Europe Is Under Siege
noahpinion.blog
noahpinion.blog
This is definitely a problem. China wants to freely operate in foreign markets, but wants to also lock others out of their own market, or control their companies to a level where they can perform intellectual property theft, or commit straight up asymmetrical warfare (like cyberattacks). But competitiveness with China requires more than fixing those problems - it also requires plain old effort - and the culture of work and social safety nets in Europe (the pension problem mentioned in the article) are difficult to fix.
Finally, I wonder who Europe can partner with now - not China, and obviously not America. Does that leave India as the only alternative? Because it doesn’t appear to me that European leaders or its citizens are very friendly towards them either. Maybe Southeast Asia or South America could also be partners. But the geopolitical strategy of Europe seems non existent. The American dependency has been destroyed but what fills that empty space?
> Because it doesn’t appear to me that European leaders or its citizens are very friendly towards them either
There's a reason the EU is finalizing an FTA with India [0], with the backing of France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, and others. India also has a multiple veto in the EU now thanks to France, Greece [1], and Cyprus [2]. India is also heavily investing in France's MIC leading to Safran [3], Thales [4], and Dassault [5] transferring IP to Indian SoEs and setting up shop in India.
But this inevitably gives India an indirect veto position like China and the US, because of India's hard anti-Turkiye stance aligns with Greece and Cyprus' national security needs (ambivalent/indifferent about Russia but antagonistic to Turkiye) and subsidizes a large portion of France's industrial base. Essentially, it allows India to use pressure on Greece and Cyprus to influence the EU the same way China uses pressure on Spain and Hungary to influence the EU, and the US uses the CEE and Ireland.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-eu-trade-talks-ent...
[1] - https://www.eliamep.gr/en/syndeontas-efkairies-o-stratigikos...
[2] - https://m.kathimerini.com.cy/gr/politiki/ptb-endeixi-dynamik...
[3] - https://aerospaceglobalnews.com/news/safran-india-fighter-je...
[4] - https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/news-centre/press-releases/th...
[5] - https://www.dassault-aviation.com/en/group/press/press-kits/...
> Is it really viable for European politicians to partner with India in that environment? And will India go for it or will they distrust Europe?
It doesn't matter.
The decisions that matter to India can be forced through the European Council, and even in those countries with nativist sentiments like Croatia [0], Greece, Cyprus and Italy [1], India increasingly uses it's monetary power to extract the deals it wants - especially because China has decided to increasingly consolidate it's investments in Hungary and Spain instead and OBOR funding in much of Europe has been scaled down [2][3] so the only large economy left that can help.
On top of that, European countries like France are using India as a backdoor for continuing business operations on dual use technology like Safran-UAC's SJ-100 commercial jet project [4].
Essentially, those politically unpopular decisions that require public consent go through the European Council, and everything else is done via business and state-level engagements.
It's the same model China used in the late 2000s and early 2010s when it was at the stage that India is at today.
> I think the same question could be asked for Southeast Asian countries too but they’re smaller and maybe are less of a focus in geopolitics
ASEAN nations like Vietnam already have FTAs with the EU [5] and are conducting influence ops within Europe with impunity [6]
This is why I made an earlier comparison to the EU with the Qing and Mughal Empires - both federal empires collapsed because individual European states made deals with those empires subnational units, which undermined both empires.
[0] - https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2025-06-26/mod...
[1] - https://orionpolicy.org/imec-and-the-battle-for-connectivity...
[2] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67634959
[3] - https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/re...
[4] - https://idrw.org/original-sam146-engine-likely-to-power-indi...
[5] - https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-relationships-cou...
[6] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-25/berlin-ki...
> The American dependency has been destroyed but what fills that empty space?
This is honestly a bit crazy right? You can depend on yourselves? I can't believe I need to tell Europe that they should look into the meaning of swaraj.
India will partner with those nations that align with reducing India's biggest security threat - a two-front war against Pakistan and China.
This is why India has been building close defense and economic ties with Greece [0] and Cyprus [1], because it allows India to put pressure on Turkiye which has increasingly armed Pakistan and now-ambivalent Bangladesh. It also gives India two additional vetoes in the European Council on top of the French and Italian vetoes due to economic and MIC ties. It's also why Israel is also building close defense ties with Greece+Cyprus [2][3] as well.
And this is why the EU is becoming increasingly dysfunctional - individual nations like the US, China, Russia, the Gulf States, Israel, Turkiye, India, and others are using state-level ties to either steamroll their strategic goals through the EU or block those of their competitors.
[0] - https://www.eliamep.gr/en/syndeontas-efkairies-o-stratigikos...
