The concept of strategic autonomy, synonymous with sovereignty, has long been the subject of attention by the European Union. He was born in the field of defense. There have been strong disagreements between those for whom strategic autonomy meant recovering political space vis-à-vis the United States and those for whom precisely this recovery had to be avoided. Along with defense, the concept contemplated foreign policy. Lately, it covers new areas of an economic, commercial, financial, monetary, scientific and technological nature. It has become more and more evident in the Council of the European Union that, "without being truly autonomous, Europeans will not be able to reach the federal political union, the founding object of the EU, and much less to act in the world as a true global player.”
In 2016, the Council of the European Union defined the concept of strategic autonomy as “the ability to act autonomously when and where necessary and to the extent possible with partner countries”. In 2020, Josep Borrell defined it again, in a document published by the European External Action Service: "Strategic autonomy is a long-term process for Europeans to increasingly take control of their destiny, to defend our interests and values in an increasingly hostile world, a world that forces us to trust ourselves to guarantee our future”.
We are witnessing the configuration of a new world order in which there are only two great powers: the United States and China. Neither Russia nor the EU meet the conditions to be one. The Russian economy is only slightly higher than the Spanish one. The EU has not managed to build its strategic autonomy or its political union.
The war in Ukraine causes the European Union to break its ties with Russia and this country leans more and more towards China. Beyond the invasion of Ukraine, Russia continues to be a European country, with an economy complementary to that of the European Union. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has dealt a blow to European strategic autonomy. It has resurrected a NATO that, in 2019, in the words of Emmanuel Macron, was in a state of “brain death”. There are not a few European members of NATO who consider that speaking today of strategic autonomy is an act of defiance towards the United States.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has just published in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine an article entitled "The Global Zeitenwende (change of era)", in which he considers that the central question is "how can Europeans and Europe continue to being independent actors in an increasingly multipolar world”; that is, how can Europe achieve strategic autonomy.
In the field of security, he proposes full solidarity within NATO, around the US, against Russia in the war in Ukraine – including the rejection of Russia's illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory, without excluding Crimea. –. He understands that promoting defense within the framework of the EU is a way of strengthening NATO. But he rejects a new US-China cold war, isolating China or ceasing to cooperate with it, as well as restricting international free trade.
Already a few weeks ago, Scholz had spoken out in Beijing against the disconnection launched by the US – a million direct jobs in Germany depend on exports to China. He is equally opposed to the ideological war between democracy and authoritarianism, maintaining cooperation between democracies. Likewise, he demands for European companies in China the same treatment that Chinese companies receive in Europe, opposes hegemonic attitudes and demands respect for human rights. Scholz's proposal is, therefore, balanced with respect to the two great powers: collaboration, but based on the defense of European interests and values.
The US allies are major trading powers, be it the EU, Japan, South Korea or other Southeast Asian countries. All are resisting US pressure to cut their economic relations with China. Even a good part of the American multinationals are reluctant to lose the Chinese market.
Years ago, Josep Borrell had already spoken along the same lines when, invoking a song by Frank Sinatra (My way), he said that Europe would act “in its own way”, without being hostage to the conflict between the US and China: "Europe has to look at China with its own eyes, values and interests, which do not always coincide with those of the US."
In addition to needing strategic autonomy, Europe aspires to be a moderating power. France and Germany failed in their attempt to exercise that power in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. First, when Merkel and Hollande sponsored the Minsk agreements in 2014, which ended the first Ukrainian war. Those agreements were never implemented. Second, with the trips that in February of last year, a few days before the start of the current war, Macron and Scholz made separately to Moscow and Kyiv. Perhaps Putin would have been more receptive if the president of a politically united Europe had traveled instead of the representatives of its two most powerful states. Let us hope that Europe will be more fortunate if it exerts this moderating power between the US and China, the current drift in whose relations can lead, if not rectified, to catastrophe. There would be no nobler endeavor or better use of the moderating power of Europe in these times than to try.
