U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday unexpectedly declared that the U.S. had accepted a proposal to create a new U.S.-EU dialogue on China that was put forward last week by the bloc's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, during a videoconference.
Pompeo, in a speech to the Brussels Forum, an annual event held by the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., laid out a litany of complaints and grievances with Beijing, referring repeatedly to "the threat of the Communist Party in China" and hammering especially hard on allegations that China covered up information about the outbreak of the coronavirus.
He accused China of "provocative military actions" including "continued aggression in the South China Sea, deadly border confrontations in India, an opaque nuclear program and threats against peaceable neighbors."
He charged that China "has broken multiple international commitments including those to the WHO, the WTO, the United Nations and the people of Hong Kong" and he lambasted China's "predatory economic practices, such as trying to force nations to do business with Huawei, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party's surveillance state" and its "legion human rights abuses." (Huawei has repeatedly denied having close links with the Chinese government.)
Given the deep lack of trust, it seems unlikely that much progress will be made discussing China or anything else between now and the November election in the U.S.
"I am starting to see even more realism on the Continent as it relates to the threat of the Communist Party in China," Pompeo said at the start of his remarks. "We should address that challenge together, as transatlantic partners have met many challenges."
But European allies have detected little willingness from Trump to act as a transatlantic partner in recent years, as he systematically abandoned an array of international agreements supported by EU and NATO allies. And indeed other parts of Pompeo's speech, including about Trump's surprise decision to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Germany, highlighted those differences.
Pompeo's acceptance of Borrell's proposal was all the more remarkable because the American diplomat had virtually ignored it during the videoconference call last week with EU foreign ministers, offering no immediate response and little encouragement. Since then, Borrell himself has played down the significance of his own initiative, saying it was just an idea he put forward.
But in the last 10 days, the political landscape has shifted. EU leaders held a high-level virtual "summit" with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, in which they stressed a strong willingness to work with Beijing but also forcefully voiced concerns about disinformation, human rights and the heavy-handed approach to Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Trump held a disastrous, poorly-attended rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma; a book by his former national security adviser, John Bolton, described the president as incompetent and ignorant of basic facts; and Trump has sagged in the polls against former Vice President Joe Biden.
Even before Bolton's book was published, PDF copies were making the rounds among well-connected European politicos, who thought there was little left about Trump that could shock them, only to discover that he once asked if Finland was part of Russia.
During Thursday's speech and question-and-answer session, in which Pompeo appeared by videoconference, the secretary of state professed to have enormous enthusiasm for Borrell's proposal, and said he hoped to travel to Europe "in just a handful of weeks to go kick that off."
"I am pleased to announce that the United States has accepted High Representative Borrell's proposal to create a U.S.-EU dialogue on China," Borrell said. "I am excited about a new mechanism for discussing the concerns we have about the threat that China poses to the West and our shared democratic ideals."
When the moderator of the event, Bojan Pancevski of the Wall Street Journal, pressed Pompeo for details, he insisted that the U.S. was already pushing forward.
"You are right. This is new, the proposal came from High Representative Borrell just within the last handful of days," Pompeo said. "But you should know, we were very interested in it. We put a big team on working together to begin to outline the shape of what this would look like." He added, "I don't know exactly what shape it will take. I am confident we will set up a structure that will enhance our collective shared knowledge."
Awakening
At the start of Trump's presidency, EU leaders harbored hopes that the combative president would team up with them to address an array of issues with China, particularly related to trade disputes, on which Beijing had long refused to give any ground. Instead, Trump lumped the EU, and especially Germany, together with China as trade rivals who had taken advantage of the U.S., and even slapped punitive tariffs on EU steel and aluminum products that prompted swift retaliation from Brussels.
And even as Pompeo said he was excited about the new dialogue over China, he reiterated some areas of sharp disagreement between Washington and European allies, including over Trump's surprise decision to reduce the U.S. military presence in Germany, which Trump has linked to his political disagreements with Berlin, including Germany's slow increases in military spending and its continued support of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.
Pompeo in his speech tried to insist that Trump's decision was based on a careful "strategic review" of military deployment levels and needs — a point that has been flatly refuted by current and former U.S. military officials.
Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign policy chief | Stephanie Lecocq/EPA
Given the deep lack of trust, it seems unlikely that much progress will be made discussing China or anything else between now and the November election in the U.S. EU leaders at the moment are intensely focused on debating their new long-term budget and a European Commission proposal for an ambitious economic recovery fund.
The Brussels Forum is often a showcase for the exchange of ideas among transatlantic allies, but that has hardly been the case during Trump's years in office. In another speech to the German Marshall Fund, in December 2018 in Brussels, Pompeo left his audience of high-powered officials in stunned silence as he unleashed an attack on multilateral institutions and "bureaucrats."
Pompeo opened Thursday's speech by insisting that he was right the first time. "I don't think that was a favorite among the European press," he said of his 2018 speech. "But you should know that privately many of my counterparts told me that they agreed with me."
On China, Pompeo said he believed the devastating COVID-19 pandemic had created more willingness in the U.S. and Europe to confront the Asian giant, picking up a favorite theme of Trump who called the virus "kung flu" at his rally in Oklahoma.
"The United States is not forcing Europe to choose between the free world or China's authoritarian vision — China is making that choice," Pompeo said in his speech, adding: "The CCP's cover-up of the coronavirus, an outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, which has now killed tens of thousands of our people and hundreds of thousands of people across the world, I think that has accelerated everyone's awakening. Europeans, like Americans, are starting to find their voice."
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