU

What EU “Geopolitical” Power Will Cost

Dec 6, 2019 Daniel Gros

Ursula Von der Leyen, the new president of the European Commission, has promised to position the European Union as a geopolitical power that is capable of holding its own against the United States and a rising China. But the EU may come to regret any attempt to parlay its economic strength into geopolitical clout.

LONDON – With former German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen assuming the presidency of the European Commission, the European Union now has a new executive. Von der Leyen has promised to lead a “geopolitical” Commission, believing that Europe needs to be more assertive in its relations with other countries, and more hard-nosed in pursuing its own interests around the world, particularly vis-à-vis the other large powers.

Because the EU lacks an army or a central secret service, it must use economic policies to achieve its geopolitical aims. But the way Europe’s policy toolkit works in practice suggests that it is not well suited for exercising power abroad.

The EU’s most important policy tool is trade, which is one of the few areas where the bloc acts as one. The EU has traditionally run its trade policy along conventional commercial lines, with the goal of maximizing market access for European exporters and protecting certain domestic sectors (particularly agriculture). Could this policy be tweaked for geopolitical purposes?

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David Altman Dec 10, 2019

If one reads the comments below, it is crystal clear that the EU will continue depending on the U.S. (directly or through U.S.-led organizations such as NATO) for military/paramilitary, intelligence and geopolitical "hard" power. The E.U. and the U.S. are therefore "entangled" in geopolitical goals and means. And the (open but unspoken) goal of the Western Alliance will be the containment of and "Geo-Superiority" over China in the next century--or until China reforms into a recognizably democratic and capitalist polity. David J. Altman
- Jack kessler Dec 10, 2019
  
  Your comment mis-understands the modern US, I think, David... as many Europeans also do now...
  
  We are become a very large & very populous & very wealthy country, bigger & more crowded & more opulent than any of us ever thought we’d be — from our origins to as late as my own 1950s childhood we Americans were raised on “small town” & “frontier” & “self-reliance” myths all changed utterly since, my own children’s 1990’s childhoods left them and their entire generation thinking very differently, on these and other matters, & both here and in Asia the old TV & Hollywood caricatures of “Americans” no longer hold.
  
  Also the enormous US is extremely varied, now: no longer are we run by tiny East Coast urban male elites, as we were for so long — and although we’ve always been immigrants, all of us, with concerns about & sensitivities to those problems, it has been many years since we’ve had immigration waves from Europe — our new-arrivals now come from Latin America, and Asia.
  
  Here on the West Coast we do business with Latin America, and Asia — our children attend schools public and private which teach Spanish or Chinese, not French or German or Italian as before — how far these new influences permeate into the rest of the US is hard to judge, but our global cities such as Chicago & New York & Boston feel them, our US education & health establishments do, our restaurants... well, let’s just say that sauerkraut is “out” and pho is “in... it’s a very new & different USA now...
  
  So Europeans who peer at things over here now are distressed. Among many friends who tour and comment there no longer is the certainty that power support in any form, hard or soft, may easily be obtained from our far away and distracted nation so enmeshed in Korean & Chinese & South China Sea theaters... and investing in Sarawak & doing l.n.g. in Kalimantan... opening markets in Bishkek... fussing over Chinese inroads in the Hindu Kush and Gwalior... Our latter-day Tocquevilles quickly see that US agendas have changed — they may participate themselves, that is open-season, but the days are gone when all US eyes were focused narrowly on, & only, London & Paris & Berlin. The EU is a welcome “ally”, as always, but nowadays “dependency” must be mutual. Such anyway is the emerging USA concern & interest: somewhere out near Arkansas it may shift back toward Europe, but even New York & Boston are besotted with Asia now... and certainly DC is... & others out east...
  
  n.b. For comparative trade figures look at trends not histories: Asia now threatens European dominance there after only 20 years of trying — Asia trade with the US was zero in 1950, remember, while Europe has had hundreds of years to build — it’s been a phenomenal change-over, one we the US worked very hard to help them accomplish...
  - David Altman Dec 11, 2019
    
    Mr. Kessler,
    I believe you might have mistaken my origins and viewpoint. To clarify, I am a first generation American (citizen), whose Russian parents emigrated/escaped the covertly decaying and disintegrating U.S.S.R. of the 1970s in favor of the American Midwest. Eventually, smelling gold on the wind, my parents moved to the "Golden State" (i.e. California) just in time to catch the "Reaganomic" boom.
    
