Emmanuel Macron’s pronouncements that Europe should avoid “getting caught up in crises that are not ours,” on his return from visiting Xi Jinping in Beijing, has set off a furore in transatlantic policy circles louder than Chinese battle drills in the Straits of Taiwan. Europe, he said, should not automatically be “followers” of Washington. With Beijing wrapping up exercises which included its jets and warships simulating dogfights, strikes and a blockade of the breakaway island democracy 110 miles off its coast, few had any doubts about which flashpoint he was talking about.
Tensions are steadily rising between the US and China. Twice President Biden has been directly asked if the US would defend the 23 million strong nation and twice answered, unanimously, “yes.”
Official US policy remains the opposite — “strategic ambiguity” — over the island. There are no formal diplomatic relations as part of the Henry Kissinger-engineered opening to the People’s Republic of China in the Seventies. Washington doesn’t want war — but it wants Beijing to think it might go there in the hope that such a deterrence factor keeps the peace.
Macron’s comments did not come out of the blue. European diplomats have been alarmed by the ramping up of belligerent Chinese rhetoric amidst one of the largest military build-ups in history. But in Washington there are a fair few embassies worried about American rhetoric, or dynamics in Congress.
The issue is not the Biden administration but what comes after. It’s not so much a fear of the return of Donald Trump to the White House — he famously referred to Xi as his “friend” and dismissed talk of the US defending Taiwan by pointing out how far away it is — but of an anti-China tendency that is growing stronger in Congress and corners of the Republican Party.
Senators such as Josh Hawley have made their names as China critics while rising foreign policy eminences of the Rightsuch as Elbridge Colby are advocating a kind of China pushback, leaving Ukraine to the Europeans. That leaves many diplomats feeling uneasy.
Long-term American politics is unclear: which kind of Republicanism is going to win out? The militaristic anti-Chinese version? Or the more isolationist variant, indifferent about democracy at home and abroad, personified by Trump with possible successors in the likes of Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio.
Those in Congress seeking to harden America’s China policy dramatically seized on Macron’s comments. Britain is seen in a very different light in these parts of Congress. Steadily, the UK has been meaningfully contributing to building up its presence and overall Western deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. This is not just in the Aukus pact focusing on nuclear submarines and high-end tech with Australia and the US. Britain has been building up its security relationship with Japan through the $30 billion Global Combat Air Programme to develop a new fighter jet. It is not doubted that Britain is “on team.”
It’s nearly impossible to imagine a British Prime Minister making comments like those of Macron. Not only because they proved, yet again, to be wildly ineffective for him, with other EU states rushing to denounce him, but because the UK doesn’t have the room for manoeuvre that France or Germany do in the event of war over Taiwan.
The reason is Australia, which has felt the pressure of Chinese bullying. If the US finds itself at war over Taiwan it will activate the Anzus Treaty between Washington and Canberra. As it stands, Australia, which fought with the US in Vietnam, would most certainly follow suit — its previous defence minister, Peter Dutton, committed it publicly to do so in 2021.
The chances of confrontation are low but they are rising. Once Australia is at war, in one way or another, Britain will be too. It is simply impossible to imagine a country with a common King, history and umbilical defence ties like Aukus and Five Eyes intelligence sharing requesting help and not getting it.
And they will request it. There will be no public tolerance for standing aside if Australia calls. This is why the DC debate and who comes out on top of the Republican soap opera matters hugely for Britain. Because if Washington decides to fight, we will not have Macron’s choices. That’s why the right combination of deterrence and diplomacy to make sure it never happens is so important.
