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111. Taking stock: Where are geopolitics headed in the COVID-19 era?

Author:
Jeffrey Cimmino, Matthew Kroenig, and Barry Pavel
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic is a strategic shock, and its almost immediate, damaging effects on the global economy constitute a secondary disruption to global order. Additional secondary strategic shocks (e.g., in the developing world) are looming. Together, these developments pose arguably the greatest threat to the global order since World War II. In the aftermath of that conflict, the United States and its allies established a rules-based international system that has guaranteed freedom, peace, and prosperity for decades. If the United States and its allies do not act effectively, the pandemic could upend this order. This issue brief considers the current state of the pandemic and how it has strained the global rules-based order over the past few months. First, it considers the origins of the novel coronavirus and how it spread around the world. Next, it examines how COVID-19 has exacerbated or created pressure points in the global order, highlights uncertainties ahead, and provides recommendations to the United States and its partners for shaping the post-COVID-19 world.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, NATO, Diplomacy, Politics, European Union, Economy, Business, Coronavirus, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Russia, China, South Asia, Eurasia, India, Taiwan, Asia, North America, Korea, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific

112. Asia Beyond China: Developing a European Indo-Pacific Strategy for a Changing Global Order

Author:
Luke Patey
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Much of Europe’s attention to Asia is currently being captured by China. However, if the European Union and its member states are serious about maintaining a rules-based global order and advancing multilateralism and connectivity, it should increase its work in building partnerships across Asia, particularly in the Indo-Pacific super-region. To save multilateralism, go to the Indo-Pacific. RECOMMENDATIONS: ■ Multilateralism first. Unpack and differentiate where the United States and China support the rules-based order and where not, but also look to new trade deals and security pacts with India and Southeast Asia partners. ■ Targeted connectivity. The EU should continue to offer support to existing regional infrastructure and connectivity initiatives. ■ Work in small groups. EU unanimity on China and Indo-Pacific policy is ideal, but not always necessary to get things done. ■ Asia specialists wanted. Invest in and develop career paths for Asia specialists in foreign and defence ministries and intelligence services.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Emerging Markets, International Organization, Science and Technology, Power Politics, and European Union
Political Geography:
China, Europe, and Asia

113. An Eastern Policy Update, but No Upgrade: The EU needs a more ambitious Eastern Partnership strategy

Author:
Cristina Gherasimov
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)
Abstract:
The EU is set to adopt a new Eastern Partnership (EaP) policy at a summit in June. This is strategically important for it and for its eastern neighborhood, where other powers like Russia and China pursue competing interests. As the policymaking process stands and given the tight deadline, however, the EU will only update and not upgrade the EaP framework due to EU states’ diverging interests. Brussels and Berlin will need to keep the EaP on the agenda after the summit to safeguard the EU’s transformative power in the region.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, European Union, and Partnerships
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, and Asia

114. Connectivity in Eurasia: Geopolitical Chances for the EU

Author:
Jacopo Maria Pepe
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)
Abstract:
As the coronavirus pandemic fuels technological and geopolitical competition among the great powers, Europe’s relations with China and Russia are facing new challenges and risks. Still, the reconfiguration of power in Eurasia also brings unexpected opportunities for European actors in the area of connectivity. To seize them, the EU needs to reconcile its aspiration to be a globally accepted “normative-regulatory” power with both its limited financial means and its more assertive attitude to geopolitics.
Topic:
Science and Technology, European Union, Geopolitics, Strategic Competition, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Eurasia, and Asia

