In the decades following the end of the Cold War, the United States has emerged as a dominant power in the international system, while Europe has largely struggled to reposition itself politically in an increasingly multipolar world. Dr. Mayer contends that Europe’s transformation cannot be explained simply by a lack of economic capacity or military resources. Rather, EU member states face mounting strains in their alliance with America, and these tensions have exacerbated an ongoing identity crisis. As Professor Mayer observes, “Europe is, to some extent, becoming ground zero for the new global order.” He goes on to suggest that many European leaders lack a coherent strategic self-definition, rendering it even more difficult to recalibrate their national policies in the wake of shifting geopolitical realities. In this regard, Europe’s predicament reveals much about the evolving quadrilateral relationship among the United States, the European Union, China, and Russia.
Maximilian Mayer is Professor of International Relations and Global Politics of Technology at the University of Bonn, Germany. He was an assistant professor at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (2019-2020) and a research professor at Tongji University in Shanghai (2015-2018). His research interests include the global politics of science, innovation, and technology; China’s foreign and energy policy; global energy and climate politics; and theories of international relations. Furthermore, he is part of the research group The Second Cold War Observatory.
Alice Liu: Dr. Mayer, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. In your 2024 piece “Is Europe Still Relevant?” you outlined the reasons for the European Union’s feebleness. What are those structural constraints?
Maximilian Mayer: Weak strategic thinking, a lack of common political will, and limited institutional capacity, especially in the field of defense and security, are constraints on the EU. I would add fragmentation: policies have to be negotiated among member states. Policy making was always a complicated process. But perhaps the most crucial constraint is the question of political will. Political will entails both the crafting of a clear strategic vision for Europe and the ability to communicate it to voters.
Europe struggles to imagine a future in which it might still cooperate with the US, yet without depending on the US for security, economics, and key technologies. Because it fails to picture this future clearly, it also cannot present a consistent and communicable strategy. That is a hurdle for politicians, not only at the EU level but also at the national level.
Because the European Union is still, above all, a union of member states, national governments remain critical, including in persuading their voters why a more integrated, united, and autonomous “Europe” is the path forward and how it can offer a solution to economic and geopolitical problems.
Another reason for the strategic standstill is that in most member countries there is strong social and cultural affinity with the US. An identity crisis regarding Washington thus arises, which makes it even more difficult to draft and communicate a more autonomous foreign policy.
AL: You’ve described the Trump-era policy as “the largest reversal of US foreign policy in eight decades.” What makes President Trump such a special challenge for Europe?
MM: The major issue is trust. Historically, there have always been ups and downs in the US-European relationship, including within NATO. France, for example, once left its seat empty in NATO. Thus, this is not the first episode of transatlantic strain. But this crisis feels qualitatively different because European allies now genuinely question whether the US will still be a reliable NATO partner. To make matters worse, the dispute over Greenland raises concerns about whether the Trump Administration respects the territorial sovereignty of European states, while its rhetoric has been openly antagonistic towards the European Union.
The second important challenge is the democratic backsliding in the US and the increasingly authoritarian behavior of the Trump administration. That damages the democratic values that shored up the transatlantic alliance in the first place.
AL: What’s the logic behind Trump and his circle supporting far-right movements across Europe and at home?
MM: It is ideological. Trumpism involves not only the president himself but also the coalition of forces supporting him: major tech companies, fossil fuel industries, MAGA, and the Christian right, among others. Some of these groups share a worldview hostile to liberal democracy and harbor strong incentives to support ideologically similar movements or parties abroad.
Trump allies have been reaching out for many years to right-wing populist movements across Europe. Last year, Vice President Vance came to the Munich Security Conference and was basically telling Europeans, “You have a democratic problem.” Ostensibly critiquing Europe’s alleged internal lack of democracy, he supported the far-right AfD in Germany, a force aimed at undermining the German democratic constitutional order, as a more competent political alternative. Trump has been cultivating sympathetic allies abroad to reshape European politics and promote “like-minded” MAGA-style relationships with the US.