    Given my age and background, I have simultaneously been an intensely proud American and (through my parents' viewpoint) a calculating sometime critic and sometime admirer of this great nation.
    
    The views expressed above by me are not based on nostalgia or outdated information, but rather on a cold assessment of the current and near-future geopolitical landscape.
    
    It is a fact that the U.S. and China are already in an intense game of geopolitical supremacy. It is a fact that the Chinese elite understood this for decades, while our policy elite only congealed around their understanding in the last decade. It is a fact that the E.U. has only just finally come to the same conclusion. It is a fact that the E.U. and (more importantly) NATO have finally identified China as a geopolitical opponent (not just a mere "rival") and are now in the process of determining how to combat that threat.
    
    My personal read is that President Trump accomplished what any U.S. President, of any mainstream political party or geopolitical academic tradition, would have attempted: (1) Require that the E.U. and all of its individual nations openly conclude that China is a threat and the U.S. an ally, (2) Require E.U. (and non-E.U.) allies (such as Japan, South Korea, Israel and increasingly India) start marshaling and allocating Cold War-level resources (minimum 2% of GDP and increasing) to military, intelligence and techno-scientific capacity, (3) Recognize that the U.S. (given its historic and current pivotal role in the military and intelligence dimension of the Western Alliance) would continue to assume both the disproportionate burdens and benefits of leading and anchoring the "Western Alliance" (an inapt euphemism given the inclusion of Japan, South Korea, Israel and possibly questionable India [forever unsuccessfully trying to claim a "non-aligned" status that does not de facto exist in the reality of a ruthlessly bipolar world] and [a pointlessly neo-Ottoman] Turkey) but could not (literally) afford to do so in the manner it had during the peer competition with the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact. China is simply far too "large" (e.g. in terms of a billion-person ethnic [i.e. "Han"] population that includes tens of millions of Chinese that are partially or completely integrated within their resident societies [e.g. Malaysia, Philippines and the United States], economic capacity and global integration, near-peer/peer technological development) for the United States to single-handedly out-compete. The Western Alliance will require a more distributed and evenhanded burden-sharing agreement.
    
    Certainly, it appears that Germany wants to free-ride on the Western Alliance's security, while optimizing its individual benefits by strategic deals with Russia and China. France desires "strategic independence." Scandinavia wants to remain "neutral." Policy elites in India are fragmented between those who want ("dream" is probably a more accurate word) of an alliance with (an intensely nationalistic) China (which dreams of restoring China to its "rightful place" as the Middle Kingdom and exalts Han Chinese as ancient and prototypical "Civilized Man"). The willful naivete and outright state of psychological denial in this faction of the Indian academic-political class is disturbing to behold. China has made it abundantly clear that it is focused like a laser-beam on restoring China to a fabled golden age of ultimate supremacy in which the Chinese nation (both the cultural polity and the Han ethnicity) is universally and compulsorily acknowledged as supreme. This "China Dream" has utterly no use for a "partnership of equals" with India or Indians.
    
    There is also that peculiar Indian desire to remain "non-aligned." The rhetoric of this faction suggests that by refusing to choose sides, India will gain double the benefits, as each side zealously courts India into their camp. In reality, Game Theory correctly predicted and seventy years of history has clearly shown that when India declared its non-aligned status, the Great Powers (of that era, the Soviet Union and United States, respectively) simply ignored India as a largely useless and inconsequential polity in the (Communist) East-(Capitalist) West rivalry. In short, India received a fraction of the resources it might have commanded if it had chosen a side--any side--but especially the U.S. side. India is now mulling making the exact same mistake! It is safe to say that eventually--*eventually*--India will become an important, top-rank power. Yet, among the greatest India-enthusiasts, the consensus is that India is at least five decades from such an exalted position. Yet, many Indian politicians and diplomats seem to want to leverage a possibility that will not occur in their own lifetimes to demand a seat for India at the top-table today. They only make themselves seem ridiculous.
    