[1] - https://m.kathimerini.com.cy/gr/politiki/ptb-endeixi-dynamik...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/turkey-mo...
[3] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/greek-par...
Anything beyond that at this stage would be unnecessarily hemming both India as well as France, Greece, and Cyprus' relationships in their backyard.
The pivot to Asia began under Obama 16 years ago. Russia simply isn't viewed as a threat worth expending resources on given that China is across the Pacific. And the era of European born-and-raised foreign policy advisors like Kissinger, Albright, or Brzezinski is over. Most Americans in the 2020s either never had or lost close blood ties to Europe, so the sympathy that allowed Atlanticism to form instead of the more heavy-handed approach used in Asia doesn't exist anymore.
A lot of Europeans (from policymakers all the way down to citizens) really overestimate how Americans view ties with Europe. We have stronger soft power relations with Asia or Latin America than we do with Europe now.
If European nations like France, Germany, or the UK shift right, then when the Dems return to power they would also be cold-to-hostile to Europe.
He's also obviously not making it to the next election, and JD Vance doesn't have nearly the same pull or unifying ability.
I think it's much more likely the right wing splits into subfactions over the matter of Israel than having another red sweep like we saw this past election.
It looks like dems are slowly pulling their heads out of their assess too, so there's a decent chance they'll be more unified come election night.
Just to be clear, what freedoms are you talking about here?
And which parts of Europe?
We are against the DSA because it is a de facto non-trade barrier to American services exports becuase of it's tax implications.
And it's doesn't matter that Trump is in office - a Harris administration would have played hardball against the EU as well, as was seen with the Biden admin perusing lawfare and lobbying to make an example out of Canada for their attempt at a digital services tax.
It's the same reason the Obama admin lobbied hard for the TPP to not include a digital services tax and harmonize with American IP law.
No one in the policy space who is able to reach a position to affect power gives a s### about ideology unless it is a deeply personal issue for that person, and for most policymakers (who are overwhelmingly non-technical in my experience), digital free speech absolutism just isn't something they care about at a personal level.
[0] - https://www.ey.com/en_gl/insights/tax/how-taxation-of-digita...
[1] - https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/tax/newsletters/tax-policy-bulleti...
Then your government should pass BEPS Pillar 1, so that this doesn't happen. You can't have your cake and eat it.
From a geo-political standpoint I'd expect to see them pretty soon, especially if the US abandons Ukraine.
Be careful throwing legislative stones from glass houses.
Also India is more liberal than western Europe in a lot of ways.
For example, French laicite means no display of religious symbols publicly, while India allows a wide variety of religious symbols, having some of the largest mosques, churches and temples in the world
Moreover, in India people openly criticize other religions, while England jails people for such things. This idea that Europe is liberal and no one else is just myopicism
European hubris makes them believe that they are uniquely liberal. European countries can hardly deal with a small number of other cultures.
Hang on, firstly what are the tax implications?
Secondly, here's a summary of the DSA: https://www.williamfry.com/knowledge/the-digital-service-act...
I honestly don't see anything particularly strange about it. The only thing I can see that would actually impact any of the businesses is the requirement to provide a complaints procedure.
Note that I worked in one of the major targets of this law (Meta) for many years and I don't see anything there that amounts to a trade barrier to US service exports.
Can you help me understand the concerns here?
Like, to my mind, the DMA is a much bigger deal but US peeps are way more upset about the DSA.
And like, the US runs the Banking Secrecy Act and weaponises the dollar system on a completely regular basis, so I'm honestly flabbergasted that they object to other companies enforcing their laws extra-territorally.
> And it's doesn't matter that Trump is in office - a Harris administration would have played hardball against the EU as well, as was seen with the Biden admin perusing lawfare and lobbying to make an example out of Canada for their attempt at a digital services tax.
Yeah this I agree with.
But unfortunately, because most tech/pharma company profits are booked where the IP is located and this is easy to move, digital services taxes are going to happen over the next decade. I understand why the US government doesn't like this, but it's either that or actual trade barriers to these companies. (And I say this as a citizen of a country that benefits massively from these shenanigans).
Calling Europe a de facto US protectorate is also ignoring the fact that the US has a geographical advantage of being relatively separated from hostile world powers, which let it avoid most of the effects of the world wars - and that’s really pretty recent in historical terms. Is that really something America gets credit for, or is it just luck?
Finally, the US had benefited a lot from immigration but the most vocal American voices that attack Europe seem to ignore this reality, and are also clamoring for a shutdown of programs like F1, H1B, etc. - despite half the biggest American companies being founded by immigrants or their children. If you glimpse into the future, is America any more “strategically serious” than Europe? Or is it just another has been that turns to racism and isolationism to deal with its problems?