OPINION:
Behind the closed doors of the Munich Security Conference last month, a dangerous idea was forming in the minds of European leaders: that Europe must de-risk from the United States.
Asserting a fatal blow to trans-Atlantic relations from the recent Greenland crisis and President Trump’s tariff push, the calls to de-risk from the U.S. apply not only to defense and security but also to U.S. technology. The Trump administration is certainly right that it is long overdue for Europe to take responsibility for its own defense and improve its economic competitiveness. Not doing so will leave the continent increasingly weak and irrelevant.
A weak Europe will be neither a good nor an equal partner for the United States. The path to European self-sufficiency is not de-risking from America, which, as former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently wrote, is a fool’s errand. More than that, it is a strategic mistake.
De-risking from America leads in only one direction: dependence on China. That will not only leave Europe subjugated to Beijing but will also be the final nail in the coffin of the U.S.-Europe alliance.
Unfortunately, European leaders are already making the mistake of looking to China as a warped alternative to America. Germany, the economic driver of Europe, made the first move when Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently announced that he would seek strategic partnerships with China. He said his country has a “strategic interest in finding partners in the world who think the way we do.”
Is China, where the Chinese Communist Party runs concentration camps and brutally represses free speech, a like-minded partner for Germany? Mr. Merz is not the only one doubling down on China. His comments follow a parade of Western leaders who have pandered to Beijing, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who visited China in January to thaw relations between London and Beijing.
That followed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s four-day visit to China in search of economic deals. Mr. Merz is the first continental European leader to open the door, and others will follow his lead.
Mr. Merz and others are establishing a dangerous precedent for Europe that purports to undo the positive change taking place on the continent. After decades of lethargy, Europeans appear to be waking up, thanks to pressure from the Trump administration, to the reality that they must stand on their own two feet in defense.
When Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed leaders at the Munich Security Conference, he received a standing ovation for his message that the U.S. needs its cherished allies to jointly confront the challenges both sides face. Europe is taking the right steps: unleashing defense investment, taking up common borrowing and debt restructuring, and focusing on its own economic security.
To be sure, much more needs to be done and at a faster pace, but a Europe tethered to China will completely undermine these efforts.
China is not a benevolent or benign actor. Economic investment comes with political strings attached. Europe can learn a great deal from Japan’s recent experience. In December, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made a comment about Taiwan, and Beijing disapproved. It retaliated by imposing export controls on raw and critical minerals in an overt effort to cripple Japan’s economy.
Beijing did the same to the United States in response to Mr. Trump’s tariffs last spring by cutting off essential magnet supplies. For this reason, the U.S. is moving quickly to develop domestic capacity in sectors where China has coercive monopolies, while diversifying supply chains for critical and raw minerals.
Japan is developing new technologies to identify deposits and use existing supplies more efficiently. Before jumping into bed with Chinese President Xi Jinping, European leaders should take note of these events.
Rather than looking for short-term gains in China at the cost of long-term economic and geopolitical exposure, Europe needs to face another hard reality: There is no alternative to the U.S.
There is no viable European alternative to the critical services across the defense, technology and economic sectors that the U.S. provides to European consumers and militaries. Although Europe’s leaders may continue to passionately rail against the Trump administration, the U.S. remains the primary guarantor of European security through its continued investment in NATO. It is also the sole nuclear deterrent for the continent.
Pretending that Europe will remain economically secure without the continued investment of the U.S. and various U.S.-based tech hyper-scalers is dangerous and counterproductive. Europe lags behind in tech innovation and competitiveness, and if the U.S. and Europe diverge, they will play right into China’s hands by enabling Chinese tech dominance.
Europe would be far better served by focusing on supporting U.S. efforts to outcompete China. With Russia as its enabling junior partner, China is the common challenge to Europe and the U.S. When it was forced to cut itself off from cheap Russian energy after the invasion of Ukraine, Europe experienced firsthand the cost of dependency on an authoritarian state.
The consequences of that disaster are still being felt across the continent in the form of high energy prices. Now the continent risks repeating the same mistake with China. A dependence on Beijing will be many times more dangerous for Europe, the United States and the world.
• Alina Polyakova is president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis. Alexander B. Gray, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, served as deputy assistant to the president and chief of staff of the White House National Security Council from 2019 to 2021.
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