    Turkey. Turkey is not a power that can stand alone, as a Great Britain, Germany and/or Russia (not to mention China and the U.S.) can. As recently shown, Turkey lacks a native defense industry that can support its military. Turkey must buy its cutting-edge technology defense needs from others. As matters now stand, Turkey is a NATO member in name only. For somewhat baffling reasons, it has alienated itself from fellow NATO members. Instead, Turkey appears to be pursuing a somewhat incoherent push-pull strategy with Russia. Russia's rivalry with the Ottomans is centuries old and blood deep, and the Ottomans re-branding as the Republic of Turkey means very little in Moscow. Yet, the Islamist, neo-Ottomans are attempting to just barely stay within the NATO alliance, while pursuing an openly self-interested agenda that clashes with NATO, and especially U.S., goals. The neo-Ottoman vision itself is . . . bizarre. The Arab countries will NEVER voluntarily submit to a Turkish yoke. Indeed, Arabs will pursue self-harming policies just to spite Turkish neo-Ottoman ambitions. Conversely, Sultan Erdogan cannot possibly imagine regaining any part of the Seljuk or Ottoman lands by force as that path would certainly lead to expulsion from NATO and an eventual military defeat by some combination of Arabs, alarmed Persians (i.e. Iranians), Russia, Armenia and perhaps even Israel. Neo-Ottomanism seems to either be a domestic propaganda tool or a plan leading to geopolitical disaster.
    
    My belief is that the potential pitfalls to the Western Alliance described above will be addressed, one by one, as they have been before. It will take decades, likely, and be at constant risk of unraveling, as always, but the Alliance will hold together and work because, ultimately, there is no other acceptable option. None of these nations, from the U.S. at the top (in terms of geopolitical power) down to the Principality of Lichtenstein desires to be relegated to subordinate barbarian fiefdoms required to pay yearly homage to the ruler(s) of the Middle Kingdom in Beijing.
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Henk Crop Dec 9, 2019

They are not able to handle the challenges in the EU, so the Brussels elite figured they should go and address the challenges of the whole World.
Nice overseas trips where they are not bothered by press, voters or politicians at home.
However when they return home they will find a troubled EU.
The EEC did well, but the attempt to build a Superstate (the EU) and the reckless introduction of the Euro have hurt Europe badly.
In the period 2009 - 2017 the Eurozone economy declined by 2,4 %. While the economies of the US increased by 39 %, and China 139 %.
They have taken more than 30 years to close the external EU border, which should have been done the day Schengen was approved.
We have had the Greek crises, the Euro crises, the refugee crises and the Brexit.
One of the first visits of mrs. von der Leyen was to the African Union. However she should have visited the slums in the European cities. The loss of cohesion. The alienation, The increasing crime, the etnic gangs and rapidly increasing drug trade. It has often gone beyond the control of the Police
This has all been the result of EU policies over the past 20 years.
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Bernhard Kopp Dec 9, 2019

Mrs. von der Leyen is a " high-class, multilingual busy-buddy ". She can make plans and announcements, and present them eloquently with charme, passion and sparkling eyes. But, unfortunately, nothing has ever worked.
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Giulio M Girardelli Dec 9, 2019

The EU needs to become a geopolitical power because it must uphold and defend the values that created it, namely those of tolerance, peace, personal liberty coupled with a social state. These values are the most important thing, much more so than the breaking of rules on economic openness always and at every cost.
This defense of unfettered openness is the very reason why the EU lacks political legitimacy and cannot exert political influence. As long as Europeans put the economy and rules of openness above everything else, the Union will remain an economic union but no political union. It’s time to leave this reality behind.
- David Altman Dec 10, 2019
  
