MUNICH — An intensifying competition between the United States and China will divide the world into “a new bipolar order,” the European Union’s top diplomat predicted.
“There will be a new bipolar order between the U.S. and China — which, of course, will not cover the entirety of international relations, but it will play an integral role,” Josep Borrell, a Spanish politician who leads the EU’s diplomatic corps, told the Munich Security Conference on Sunday.
That assessment contains a partial echo of American warnings that China is waging “a cold war” against the U.S. that represents a far-reaching threat to all Western democracies. And yet, Borrell declined to call for European allies to close ranks with Washington in a worsening rivalry with Beijing.
“Europe must be vigilant here,” Borrell said. “Europe must not be caught in the middle between this bipolar order.”
Those comments are likely to disappoint U.S. officials, who have been working to rally European allies to deter prospective threats from the rising Communist power.
“Our collective future may hang in the balance if we fail to make the hard choices now for the long run,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper told the conference attendees in a Friday morning speech.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg struck a different note than Borrell by arguing that China’s growing power and capacity to endanger American interests should only make U.S. officials value European allies even more.
“If the United States is concerned about China, the size and rise of China, then it’s even more important to maintain NATO — to keep your friends and allies close,” Stoltenberg, the civilian chief of the transatlantic security bloc, said in a televised interview Saturday on the sidelines of the conference. “Because together with Europe and Canada, we represent 50 percent of the world’s military might and 50% of the world’s economy, so together we are strong.”
And yet, U.S. officials have struggled to persuade European allies that China’s telecommunications companies “are Trojan horses for Chinese intelligence,” as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put it on Friday. European allies especially chafe at Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and renewal of economic sanctions on Tehran, because they believe the agreement defused a nuclear crisis.
“We need cooperation with the U.S., but, of course, we have to respond when the U.S. takes positions that do not correspond with our interests or our values,” Borrell said. “If your friend does something that hurts you, then, of course, you are going to ask them to correct that measure.”
