Europe Must Choose Between America and China

No one doubts at this point President Donald Trump’s intention to tear down the international economic system that the United States has fostered since the end of the second world war. The confusion is about what might replace it. Comments from the Trump administration have offered some clues as to the potential contours of a new US-led economic and security alliance, but the biggest of open questions concerns Europe. 

In February, secretary of state Marco Rubio gave an answer that provides the best starting point for understanding the Trump administration’s actions. “It’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power,” he observed. “That was an anomaly. It was a product of the end of the cold war, but eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multi-polar world.”

 This belief that American hegemony has ended is foundational to the “New Right” view that has become increasingly influential in Washington. As Elbridge Colby, who was confirmed this week as the Pentagon’s policy chief, wrote in 2021: “For the last generation, one nation has wielded unmatched military power [and] bent the international financial system to its will.” For its allies, “America’s tutelage was easy, its burden light — certainly compared to history’s other real or aspiring hegemons. Those days have come to an end.”

In the new multi-polar world that would supplant the “liberal world order” of the post-cold war decades, the US would lead an economic and security alliance anchored by the major market democracies, while conceding to China a sphere of its own. Participation in the US-led bloc would require compliance with certain demands, chief among them balanced trade, with no country running a large surplus or deficit at the expense of the others; each member taking the lead in providing for its own security; and a joint commitment to exclude China from their markets.