  Mr. Girardelli,
  With all respect, you are preaching an ideal with no constituency. Is there any will in the E.U. to put six million men in uniform ("kit"), build trillions of Euros in bases and equipment and create a military-industrial-technological complex equal to one tenth of the economy? Today, Germans (the "heart of Europe") poll as utterly rejecting assisting any other European nation in a war--while simultaneously expecting to be protected by others (mostly the U.S.) That is today's reality!
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- Henk Crop Dec 9, 2019
  
  Gulio. These important values were not invented by the EU. They developed during the Enlightment, some 400 years ago in North Western Europe (England, the Netherlands). People had lived for hundreds of years ruled by King and Church. but they began to see that they could think for themselves. Instead of serving the King and Church, and following their ruling. The Enlightment curtailed the influence of both and provided the basis for democracy and later the Industrial Revolution. They demanded that Kings serve their citizen.
  Countries who embraced the values of the Enlightment in the past did economically very well: Britian, the Netherlands and the USA. There is no inconsisteny between values and economic performance.
  The EU, with their ambition to centralize and rule the citizen, is developing itself as an autocratic medieval Church / Kingdom.
  The Brexit is perhaps more a clash of cultures than a political event.
  - Ivana Petrovic Dec 10, 2019
    
    "Countries who embraced the values of the Enlightenment in the past did economically very well: Britain, the Netherlands and the USA. " coincidentally the same countries who embraced (pioneered) the values of colonialism (and occasional slavery)...
    - Henk Crop Dec 11, 2019
      
      Ivana. David Altman put it right. I think colonisation and slavery existed a long time ago and was conducted by the Greeks, the Romans, the Turks and Arabs.
      The Romans even occupied most of western Europe.
      However what is remarkable is that over these thousands of years, only in the 19 th century, in Britain, the USA and later in the Netherlands men (white) took steps to abolish slavery and later colonisation.
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    - David Altman Dec 10, 2019
      
      Your premise is entirely incorrect. Great Britain, the Netherlands and the United States (the "Later Powers") certainly did not pioneer Western Colonialism or slavery. Rather, (current geopolitically insignificant) Portugal and Spain were the inventors and cruelest practitioners of these despicable systems. The Later Powers, especially Britain and the U.S., paid the vast price (in oceans of blood and mountains of treasure) to destroy slavery and European colonialism.
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  - Giulio M Girardelli Dec 10, 2019
    
    Henk. Nobody said these values were “invented by the EU” (please read my reply more carefully). What I said was that the EEC was born out of the need to preserve peace, individual and civic liberties at the continental level. In this sense, economic integration was only a means to an end. Instead, since then economic openness and unfettered capital liberty has become the overarching goal. Herein lies the barrier for the EU to become a geopolitical actor.
    The EU must become a political actor (what you term “superstate” in derogatory term) because in this way it will be able to project its values (arising from an experience that is different from that of the US, for instance) at the international level and offer a third way between an US that returns to its traditional isolationist stance and expansionists and authoritarian China/Russia. This is the only way for the small European countries to exert influence at the international level. If not they will succumb to the economic orthodoxy of the US with its fear of anything “social” or succumb to the authoritarian and undemocratic ways of China.
    That Brexit is a matter of culture is exactly the lie that has been said over and over again. But if you look at eu policies in every domain beyond agriculture, these have been economically very liberal (much more so than what I think is optimal - unfettered capitalism hasn’t brought the world to a good place). You mention European slums in your other comment. These slums are certainly not the result of a “superstate” per se, but rather what this superstate has prescribed, ie. economically orthodox policies.
    - Henk Crop Dec 10, 2019
      
      Gulio. Diverse as it is Europe should have remained the market organisation it once was, the EEC. Then it could also have preserved its values.
      The step from EEC to EU has proven to be a bridge too far. With their sky high ambitions ( the Superstate ) a bureaucratic monster has developed, unable to govern.
      This has been amply demonstrated by the many failures that were made over the past 20 years and the low performance. An open economy is good but I agree with you that some more control could have been applied.
      The slums in the big cities are caused by uncontrolled mass migration and by the inability to deport or detain illegal migrants. The EU has taken away from authorities the means to run their city or country, this leads to crime and economic damage.
      When I read the ideas of mrs. von der Leyen I am afraid it is not going to be any better.
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Ivana Petrovic Dec 9, 2019

