Unlock Editor’s Digest for free
FT editor Roula Khalaf selects her favorite stories in this weekly newspaper.
The great geopolitical awakening of the Europeans has resulted, firstly, in realizing that they are dependent on other powers in many almost-existential ways, and secondly, that those powers are increasingly willing to use their clout to bend Europe to their will.
This fear first fully emerged in China a decade ago with concerns over Huawei’s role in 5G networks. Countries close to Russia warned early on about the sensitivity of Vladimir Putin over energy flows, but it became generally understood only after gas sales were openly weaponized in 2022.
Yet what surprises Europeans most is how America has joined those who are turning their dependencies against them. The most serious economic matter is Donald Trump’s punitive tariff threat against countries that oppose his land grab in Greenland. Moreover, the Europeans deeply feel their dependence on American provision of strategic military technology.
These (and more) cases all add up to a list of “chokepoints” – the supply of critical goods and services where Europe is at the mercy of producers elsewhere. Their armament has left Europe economically and politically, and even philosophically, disenfranchised, as Europeans practiced and preached economic interdependence more sincerely than in any other part of the world.
European leaders are now adapting to the new reality by rallying around autonomy and flexibility, in order to overcome the pressures imposed on them by others. This is a completely defensive reaction. aims only for resilience obscures any idea of counterbalancing Power Which Europe itself keeps and can use against others.
But something more ambitious is beginning to stir. one in study last yearPolicymaking and industry participants told the Paris-based Institut Montaigne think-tank that they had less confidence in achieving autonomy than in promoting European “imperativeness”, especially with a group of reliable allies (which may or may not include the US).
The study concluded: “By promoting European leadership in cutting-edge semiconductor technologies, the EU could create chokepoints on which others depend, thereby strengthening its geopolitical leverage. In particular, it would then strengthen European means to prevent export boycotts and perhaps even military adventurism on Europe by rival states.”
According to the Institut Montaigne, the technologies in question refer to Europe’s dominance of extreme ultraviolet lithography through the Dutch company ASML, and with the right policies, could also include photonic and quantum chips in the future.
Europe has dominance in other areas also. A group of experts called the Geostrategic Europe Taskforce last week published a report which “identifies 41 critical chokepoints where China depends on the European Union for more than 80 percent of its imports, and 67 such dependencies to the United States. These include essential inputs including insulin, pharmaceutical intermediates, medical technologies, and specialized machinery for agriculture, paper production, and industrial processing.”
And the German economic think-tank Dezernet Zukunft also recently issued a Study Highlighting that “Europe holds more of the cards than it thinks. We control 80 percent of US uranium imports. Siemens dominates the turbines that US data centers desperately need.”
These researchers do a great service in showing that Europe is much better armed for geopolitical conflict than its leaders think. Simply mapping out the levers one can use is a step toward a more assertive stance. These exercises also offer many further lessons for European leaders.
As the Geostrategic Europe Taskforce says, there is a need to broaden its approach “from managing partnerships to projecting power”. In particular, for the EU, this means reducing the range of “counter-coercion tools” that allow multiple forms of retaliation to be deployed to deter any threat before it occurs, rather than merely reactively.
Another lesson, as Dezernat Zukunft emphasizes, is that it’s not all about the supply of scarce goods. Having a large consumer and financial market – access to which can be denied – is also a form of leverage. The third is that the EU and Britain need to find ways to coordinate on the use of chokepoints (as they have done on sanctions against Russia).
This knowledge is welcome and necessary, but only a start. Power in the sense of possessing the means of coercion is not the same as power in the sense of successfully securing one’s interests. The latter requires a willingness to use the former – perhaps aggressively. This is a step that Europe’s political leaders have yet to take.
martin.sandbu@ft.com