AL: You argue that a major victim of US self-sabotage is NATO. How so?
MM: We’re back at the trust issue. NATO was built on the allies’ trust in the US as the default center of a collective security mechanism, and it only works under that precondition. This shared assumption shapes its entire security architecture, military deterrence, and the basic foreign policy of its member countries. When their trust in the United States erodes, the entire system starts wobbling.
Take a recent example. Trump has threatened to take Greenland away from Denmark. This signals the US moving down the road toward a much more openly imperialist, you could say Schmittian, foreign policy, which by definition does not recognize national sovereignty or territorial borders. Then some European countries sent small contingents to Greenland as a double signal. It is partly a signal that Europe takes seriously the fact that Russia and China have great interest in Greenland, but also partly a gesture to the US government that Greenland is sovereign Danish territory and not up for grabs. That these European states feel compelled to signal deterrence not only to Russia and China but also to the United States, their ally, tells you that the trust foundations of NATO have been demolished.
AL: You’ve called Europe’s current strategic mindset “infantile,” and you wrote that Europe lacks a clear formulation of China’s role beyond economics. Can you summarize your critique of Europe’s stance on China? What is it like, and why is it problematic?
MM: European-Chinese relations have been deteriorating for many years, actually. In the last couple of years, the European side has changed its strategic formula toward China into a three-part discourse: China is a partner, an economic competitor, and a systemic rival. While each label captures some part of political reality, can you realistically expect policymakers to act coherently based on this self-contradictory formula? Of course not. Not too surprisingly, this discourse invites cherry-picking, in which different politicians and decision-makers act on different elements. This results in an inconsistent strategy toward China. The strategic incoherence embodied in these three concepts is blocking alternative strategic thinking in Europe.
Europe has also largely remained reactive. The EU has failed to present any progressive agenda, for example, on climate, renewable energy, or other areas. We have not seen any major partnerships emerging in the last couple of years. At the same time, however, neither the partnership nor the de-risking agenda with China has been progressing smoothly. In fact, Europe’s trade relationship with China is becoming increasingly imbalanced, and Chinese technological progress has placed growing pressure on European companies. Yet, amid the transatlantic meltdown, European leaders are flocking to Beijing.
The other issue is that Europeans have many discussions, but very little of this talk is translated into concrete policies and investments. Take the Draghi report and its lack of implementation as an example. Its recommendations of increasing industrial capacity, building technological innovation, strengthening competitiveness, and thereby reducing technological dependence on China are strategically sound. Yet, the realization of these policies has been slow and highly uneven.
The most important China policy Europe can pursue starts at home. A better China-EU partnership can only begin with Europe doing its homework domestically in terms of industrial policy and investing in trade and innovation. Without increasing domestic competitiveness and thereby gradually reducing dependence on China, effective cooperation or negotiation with China remains elusive. An incoherent strategy combined with Europe’s lack of domestic preparation becomes a fundamental obstacle to finding a different way to engage China.
And the war in Ukraine exacerbates the failure. China’s increasing support, certainly diplomatically but also in terms of defense technology component supplies, for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is another thorny issue for European security. Europe has not found an effective way so far to convince China to make a difference. It keeps simply complaining in the hope that the Chinese leadership might ultimately listen to increase pressure on Putin.
Security issues are becoming an increasingly important part of relations between China and the EU in the context of a weakening transatlantic relationship. When dealing with Russia, Europe finds itself unable to fully rely on NATO and thus increasingly alone, which renders its ineptitude in coping with China all the more consequential.
AL: What is the deeper reason behind European incoherence? Is it because different EU nations have different interests in China, or is there another reason?
MM: Different national interests play a role. France and Germany, Eastern European states, and southern member states’ national interests are not fully aligned. But a deeper problem is that the important French-German connection, the so-called “engine of European integration,” has been stuttering for many years. Since the United Kingdom left the EU, coordination between the two most important states in Europe has suffered in many policy areas, especially in the China field. The faltering of French-German leadership has led to more reactive behavior and foul compromises while preventing strategic, collective, forward-looking policy approaches regarding China.
