“Today's deal creates certainty in uncertain times. It delivers stability and predictability, for citizens and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic,” said Ursula Van Der Leyen. But everybody with eyes to see knows that Europe was getting hosed by Trump and barely putting up a fight.
I am DYING at the body language of the two female staffers standing to the side and looking off to the distance, gripping their hands in rejection « thumbs up » photo. You know which Euros have lost their souls by the degree of enthusiasm with which they perform Trump’s humiliation rituals.
Is this the signing of the unequal treaty that marks the beginning of Europe’s own century of humiliation? No Euroboxer rebellion for bureaucrat dowager Von Der Leyen.
What happened?
THE SOFT POWER TRAP
Once upon a time the distinction between Hard and Soft power didn’t make any sense. The very concept of sovereignty wasn’t fixed and unitary before the rise of the nation states, but was organized according to one’s relationship with other political entities: there were empires and suzerains, free cities and protectorates. Kingdoms and duchies and principalities and confederations. A good dynastic match can be worth more than a standing army. And insulting the dignitary of a far-away lord could lead to invasion.
With the rise of the post-war international order codified under the United Nations, geopolitical musical chairs came to a stop. Sovereignty became unified and quantized and the use of military force absolutely forbidden as a way of settling disputes amongst civilized nation states, now elevated to be equal in dignity despite huge disparities in size and wealth, at least formally.
Hard power became functionally unusable because violating another state’s sovereignty made you an instant pariah. It stilled happened, but the consequences was disproportionately expensive. But the exercise of soft power became borderless: free from hard power consequences, nations competed on trade, ideologies, values, identity.
The Cold War ended not because the United States defeated the Soviet Union in battle, but because the people yearned for freedom and fully-stocked grocery stores. The longer (broadly speaking) global peace prevailed, the more powerful Soft Power became. And the Western countries were dominant at playing the Soft Power game.
After a while, keeping up with actual militaries seemed like an extravagance for Europe, who had a surfeit of soft power. The famous peace dividend. The world became colonized with soft power norms and institutions. NGO, UN bodies, finance systems. free trade zones. You can even argue the EU and NATO are soft-power organizations, although you see how the line now was being blurred.
How the exercise of hard power collapses the soft power world
All good things come to an end: the Russia-Ukraine war to me signaled the end of the soft power world. Once a major power like Russia decided to bear all the soft power costs and use hard power, it’s almost like a magic spell was broken. Why did we think sanctions could break Russia? Sanctions couldn’t even break Cuba! Freezing Russian funds and even using it to fund Ukraine might feel like a soft power coup, but in reality it just drives another stake into the Soft Power system as it alerted countries and individuals to that vulnerability.
Europe is the biggest loser as it fell squarely into the soft power trap. It is learning in real time that GDP doesn’t convert smoothly to artillery, and that once you sanction someone you don’t hold the power of sanction over them anymore. Ian Bremer coined the term “GZero world” to describe the coming multipolar order (or lack thereof.) But I think for the foreseeable future, he is wrong. It’s a G3 world, because that the number of world powers that still wields world-class hard power.
(Some people would quibble indignantly that I’ve put Russia as a world-class hard power. The very fact that Europe is so terrified of Russian invasion it’s willing to sign anything to prevent abandonment by America proves my point.)
I don’t think we’ll get a WWIII. Nobody has the appetite for that I hope. But we will get a series of smaller conflicts and proxy conflicts as the three powers test each other’s limits. Then we will probably get a Yalta II. And eventually a return to a world where the bright distinction between hard and soft power again disappear beneath a tangle of relative power structures.
India: A study in Strategic Independence
Traditional US allies were lulled into a false sense of complacency. As a result, they’re getting a worst deal than countries that braced for impact. Trump is picking the soft persimmons first, as we said in Chinese. In an astute post, Brad Bird noted that Trump actually didn’t really change his stance on China that much. They’re getting a better deal because Trump simply doesn’t have as much leverage on them.
Poor little Taiwan has so little leverage I think Trump might have forgotten about us altogether. It’s past midnight on 8/1 now here in Taipei and we still haven’t heard. Japan, Korea, Vietnam…just like Europe they are caving with unequal tariffs, unrealistic investment plans and promises to buy pricy US LNG.
India, however, did not bend the knee. Trump was furious as a result and fired off some classic posts on Truth Media as he subjected India to 25% tariff while taunting India with an oil development deal for rival Pakistan.
Here’s my prediction: India is not gonna pick sides. For whatever reason, it has always been obsessed with strategic autonomy. India was one of the founding members of the Non-aligned Movement. This meant it missed out on the bounty showered on good western little brothers like Taiwan and Korea.
It’s not until recent years that India sidled up more to the west. While it remain a part of BRICS it’s generally seen as the shakiest one. You can argue too here it missed out on riding on the dragon’s tail as China came up in the world.
Having said all this, strategic autonomy is about being willing to pay the costs not to be anyone’s bitch. Not benefits-maxxing.
Looking at the relative position of Europe vs India post Trump Tariffs. Indian reaction is justifiable upset, and they might have also caved a little by promising not to buy more Russian oil through their State-owned companies. But they’re not utterly humiliated and giving up the farm like Europe. Modi never called Trump Daddy and he probably won’t be.
A lot of folks decry India for being geopolitical fence sitters without the finess for neutrality of a, say, Singapore or Switzerland. However, in today’s messier than ever international order, it could be that paranoid strategic autonomy is better than utter dependence.
I don’t see India as a world power that is sitting at the table, but it might just have enough of its own autonomy to escape being on the menu. Unlike Europe, it has worked hard to avoid the soft power trap.
I doubt europe intentionally pursued soft power as a strategy. Don't forget all leading european countries were colonizers not so long ago. they understand hard power better than the rest of the world.
instead, europe thought it will always be able to ride on the coattail of the US which possesses the hard power and acts as the world police. europe can enjoy the benefits as a junior partner or minion without the investment and cost.
to call Nato a soft power organization is strange - didn't it bomb yugoslavokia shortly after the end of the cold war? it pretty much followed the US on the forever wars and color revolution inspired conflicts all over the middle east.
europe is a vassal today because it chooses to be a vassal to a hard power, not because it values soft power per se.
as for india, it's hardly an independent super power. it is an opportunistic, fence-sitting middle power at best. modi's biggest aspiration is to be a junior partner to the US, which has finally realized india is more a liability than an asset or in Chinese, an 阿斗。
I was a true believer in the end of history and feel quite naive in the aftermath.
I think the soft power world was mostly a mirage for people in the US core and its periphery, like parts of East Asia.
The bombing of Yugoslavia and the invasion of Iraq should tell you it’s always been a hard power world, even during the “end of history” era.