The EU has never been able to properly articulate what “systemic rival” means. If the label was designed to please Washington and stress an ideological camaraderie, then the EU was barking up the wrong tree – then-president Donald Trump seemed to hold no truck with ideology and clearly disliked the EU. And if the label was designed to restrain China in the hope of bargaining for some benefit, it has failed miserably there too, because China loathes an ideological war.
In theory, the “systemic rival” strategy should have found better purchase with the post-Trump administration of Joe Biden, which seems obsessed with Cold War bloc politics.
But in reality, with Europe facing a hot war (in Ukraine), a brewing cold war (between the US and China) and a potential crisis in the Taiwan Strait that could disrupt world trade and the economy, the “systemic rival” strategy has become totally unsustainable. It contributes to neither regional stability nor world peace.
Read the full commentary in the South China Morning Post
Originally published in the South China Morning Post
Grand Strategy
The EU has never been able to properly articulate what “systemic rival” means. If the label was designed to please Washington and stress an ideological camaraderie, then the EU was barking up the wrong tree – then-president Donald Trump seemed to hold no truck with ideology and clearly disliked the EU. And if the label was designed to restrain China in the hope of bargaining for some benefit, it has failed miserably there too, because China loathes an ideological war.
In theory, the “systemic rival” strategy should have found better purchase with the post-Trump administration of Joe Biden, which seems obsessed with Cold War bloc politics.
But in reality, with Europe facing a hot war (in Ukraine), a brewing cold war (between the US and China) and a potential crisis in the Taiwan Strait that could disrupt world trade and the economy, the “systemic rival” strategy has become totally unsustainable. It contributes to neither regional stability nor world peace.
Read the full commentary in the South China Morning Post
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