Another issue is Europe’s geopolitical blindness. The European Commission styled itself “geopolitical,” but too often its actual priorities do not quite match the definition of “geopolitics.” For example, the integration of defense industries has stalled. It seems that the political priorities were not really economic security despite a world of weaponized interdependence, nor were they digital sovereignty vis-a-vis the US. Nor was Brussels’ geopolitical priority Europe’s immediate environment; the EU lacks a focused neighborhood strategy. So where is the “geo” in our professed “geopolitics”?
All of that makes Europe less credible from Beijing’s perspective. In Chinese internal discourses about Europe, many experts have stopped taking Europe seriously because it is not capable of strategically developing a coherent approach. That Europe’s declared geopolitics lacks substance erodes its reputation and leverage. One can trace these consequences in terms of Chinese diplomacy toward Europe.
AL: You write that both Germany and Europe tend to overestimate China’s threat while underestimating Eurasia’s political and economic reshaping. What do you mean?
MM: A couple of years ago, there was a European discourse that China was actively trying to “split Europe,” especially by investing in parts of Southern and Southeastern Europe. This perception clearly overestimated what China can do politically.
At the same time, Europe underestimated how much structural change has taken place in Eurasia. The Belt and Road Initiative and other corridor initiatives, orchestrated not just by China but also by other actors, are reshaping economic relations across Eurasia. Europe’s initial response for several years was to do nothing, to watch and wait. Then it finally came up with the Global Gateway as a counterproject against the Belt and Road. But Europe is far from doing enough to push these kinds of initiatives, both in terms of partially linking them to other corridor projects in a more productive way and in investing enough to promote its own priorities.
It is striking if you look at the Global Gateway. It is a program of very limited spending and diffuse strategic focus. For a European program, its focus ought to be its neighbors: North Africa, the Middle East, and adjacent regions. But instead, the Global Gateway is scattered all over the place with small projects, diluting the effectiveness of each investment. It lacks a necessary strategic and geographical focus. Meanwhile, China has been highly active with investment in those exact regions that matter most to Europe’s long-term stability—precisely in those places where Europeans ought to be present with investments.
So if we compare far-fetched conspiracy theories that China is geopolitically trying to split Europe with European inaction and Chinese growing activity in regions that are key to European interests, the contradiction becomes obvious. That contradiction points to a deeper problem: Europe’s lack of an overarching neighborhood strategy that would comprehensively guide investment initiatives, economic partnerships, and security cooperation.
AL: You argue that Europe is not a global power so much as a continental one, and that its identity as a self-declared “normative power” is outdated. Can you elaborate?
MM: Europe is certainly a strong market and a huge economy. In theory, if all nations pooled their armed forces, it would also be quite a substantial military power. But in reality, it remains a regional constellation of closely cooperating states, with deep integration in many policy fields and less so in others, especially security and foreign policy.
For a long time, Europe understood itself as a significant regulatory power. For example, the so-called “Brussels effect,” the idea that European regulations have global significance and that many other markets and actors emulate or learn from them, is certainly still the case. It remains a key element of Europe’s influence in the global context.
But that identity is outdated in the sense that it can no longer capture the political essence of the European Union. The Union has been pulled into intense security competition with Russia and is an indirect participant in the war in support of Ukraine. It is no longer just a rule-maker; it is also trying to become a geoeconomic actor. This is evident, at least rhetorically, in its approach to de-risking with China and in its response to political coercion and pressure against EU regulation from the US.
Europe is still taking time to adjust its self-identity accordingly. It might also be somewhat unfair to demand an instant breakthrough. But note one historically significant point. In past crises, Europe often responded by deepening integration. This time, there is not yet a serious debate about substantial defense integration, unified security policies, or creating a European army as a real institutional option.
