GORDON CHANG: Appeasing China won’t save Europe — Trump’s hard power just might

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz plans a trip to China early this year, probably in late February. So does British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose government just surrendered to Beijing by greenlighting the “mega embassy,” thus assuring the visit will go forward. French President Emmanuel Macron and wife traveled to the Chinese capital at the beginning of December.

Europe is desperately looking to China, to achieve elusive goals of trade and security. Unfortunately, there is, as Margaget Thatcher once said, “the stench of appeasement” in the air. European leaders are absolutely determined to placate the Chinese, no matter what Beijing does to impoverish Europeans and endanger their homelands.

At the same time, the decline in support for the U.S. across Europe has been, as Mark Leonard, director and co-founder of the European Council on Foreign Relations, points out, “precipitous across the continent.”

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“Europeans,” writes Leonard, “have already realized Washington is more foe than friend.”

Foe? Europeans are now focused on President Donald Trump’s brazen demands to annex Greenland, a territory of Denmark. His implied threats to use force — “one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland,” he told reporters this month — and tariff threats of course alienate Europe, but Europe’s leaders are not keeping their eyes on what’s important.

In fact, they just do not get Trump.

As an initial matter, they should be criticizing themselves for ignoring the real threat: China’s and Russia’s militaries were openly threatening to dominate the Arctic with frequent and aggressive air and sea patrols. China, in addition, is installing its own infrastructure of satellite ground stations and fiber-optic cable in the region, part of its Polar Silk Road and Digital Silk Road initiatives.

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Trump has been right in noting that Greenland’s defense now consists of “two dog sleds.”

NATO countries — France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium— are now sending military personnel to the world’s largest island. Yes, these tiny deployments are apparently intended to prevent Trump from invading, but he is getting them to take Greenland’s defense seriously, long neglected by both Denmark and NATO.

More broadly, the American president has been good for Europe, shaking it out of an almost terminal slumber. Even after two Russian invasions of Ukraine, European leaders were having trouble stirring themselves into necessary action.

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As NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte last month declared, Trump has been good for the Atlantic Alliance, calling the recent pledge of member countries to spend at least 5% of their economic output on defense the American president’s “biggest foreign policy success.” He also said NATO was “stronger than it ever was” and that the American president “is good news” for both collective defense in general and for NATO in particular.

Europeans are understandably irate by Trump’s abrasive tactics, but they didn’t budge when previous American presidents, including Trump himself in his first term, used only soft words to get them to up absolutely necessary defense spending.

Trump’s second-term actions, therefore, were needed. And although Europe, in its stupor, had essentially abandoned itself, Trump has the best of intentions. His National Security Strategy, released last month, makes this crucial point: “We will need a strong Europe to help us successfully compete, and to work in concert with us to prevent any adversary from dominating Europe.”

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At the moment, Europeans are reacting emotionally. “The rules-based order is giving way to a world of spheres of influence, where might makes right and the West is split from within,” wrote Leonard.

Leonard and others are not paying attention. Trump does believe that foreign powers should stay out of the Western Hemisphere — the “Donroe Doctrine,” as it is now called — but he does not believe either Russia in Europe or China in Asia should have their spheres. Trump’s short and easy-to-read strategy document makes that clear.

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The National Security Strategy prioritizes regions, with Europe coming in third behind the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific. Whatever one thinks of Trump’s division of the world — I don’t think the world, with China and Russia challenging America across-the-board, can now be broken up that way — Europe is still seen as a power controlling its own destiny.

Leonard, also author of Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail, correctly points out that the rules-based order is dead or dying. Many in Europe, including Leonard, blame Trump, but here they are wrong. China and Russia killed the rules-based order throughout this century, with, among many other things, the invasions of Ukraine.

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Americans and Europeans, trying to accommodate Beijing and Moscow, refused to defend that order when they had the chance. Trump, to his credit, is taking the world as it is. He is using American power to secure America.

By doing so, he is making the world safe for Europe too.

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