EU already turned most of the peripheral countries, especially in the Balkans into de-facto banana republics. Its interests in stability at its outer borders completely overshadowed any regard for good governance. EU is not risking to but already for decades "propping up corrupt elites who have done nothing to foster development." "Better connectivity in goods, services, capital, and people along the EU periphery" already exists and it already drained the Balkans' countries of both human and financial capital. In the end, it is extremely cynical to suggest that there is no point to invest EU money in "roads to nowhere". The peripheral economies are weak and corrupt in large part thanks to EU and its disregard to its principles not in spite of its best efforts. In the end, resentment is already there.
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Jack kessler Dec 8, 2019

Europe’s difficulty, I believe, lies not in the lack of economic weight which Von der Leyen wants to redress, but in its lack of political legitimacy to enforce that and other measures. Since the EU’s creation that has been its crippling disadvantage, per Kissinger’s famous comment, “If I want to call ‘Europe’, who do I call?” Von der Leyden needs to address this: with proper unity of purpose she and other EU leaders can use their enormous economic weight — but if they then show the political disunity they have shown in the past, over olives for example, that economics will fail. Nations need both efficacy and validity, Kelsen said, and validity comes from sound & solid politics. Business & policy partners need to know who to call, and need that person to be efficient and reliable, when they call “Europe”.
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j. von Hettlingen Dec 7, 2019

Daniel Gros warns against the ambition the new EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen harbours. He says her promise to lead a “geopolitical” Commission, and a Europe that “needs to be more assertive” on the global stage, and “more hard-nosed in pursuing its own interests” across the globe, especially in dealing with world powers, like the US and China, would not be a wise idea, and the EU “may come to regret any attempt to parlay its economic strength into geopolitical clout.”
It is unclear whether she would want flex the EU’s “geopolitical” muscles. While her foreign policy priorities have so far been less clear, her ambition will focus mainly on battling climate change, an “existential” issue which is “about all of us. We have the duty to act and the power to lead.” She said she would work on “a European Green Deal” so the EU can continue to be a global leader in this domain, and come forward with a comprehensive plan within the first 100 days of her tenure.
The author says, as the EU “lacks an army or a central secret service, it must use economic policies to achieve its geopolitical aims. But the way Europe’s policy toolkit works in practice suggests that it is not well suited for exercising power abroad.” Given the division within the EU, he sees trade as “one of the few areas” that unite all member states. He urges the Commision to centre around trade and use it as the EU’s “most important policy tool.”
Von der Leyen sais that issues like limate change, digitalisation, the economy, Brexit, security, trade, migration are on top of her new agenda. In her first week at work she travelled to Madrid and attended the climate summit. Later she travelled to Africa, making her first official trip outside the EU, which is a major trading partner with, and aid donor to, African countries. The move shows the EU’s increased focus on the continent.
While climate change and Africa are two of her key priorities over the next five years, the author says, instead of “maximizing market access for European exporters and protecting certain domestic sectors,” the EU should open “its markets to agricultural imports from northern Africa, to foster growth in that struggling region and stanch the flow of economic migrants into Europe. It must also overcome opposition from Italian, Spanish, and other olive growers that has blocked this option.”
Von der Leyen vowed in her debut press conference to “define” the bloc’s future relationship with a “more self-assertive” China. It would build its relations with the US, and be a reliable neighbour to Africa, standing up for its values and world-class standards.
The author fears that China, by providing cheap finance for infrastructure projects across a wide range of countries, including some EU member states, is “gradually encroaching” on Europe’s periphery – like in the Balkans – with its “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). While the EU’s financing institutions – the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development – “generally counsel against such projects” in some remote areas in Europe, that are seen as a waste of money, China emerges as a white knight in the region.
Forget the military might projected by NATO and focus on trade and development aid , would be the EU’s best soft-power weapons. As the world’s fourth-largest aid donor, and its member states collectively spend three times more on aid, accounting for more than half of the OECD’s official development assistance. The author says, countries that receive the bulk of EU ODA – Pakistan, Syria, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Somalia – also tend to be the sources of the most migrants. The EU thus has a vital interest in helping these countries prosper, while demanding transparency and good governance.
In this regard, the EU has the potential to compete with China’s own financial institutions , whose development banks involved in the BRI, are viewed with suspicion, because of the fear of Beijing’s debt-trap diplomacy. The author says, in economic terms the EU is still of a comparable size to China or the US, “which is why it is tempting to think that its economic strength could be parlayed into geopolitical power. The EU would have to abandon some of its core principles to go down this road.” It remains to be seen whether it would be worth it. The best approach is to give von der Leyen time to prove herself. Only time can tell whether she will do a good job.
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Emanuel Müller Dec 7, 2019