The most relevant exception is attempts to achieve closer coordination between the nuclear programs of France and the UK and initial steps to integrate Germany into that framework. This would be a critical step toward more integration, but it can’t replace the broader necessary debate about a real common defense and security policy, a European army, and unified defense infrastructures from cyber to drones to maritime infrastructure. That seems an interesting difference from earlier crises of the European Union. It reveals that Europeans currently find it difficult to articulate a more integrated Europe with a different global role operating within a new geopolitical and geoeconomic context.
AL: You argue that disputes over Ukraine mirror deeper cognitive and political frictions in Sino-European relations. What deeper frictions are you referring to?
MM: The most important one is disappointed expectations on the European side. Historically, many US and European elites expected China’s economic growth and rapidly expanding middle class to evolve into democratization and political liberalization. That expectation has been crushed. The first five years of Xi Jinping finally proved this to be a pipe dream. Now Europeans are in the midst of rethinking their relations with China as an increasingly influential authoritarian state. From a European point of view, a powerful authoritarian country invariably has the potential to threaten and undermine European democracy. This perception strengthens the “systemic rival” outlook.
The second deeper friction is economic. For a long time, European and Chinese economies were complementary, and trade benefited both sides. Today, China’s economy has become much more tech-driven and innovative, and its firms increasingly competitive. Chinese companies are profusely exporting high-quality goods into European markets, threatening many European industries. In addition, there is the longstanding European grievance about Chinese government subsidies and unfair market interventions. However, the friction is driven by structure, not policy. The economies are no longer complementary. The fundamental economic underpinnings of the bilateral relationship have changed. Trade is no longer necessarily to Europe’s advantage. Regardless of how European governments respond with defensive economic measures, such as blocking Chinese imports of EVs, that friction will persist.
In addition, as already mentioned, security has entered the relationship. For decades, China and Europe did not have a noteworthy security relationship. That has changed because of China’s role in the Ukraine war. Beijing’s open diplomatic and material support has sustained Russian war efforts aimed at eliminating Ukraine as a sovereign state. A security dimension between Europe and China has thus come into being, which adds to the difficulty for Europeans in cultivating normal relations with China. The above three frictions explain why the relationship has turned sour and become more complicated over the last five to ten years. Even if transatlantic tensions create an opportunity for EU-China relations, the underlying issues won’t disappear.
AL: You ask in an article of yours, “Is Europe still relevant?” Indeed, why does Europe matter?
MM: Europe matters first and foremost to the Europeans. To be declining means you are more subject to the power, pressure, and decisions of others. The stakes include national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political decision-making, but also control over technologies, data systems, AI, and ultimately public policy. As the cases of Ukraine and Greenland demonstrate, Europe is becoming ground zero of the new global order to some extent. Russia, the US, and, to a certain extent, China are displaying and emulating neo-imperial behavior, thereby inadvertently creating a new order based on inter-imperial power relations and spheres of influence.
These actors are pushing a Schmittian model in which political power overrides international law and national sovereignty is downgraded. In such an order, supreme leaders get to make decisions in their spheres of influence, and their actions, which would be recognized as military aggression under international law, are legitimized as “policing” or “special operations.”
Europe’s problem is that it is not strong enough, at least at the moment, to decisively push back economically and militarily against this new imperial logic. It is supporting Ukraine, though, and Ukraine would not survive without European help. Yet the harsh reality for Europe is that the United States, a former ally, is articulating not only a hemispheric Großraum strategy but also a civilizational-imperial project that aims to destroy the EU and Europe’s regional peace project.
Europe is not alone in that, though. Many other middle powers around the world, particularly in the Global South and the Global East, do not like the idea of a system dominated by three imperial powers—Russia, China, and the US—and are working hard to push back against it. This sort of middle-power agency requires patience, strategic pragmatism, and smart coalitions. Europe is in the early stages of figuring out its own “middle power” strategy and, inspired by Canadian Prime Minister Carney’s provocative speech in Davos, considering the ideas it could offer as an alternative to the neo-imperial models of the US and Russia.
AL: How should Europe navigate this triangular relationship among Beijing, Moscow, and Washington?
