When we look at the world around us, it is striking to observe how the foreign policies of many powers seem to be inspired by a keen awareness of their possible decline. Their diplomacy is then guided by the unshakable will to rediscover a bygone greatness, to reclaim a lost power.
This is the case with the new Sultan Erdogan, whose every chin stroke is part of the nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire. In Beijing, Xi Jinping also seeks in the past glory of imperial China, but above all in the trauma of the “century of humiliation”, during which the European powers tore up the declining empire of the Qing, the resources for China to once again become the center of the world. As for Putin’s Russia, the ever-increasing threats it poses to Europe, and in the first place to Ukraine, find their source in large part in what was perceived in Moscow as the profound humiliation of the 1990s. A decade in which Russia felt it was losing its great power status.
Jérémie Gallon, specialist in European issues.
Krystal Kenney
This Europe that comes out of History
Over the past decades, we Europeans have also been confronted with many symptoms of our own decline. On the geopolitical level, the Syrian crisis, the recent war in Nagorno-Karabakh or the terrible withdrawal from Afghanistan are all tragedies that have cruelly reminded us of our impotence. But it is also on the technological and economic levels that our decline is observed. Thus, in 2020, while China and the United States accounted for 80% of global investments in artificial intelligence and blockchain, Europe’s share was only 7%. That same year, while the total CNRS budget was 3.5 billion euros, Amazon spent 38 billion euros on research and development. Wherever we look, Europe emerges from history. And she walks out.
However, the determination to see her become a major player again does not seem to be driving our current leaders – and that’s not because she would be electorally unpopular. Every day we see how the extremes play dangerously on the theme of decline in order to strengthen their electoral base.
tragic impotence
No, it is rather cowardice that seems to prevent our leaders from taking a lucid look at the current state of Europe. Looking at each other and judging each other with honesty, they would be too afraid of being sued for defeatism or lack of patriotism.
Above all, it is much easier for our leaders to get lost in a European diplomacy that claims to be imbued with morality and idealism. Because they multiply outraged statements to condemn human rights violations and crimes committed by leaders against their peoples, European leaders pride themselves on having fulfilled their moral contract. But they lie to themselves. Through its tragic impotence, our foreign policy, the foreign policy of Europe, is becoming amoral.
The worst is that many of them seem resigned to European decline. While the most ambitious are content to wish for a form of limited independence from Washington and Beijing, many European politicians resolve to live in the shadow of one of the two superpowers. At most they seek to avoid being the victim of a new cold war between the United States and China.
Defend our interests
But if Europe wants to write history again, then it has no choice but to look at itself with lucidity. Not to wallow in nostalgia for a lost greatness or a mythologized past as so many extremes do, but to find the resources and the will to once again become a power capable of defending its interests and transmitting to future generations its values and this heritage of humanism, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment which makes us Europeans so different from the rest of the world.
*Jérémie Gallon is Managing Director for Europe of the geopolitical consulting firm McLarty Associates. He teaches international issues at Sciences Po and has just published Henry Kissinger. The European (Gallimard).