'Today we're in one era, and tomorrow we'll be in a different era," President Donald Trump loudly proclaimed from the White House Rose Garden as he hiked US tariffs to their highest level since 1909. "No one's done anything quite like this!"
Not true.
On Oct 1, 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong stood atop Tiananmen, the entrance gate of Beijing's Forbidden City, and declared China's own "liberation day". The Communist Party of China (CPC) thenceforth divided the 20th century into two eras: "before liberation", under Chiang Kai-shek, and "after liberation", under Mao, who threw China into three decades of political and economic chaos. Now, Mr Trump's "Liberation Day" promises similar tumult and disruption, but on a global scale.
For Europeans, in particular, it is as if the sun had suddenly burned out: the geopolitical system has lost its coherence and predictability as planets begin careening from their orbits. Once reliant on the US, even as they sometimes looked down on its crudeness and naivete, Europeans now find themselves on their own, without gravity and forced to confront an American leader who is the ne plus ultra of baseness and ignorance.
Now that the old geopolitical order has been canceled, China and Russia are ready to step into the vacuum and create their version of order. But one is a deracinated Marxist-Leninist regime with lots of military hardware, geography, and natural resources, but an economy smaller than Canada's, and the other is a rejuvenated Leninist one-party state with a massive economy, a thin-skinned leader, and a vibrant global tech hub. Does Europe really want a world made safe for autocracy?
Instead of remaining a "dish of loose sand," as Sun Yat-sen once said of post-dynastic China, Europe now must not only crank up its military industries to defend itself, but also seek to restore a modicum of democratic global order.
After all, Europe is not without important resources it could share with others. There's the French-British nuclear arsenal that could become an umbrella of deterrence for the continent; Germany's Rheinmetall-like arms producers; Ukraine's drone technology expertise; the United Kingdom's BAE; France's Airbus; and the Netherlands' ASML, with its monopoly on the EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) technology needed to produce advanced microchips.
But Europe has yet to launch an effort to adopt the alliance structure that the US has now abandoned. By reaching out to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Australia, Europe would let China know that the world without the US at the helm is not theirs. Given Mr Trump's hostility to Nato, Europeans and Asians who care about democracy and world order need to awaken to the dangers of their dependency on the US militarily and on China economically, and build new kinds of partnerships among themselves and like-minded countries. An ever-prickly India certainly agrees with that, and could become a cooperative partner as well.
Such a new structure is exactly what Charles de Gaulle once advocated for France. In the 1950s, after France joined Nato, de Gaulle feared that the US might not come to Europe's aid if the Soviet Union attacked, even bluntly telling the Americans he doubted they would ever sacrifice New York to defend Paris.
So, de Gaulle developed France's own nuclear force de frappe and then, in 1966, withdrew from Nato's military command (though France remained a member of the alliance). At the time, many regarded de Gaulle's move as mere petulance. But his logic now suddenly looks prescient.
More negotiations, dialogue, trade agreements, cultural exchanges, and public diplomacy -- the usual stuff of European Union foreign policy over the decades -- will not transform the likes of Chinese President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin. They are not seeking partners for ensuring global peace and stability; they want to replace the US atop the world order and then change the order itself.
Mao once declared, "Without destruction there can be no construction," and there is some truth to this adage. Mr Trump is also an agent of destruction, but if Europe can rise to the occasion, Mr Trump could paradoxically become, malgré lui, an agent of construction, the midwife of a new non-American-centric world order. But lest Europeans forget, the US already tried a strategy of accommodation, not only with post-Soviet Russia, but also with China, as 10 presidents since 1972 (including the first Trump administration) supported different versions of "engagement" with the government in Beijing.
Alas, these efforts all failed because CPC leaders remain wedded to their belief that the US is fundamentally bent on overthrowing its one-party rule, no matter what American presidents say. They regularly recall that President Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles declared in 1953 that "liberation" from Soviet rule might better occur through a "process short of war", namely, by peaceful "internal pressures… bound to alter the character of the communist regimes." And in 1958, Dulles counseled US diplomats to "accelerate [such] evolution within the Sino-Soviet bloc" through peaceful means.
Mao was alarmed by what he called "peaceful evolution." He saw it as a "much more deceptive tactic" than open warfare because it sought to corrupt and finally overthrow China's communist system. Mr Xi, too, has always perceived the US as an inalienably "hostile foreign force".
So, Europeans must not delude themselves about China. The best guarantee of peace in a world of emboldened autocracies is deterrence through military strength, alliance unity, and economic influence. With the US no longer willing to lead the world's democracies in this endeavour, Europe must step up. No one else can. ©2025 Project Syndicate
Orville Schell, Director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society, is a co-editor (with Larry Diamond) of Chinese Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Engagement.