MM: How to deal with the quasi-imperial new powers is the crucial question. No single strategy works for all, as Europe has a very different relationship with each of these three actors. Only differentiated strategies work for these bilateral relationships.
The relationship with Russia is of existential urgency. Europe has to ensure that Russian imperialism does not strip Ukraine of its sovereignty. The Baltic region remains vulnerable. Hence, the relationship with Russia, for the foreseeable future, will be one of defense and deterrence. European nuclear weapons are a critical instrument to be able to deter Russia on Europe’s own account and, in the worst case, without US help.
A clarification about nuclear weapons is warranted here: It is not as if European states and other middle powers are interested in nuclear proliferation, not at all. European nuclear arsenals would be merely a response to the dire reality of collapsing international nuclear arms control and monitoring agreements. There is no longer any international regime for major nuclear powers to monitor or reduce their arsenals. The credibility of the entire Non-Proliferation Treaty is no longer self-evident. Not only have the major powers given up on self-restraint in the legal sense, but they have also given up on it in other ways. Russia, a nuclear power, has attacked Ukraine and threatened to use nuclear weapons. China coerces neighboring countries. The US has invaded Venezuela and threatened to bomb Iran. In these circumstances, Europe is having, and has had, a debate about nuclear weapons.
With China, it is primarily about recasting investment and trade relationships. As I said earlier, the key to that strategy lies in domestic innovation and economic competitiveness. There are some elements that can be learned from Chinese economic policies over the last 30 years, but Europe needs to come up with its own approach to innovation. Many Europeans are stuck in the outdated idea that China is stealing European technology, while there is really very little technology left that Chinese companies can steal. In reality, the trend has almost reversed. European firms need to be very agile in enabling technology transfer to Europe by different means. Europe must strike a delicate balance by reducing its economic and technological dependence on both China and the US.
With the United States, the relationship is perhaps the most difficult and consequential, as it sits at the center of European postwar identity. The deep-seated transatlantic bonds on which almost all European countries have built their political identity since 1945 make this troubled relationship the cause of an acute identity crisis, to a much greater extent than with China or Russia. If the US is turning more authoritarian, or even fascist, then Europe is confronted with the urgent decision to engineer a decoupling in terms of security, technology, ideas, and economics. If the US can reverse course, perhaps in a couple of years, there is also the possibility of renewing the transatlantic relationship and the security partnership, and possibly more. At the very least, Europe should support the forces of democratic renewal in the US right now. But the bottom line remains that Europe’s basic security cannot rest on an authoritarian regime.
AL: If Europe fails to reform along the lines that you propose, if it fails to reassess its status in the global order, what would be the most likely geopolitical consequences?
MM: The result would have domestic and international dimensions. Domestically, there are many elections in Europe, and it is not impossible that France will have a conservative/right-wing government, and the same holds true for Germany. That is also a real possibility for the UK, which is not a member of the European Union but remains a very important European power. So, in one scenario Europe could be increasingly dominated by right-wing populist parties across Europe.
This would have implications for European institutions themselves. Imagine right-wing populist forces controlling legislation in the European Parliament, the European Commission, and national parliaments. This would also likely bring ideological alignment with the MAGA ideology in the US, all of which could turn Europe into a mirror of US authoritarianism.
Externally, if Europeans cannot get their act together and fail to partner with Japan, Canada, and India, among others, to defend a United Nations-based international order and a rule-based trade regime, then Europe could suffer greatly. It will become vulnerable to various kinds of imperial projects, namely Russian military threats, American tech dominance, and economic dependency on China, which ultimately leads to Europe’s peripheralization. Should Europe fail to present a coherent strategy, it can hardly withstand the decisive blows from the simultaneous advance of these imperial endeavors.
The concern that Europe could become a mere vassal state, completely subjugated by imperial projects, is a worst-case scenario. However, the danger of Europe losing political and economic autonomy is very real, representing a plausible future that keeps many European politicians awake at night. Unfortunately, we cannot rule out this becoming a reality within the next five to ten years.