115. European defence policy in an era of renewed great-power competition

Author:
Douglas Barrie, Lucie béraud-Sudreau, Henry Boyd, Nick Childs, Bastain Giegerich, James Hackett, and Meia Nouwens
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
In 2019, European governments’ combined defence spending, when measured in constant 2015 US dollar terms, surpassed the level reached in 2009, before the financial and economic crisis led to a series of significant defence-spending cuts. However, a different strategic paradigm – one that Europe is struggling to adjust to and which is once more a concern for European governments – has re-appeared in this past decade: great-power competition. Russia attempted to change international borders in Europe through the use of force in 2014 by annexing Crimea and continues to support an armed insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Moscow’s challenge to Euro-Atlantic security exists in multiple dimensions: as both a conventional military and also a hybrid-warfare issue, with Russia working to dislocate existing societal alignments and disrupt political processes in Western states. The poisoning of a former Russian intelligence officer (and of his daughter) in the United Kingdom, attributed by the British government to Russia, underlines further how much the character of conflict has changed. How to manage the challenge Russia poses without simply reverting to Cold War logic remains a worrying problem for governments in NATO and the European Union member states. Meanwhile, European security establishments are beginning to recognise the growing political, economic and military influence of a rising China. Although less of an immediate challenge, China’s growth in these areas has possible profound consequences in the long run. Indeed, in December 2019, NATO declared: ‘We recognise that China’s growing influence and international policies present both opportunities and challenges that we need to address together as an Alliance.’2 For the United States, China has already become the pacing military threat. The US Indo-Pacific Strategy Report, released in June 2019, opens with the assertion that ‘the Indo-Pacific is the Department of Defense’s priority theater’. In other words, the European theatre is not. European analysts and officials have begun to wonder whether the US might begin to see Europe through an Asian lens, seeking to generate European commitments to the Indo-Pacific region, or at the very least getting Europeans to take on greater responsibility for their own security and thereby freeing up US resources. Although there will be some elements of the US military presence in Europe that are indispensable to US military action in other regions of the world, that might not be enough to sustain Washington’s firm commitment to European security in the future, regardless of who occupies the White House. Significantly, not even the US has the capability to fight two major wars simultaneously any more, meaning binary choices regarding focus are inevitable. As some observers have argued, Europeans need to urgently assess what Washington’s choices in this regard – and their implications for Europe – might look like. Considering both how to deter Russia and what a European contribution to containing China might entail represents a major challenge for Western European nations, which have relegated defence to a secondary position, as almost a discretionary activity. European states partially demobilised in the 1990s and early 2000s, intellectually and in terms of their force structures, in response to the end of the Cold War. For example, according to IISS data, in 1990 West Germany alone was thought to be able to field 215 combat battalions and the UK 94. Today it is a fraction of that. However, security challenges relating to regional instability, crisis management and transnational terrorism – which all dominated the previous two decades – have not disappeared. On the contrary, all these still demand attention and the investment of European resources. While there is a growing recognition among Europe’s analytical community, and some governments, that things cannot simply continue as before in terms of regional security and defence, coherence and resolve among core actors in the Euro-Atlantic sphere have weakened. The US administration has intensified its call for better transatlantic burden sharing, at the same time displaying a cavalier attitude to the collective-defence commitment enshrined in NATO. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has also expressed severe doubts about the viability of NATO’s collective-defence mission. In addition, the British decision to leave the European Union in 2020 implies that the EU has lost one of its most militarily experienced and one of its most capable member states. There is a tendency among many observers and some politicians to argue that European NATO and EU member states need to clarify the political dimension of their defence ambition, via-à-vis greater strategic autonomy, before resolving the problem of how to meet this ambition militarily, at what cost and in what time frame. Indeed, at times, the debate about European strategic autonomy seems to focus more on the degree of independence from the US that its various proponents would like to achieve and less on the military requirement that autonomy is meant to respond to. It is now widely accepted across Europe that Europeans need ‘to do more’ for their own security and defence. Most of the intellectual energy allocated to this aspiration is spent on achieving better coordination – and even a level of integration – among European armed forces. This is useful, but only if it is directed at building capability to provide for the defence of Europe. The existing military capabilities of the European NATO member states fall short when compared to the force requirements generated by the political–military level of ambition as defined by NATO, or for that matter the EU.5 However, this should not be an excuse to lower the level of ambition, nor should the assumption that Europeans are unable to defend themselves be declared an inevitability. Defence output is the result of political, financial and military choices by governments. To think systematically about the challenge of providing capabilities that can meet Europe’s emerging military requirements, The International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Hanns Seidel Foundation convened a group of thinkers and practitioners from Germany and the UK. The group took seriously the US assertion that Europe needs to be able to provide for its own defence. If Europeans can achieve this, they will be valuable partners to the US in upholding and strengthening the liberal international order on which Euro-Atlantic prosperity and security depend. Meeting twice in 2019, the group discussed threat assessments, debated European capability gaps and scoped potential approaches to addressing them. The following pages draw on the group’s deliberations but do not represent a consensus position.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, Regional Cooperation, European Union, and Military Spending
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, North Atlantic, Asia, and North America

116. Stand by Me! The Sino-Russian Normative Partnership in Action

Author:
Alice Ekman, Sinikukka Saari, and Stanislav Secrieru
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
It has become commonplace to describe the relationship between China and Russia as ‘a marriage of convenience’,1 in particular in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea in 2014. However, this popular metaphor hides very different – even contradictory – interpretations of the nature and future of the relationship. Perhaps depending on one’s take on arranged marriages, the deepening relationship between these two states is seen as ‘stable and successful’2 and ‘durable’,3 or on the contrary, as a ‘mere’ convenient arrangement doomed to be a temporary solution.4 It seems that fuzzy and often misunderstood marriage allegories bring more confusion than clarity to understanding and explaining complex relations between states. Shared norms and worldview would certainly indicate a steady and long-term arrangement whatever the marriage metaphor used. The Sino-Russian partnership is dense and multidimensional, and it is rooted in shared norms. International norms – the standard of expected state behaviour – reflect the underlying values of the global system, and underpin international cooperation in the political, economic and security-related fields.Sino-Russian normative cooperation aims at redefining and re-interpreting existing international norms in a way that reflects their shared principles, worldviews and threat perceptions – ‘like-mindedness’ as Chinese official communication refers to it.5 Both China and Russia share a conviction that today's international order is unfairly dominated by the US and the West, and that the current international norms and their interpretation reflect Western values that should not be considered universal. They are both convinced that these need to be changed, and that the time is ripe for this. For Beijing and Moscow, a post-Western era of global governance looms on the horizon. This shared reading of the present and predilection for such a future global order has been translated into dynamically evolving normative cooperation between the partners at multilateral level. Two other important and shared convictions are, first, that neither party represents a threat to the other regime’s survival (and even has an interest in supporting the other regime) and, second, that the West would like to see the regime in both China and Russia challenged (and under the right circumstances is ready to contribute to this). The shared worldview and threat perception help to smooth out the differences between the two countries: when their interpretations differ, they show mutual self-restraint and acquiesce rather than go against each other in the name of national interest. This Brief examines the normative dimension of Sino-Russian cooperation – i.e. how the two countries advance their understanding of international rules and norms together in the international arena. It studies how the two countries advance their understanding of appropriate state behaviour internationally in three areas: human rights, non-intervention and cyber-governance. All three issues are united by a common thread – states’ sovereignty – a robust version of which both vigorously defend. As a result, in these three areas, their cooperation is particularly strong and proactive.
Topic:
Bilateral Relations, European Union, Partnerships, Geopolitics, and Norms
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Eurasia, and Asia

