The geopolitical incompetence of Europeans

by Guy Mettan*

If you want to understand what’s happening in the world, there’s no point listening to the experts who take to the airwaves on our radio and television stations. They live in a parallel world that no longer has anything to do with current international realities. Even American commentators are sometimes out of their depth.
  It is better to follow some of Asia’s best analysts from time to time, such as Shashi Tharoor, the prominent Indian author and political figure, and M. K. Bhadrakumar the former diplomat who now writes and publishes Indian Punchline. There is Zhang Weiwei in China and Kishore Mabubhani in Singapore. In a recent podcast, the last expresses his bewilderment at the “geopolitical incompetence of European heads of state and government”. Mabubhani is equally unapologetic about the blind arrogance of the US intellectual elite.
  The diplomatic offensive the Trump administration has been conducting since the beginning of the week to end the war in Ukraine proves Mabubhani  absolutely right. The Europeans and the British – obsessed with the warmongering of the von der Leyen-Baerbock-Kallas-Rutte-Starmer quintet and mesmerised by the laments of the charming comedian from Kiev – saw nothing coming. They did not foresee Trump; they did not foresee the tornadoes he would unleash with his threats of conquest and his tariff wars. Nor did they foresee the peace, or at least the silencing of arms, that he hopes to bring to Palestine and Ukraine.
  All of this had been announced for months.
  The result: The one-and-a-half-hour conversation between Trump and Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, 12 February, see above] threw the Europeans off balance. They stood on the side-lines in consternation, they who had bet everything on Russia’s “diplomatic isolation” and “economic collapse”. Even the media remained silent, barely mentioning the event the next day or even ignoring it completely.
  That much-remarked telephone conversation is an important turning point after three years of war. Four of the most senior figures in the Trump administration – Vice-President J. D. Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and special envoy Steven Witkoff – went to Europe to deliver the message that the US no longer wanted this war and would enter into direct negotiations with Moscow without asking the Europeans for their opinion. The mood at the Munich Security Conference, 14–16 February, was very predictably tense.
  The irony is that Trump is proving to be the best defender of long-term European interests in this matter. Not only is he willing to forego the economic benefits that the war in Ukraine has brought to the United States; he is also helping Europe’s faltering economies to recover after the Continent severed all energy and trade ties with Russia. Trump now demands privileged access to Ukraine’s plentiful and diverse mineral supplies, and a share in its revenue from ports and infrastructure operations, in exchange for US$500 billion in American investments. This gives the Washington–Kiev a pronounced mercantilist aspect. In effect, Trump is forcing Europeans to take charge of their own defence and reassume their own geopolitical role. Ultimately, the whole of Europe, including Ukraine, will have to thank him for this.
  Oleksyi Arestovitch, a former adviser to Zelensky, was not wrong when he recently confessed in his blog that Ukraine had done everything wrong by indulging, since independence 1991, in a nationalist, Russophobic frenzy and, beginning in 2014, in a conflict with Russia that was lost from the outset.
  For Asians, who look at Europe from afar and follow the United States up close, this incoherent attitude, this blatant ignorance of the European elites toward the physical, economic, geographical, and political realities of their own continent is nothing short of astounding.
  Why do Europeans ignore the fact that they are fated to live alongside their great Russian neighbour for all eternity and that intelligent cooperation with them is preferable to war? Why do they ignore the fact that Russia, which has been periodically invaded by their predecessors for a thousand years, is primarily concerned with its security and puts this concern above all others? Why do they ignore the effects of the insults they constantly hurl at the Russian head of state, who they accuse of all mistakes and misdeeds?
  Why do they not accept that the United States, worried about its relative decline, is today trying to refocus on itself in the hope of restoring its place in the global order? Why don’t Europeans, living on a continent as diverse, complex, complicated, and sometimes contradictory as Southeast Asia, share the Far East’s wisdom – and, so, to talk to adversaries and rivals, whatever happens and no matter how loathsome they may be, in the knowledge that one must live with them in any case, in any circumstance?
  These are the questions that our Asian friends are asking Europe. They are not without common sense. •

(Translation Current Concerns)

* Guy Mettan is a journalist and member of the Grand Council of the Canton of Geneva, where he presided in 2010. He worked for “Journal de Genève”, Le Temps stratégique, Bilan, “Le Nouveau Quotidien”, and later as director and editor-in-chief of “Tribune de Genève”. In 1996, he founded the Swiss Press Club, of which he was president and later director from 1998 to 2019.

https://www.zeit-fragen.ch/en/archives/2025/nr-4-18-februar-2025/die-geopolitische-inkompetenz-der-europaeer-ist-verblueffend

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