Ursula Von der Leyen's self declared role includes protecting european values, thus the rule of law, property rights, human rights, women's rights, animals rights etc. As non western countries seem to fail to integrate properly those values and spawn immigrants deep inside the west that go on not integrating those values, Trump and Von der Leyen have the historical mission of creating a "fortress universal values" in the face of which european principles are nothing but replaceable tools.
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Emanuel Müller Dec 7, 2019

The West is somewhat embattled, with regarding the EU, black African migrants to the South, Russians and Chinese to the East and a few others. The natural thing to do is to turn the EU into a full blown geopolitical superpower allowing the creation if necessary further down the road of a transatlantic superstate, the world's first hyperpower.
- Jack kessler Dec 9, 2019
  
  “a full blown geopolitical superpower”: I doubt whether this would be possible, within our lifetimes — or desirable, ever, for Europe or any other — in fact the “superpower” concept itself is outdated, in the modern globalized world where national boundaries themselves are receding in importance and entities such as “USA” and “Russia” and “India” and “Europe” are less what they once were.
  
  See the Global Cities literature: increasingly the giant metropolitan areas around the world are where most of us live and work and think, and these have more in-common with one another than any of them do with their immediate hinterlands — a new geopolitics is emerging from this, very different from the old one established from maritime trade and ancient histories.
  
  So wait and see, before judging: think of Navi Mumbai and the gigantic New Jakarta and New Guangzhou Region, and London Region, Paris region, others — all that rapidly is becoming our “leading-nation” now, very well-integrated and inter-connected and importantly-different from all their respective hinterlands and countrysides, a new “rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem” or so it’s been portrayed by no less than Yeats & Didion & Wm. Gibson & increasing numbers of our better thinkers... all of them alarmed, but that’s futurism...
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Prashant Kotak Dec 6, 2019

Ah well, the words 'The EU' and 'Bananas' (bendy or straight) seem to have become enmeshed in my mind for some reason, from the early days of Johnson in Europe onwards. Synonymous almost. It's nice to have validation that the preoccupation with bananas is as strong even amongst those for whom the daily work of the EU is serious business.
- Jack kessler Dec 8, 2019
  
  “Bananas”, bendy or straight, enjoy a large influence through characterizing developing economies: here in the US, anyway, “banana-republic” is virtually a synonym for geopolitical despotism, and the dependency of poorer agricultural states upon other larger manufacturing and services-based nations. You don’t want to be, only, a seller of bananas, nor do you want to be dominated by giants such as the United Fruit Co. or the USA.
  - Prashant Kotak Dec 9, 2019
    
    '...here in the US, anyway, “banana-republic” is virtually a synonym for geopolitical despotism...'
    
    Indeed, and in fact 'Bananas' by Woody Allen is an old favorite of mine (yeah, I know, no one is allowed to admit they like Woody Allen movies anymore, but still). And in all honesty, I fully expect Von der Layen's first couple of policy diktats to be:
    "Hear me! I am your new president. From this day on, the official language of the EU will be Esperanto. In addition, all citizens will be required to wear green underwear. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check.”
    - Jack kessler Dec 10, 2019
      
      :-)
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