117. Remolding China’s ‘Empty’ Belt and Road Initiative: An Opportunity for the EU

Author:
Jasper Roctus
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
China’s controversial Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been subject to ample scrutiny since its inception in 2013. Practical results could be said to be severely lacking in contrast to the project’s ambitious plans. Chinese engagement abroad has irrefutably intensified since Xi Jinping assumed power in 2012, but whether this can be classified as the fruits of BRI remains unclear. China, in fact, is developing BRI on the go. That gives the EU an opportunity to engage with BRI and remold it into a more desirable form. Because China increasingly sees Europe as BRI’s “final destination”, the EU has a lot more leverage than it commonly assumes.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Infrastructure, Hegemony, European Union, and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
Political Geography:
China, Europe, and Asia

118. Promoting European strategic sovereignty in Asia

Author:
Janka Oertel and Andrew Small
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)
Abstract:
The continuing rise of China and the onset of the pandemic have made asserting European strategic sovereignty in Asia ever more complex and difficult. Both developments mean that economics, security, and technology issues in Asia are becoming ever more intertwined. On the one hand this leaves Europe exposed – its dependencies on China have grown, and the security framework that has enabled Europe’s burgeoning economic ties with the wider region is under strain. Yet as other Asian powers, and the United States under the new Biden administration, increasingly assess the emerging strategic competition through a geo-economic prism, Europe’s leverage and its opportunities for partnership have also grown. Europe should upgrade its security activities, and seize the moment to push multilateral institutions up the agenda. But it will be Europe’s connectivity agenda that provides the golden thread running through its foreign policy and its environmental, industrial, trade, development, values, and security objectives in the region.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, European Union, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Europe and Asia

119. Biden’s World? Views from the United States, China, Russia, and the European Union

Author:
Alexey Gromyko and Sven Biscop
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic prevented the annual joint seminars that since a few years the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Egmont – Royal Institute for International Relations organise in Moscow and Brussels. But the coronavirus cannot interrupt academic exchange; a dialogue that is more than ever necessary in a world of increasing tensions between the great powers. We continue our collaboration through this joint publication, therefore, for which we have invited prominent scholars from Russia and the European Union as well as China and the United States to share their analysis of the impact of Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential elections on international politics.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, International Cooperation, Military Strategy, European Union, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Asia, North America, and United States of America

120. Technology Strategies in China and the United States, and the Challenges for European Companies

Author:
Laurence Nardon
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI)
Abstract:
As international relations are increasingly reorganized around the US-China rivalry, the tensions between these two great powers are shaping a growing number of sectors, and the exchange of sensitive technologies in particular. This is a critical issue for European companies today. Indeed, European companies, as manufacturers, importers and exporters, risk finding themselves at the heart of the deepening technological competition opposing the United States and China (Éric-André Martin). The United States has a long history of using multiple regulatory instruments in managing the export of dual-use technologies, in particular towards China. Even beyond the Trump administration’s aggressive positions, these regulations are expanding and increasingly strict, hinting at a potential protectionist technological warfare (Pierre Girard). Despite China’s progress in innovation (5G, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things), and an expansion of measures meant to protect intellectual property rights both for domestic and foreign firms, Beijing’s predatory industrial practices and the weight of the Chinese Communist Party on the economy and society clearly live on (John Seaman). French and European companies are thus hindered both by the prohibition of re-exporting American technologies and products enacted by Washington and by Beijing’s predatory practices. How much leeway do European companies have? What role should the European Union (EU) play in the face of such challenges? Since 2016, new propositions to reform the EU export-control regime regulating dual-use items are being intensely debated (Sofia Bournou). The three chapters of this report examine the norms currently in place in the United States, China, and Europe, and delve more deeply into specific case studies: the battle between the Trump administration and Huawei (Marion Welles), the problems facing European companies in China (Laurence Nardon and Mathilde Velliet), and the case of the communications satellites (Jean-François Bureau). The conclusion of this report draws up a list – of great interest for decision-makers – of the infrastructures and technologies that will be critical for European strategic autonomy in the years to come (André Loesekrug-Pietri).
Topic:
Science and Technology, European Union, Internet, and 5G
Political Geography:
China, Europe, Asia, and United States of America