“Today we are in one era, and tomorrow we will be in another,” US President Donald Trump solemnly declared in the White House Rose Garden after raising US tariffs to their highest level since 1909. “Nobody has ever done anything like this!”
Incorrect.
On October 1, 1949, Chairman Mao, speaking from Tiananmen Square (the gate of the Forbidden City in Beijing), declared China’s “Liberation Day.” From that moment on, the Chinese Communist Party divided the 20th century into two eras: “before liberation,” under Chiang Kai-shek, and “after liberation,” under Mao Zedong, who plunged China into a thirty-year period of political and economic chaos. The “Liberation Day” now being proclaimed by Trump threatens similar chaos and upheaval—but on a global scale.
For Europeans, the situation resembles the sudden disappearance of the sun: the geopolitical system has lost its cohesion and predictability, as if planets have been thrown out of their orbits. Europeans have relied on the Americans, even though they have sometimes looked down on them for their rudeness and naivety - but now they are left to their own devices, gravity has disappeared, and they must face a US leader who is unparalleled in his indignity and ignorance.
With the old geopolitical order dismantled, China and Russia are poised to fill the vacuum by creating their own version of order. However, one of these countries is a former Marxist-Leninist regime, armed with vast amounts of military hardware, territory, and natural resources, but with an economy smaller than even Canada’s. The other is a rejuvenated Leninist one-party state with a huge economy, an intolerant leader, and a major global technology hub. Does Europe really want the world to become a haven for authoritarian regimes?
Europe must not be “a heap of loose sand,” as Sun Yat-sen described China after the dynastic period. It must not only strengthen its own defense industry, but also gradually rebuild a democratic world order. Europe, in fact, has important resources that it could share with others. There is the Franco-British nuclear arsenal that could serve as an umbrella of deterrence for the entire continent; there are German weapons manufacturers like Rheinmetall; Ukrainian experts in unmanned technologies; Britain’s BAE, France’s Airbus, and the Netherlands’ ASML – which has a monopoly on extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) technology, essential for producing the most advanced microchips.
Europe, however, is yet to move towards the alliance structure that the United States has abandoned. By establishing contacts with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Australia, Europeans would send a message to the Chinese that a world without US leadership is not necessarily a world to their liking.
Given Trump's hostility to NATO, Europeans and Asians who value democracy and world order should become aware of the dangers of their military dependence on the United States and economic dependence on China - and begin to build new partnerships among themselves and with like-minded states. The perennially dissatisfied India is likely to agree and may also become a willing partner.
Such a new structure is reminiscent of what Charles de Gaulle once proposed for France. In the 1950s, after France joined NATO, de Gaulle feared that the United States might not come to the defense of Europe in the event of a Soviet attack. He even openly told the Americans that he doubted they would ever sacrifice New York to protect Paris.
He eventually created his own French nuclear force (force de frappe), and in 1966 he left the military structure of NATO (although France remained a member of the alliance). Many at the time considered his move a mere whim. But today his logic suddenly seems prophetic.
Through negotiations, dialogue, trade agreements, cultural exchanges, and people-to-people diplomacy—which have been the common practices of the European Union’s foreign policy in recent decades—people like Chinese President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot change. They are not looking for partners to ensure global peace and stability; they want to replace the United States at the helm of the world order, and then change that order itself.
Mao once declared that “without destruction there can be no construction,” and there is truth in those words. Trump is also an agent of destruction; but, if Europe rises to the occasion, Trump could, paradoxically, become – despite himself (malgré lui) – an agent of creation, the midwife of a new world order without America at its center.
However, Europeans must not forget that the US has already been implementing a soft strategy of rapprochement not only with post-Soviet Russia, but also with China: since 1972, ten US presidents (including the first Trump administration) have supported various versions of “interactions” with the government in Beijing.
All these attempts have unfortunately failed because the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party still believes that America is fundamentally determined to overthrow one-party rule - no matter what American presidents say. In China, it is regularly recalled that in 1953, under President Dwight Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said that "liberation" from Soviet rule could best be achieved "through processes that do not require war" but rather through peaceful "internal pressure... that will change the nature of communist regimes."
In 1958, Dulles advised American diplomats to “accelerate the evolution within the Sino-Soviet bloc” through peaceful means. Mao was wary of what he called “peaceful evolution.” He considered it “a much more insidious tactic” than open war, as its goal was to destroy and then overthrow the communist system in China.
Xi Jinping similarly sees the United States - as a perpetual "hostile foreign power." Therefore, Europeans must have no illusions about China. The best guarantee of peace in a world where authoritarianism is growing is a policy of deterrence - through military force, strong alliances, and economic influence.
Given that the US no longer wants to lead the democratic world, Europe must take on that role. And no one else can do that.
The author is the director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025. (translation: NR)
Bonus video:
