In this barbaric 21st century, anti-Trumpian America and Europe are faced with a painful dilemma. Which side should they be on? Above all, United Europe (de jure, but disunity), which for more than seventy years, after the terrible Second World War, deluded itself into believing—by rejecting nationalism and affirming the values of democracy and the Declaration of Human Rights, the foundation of the United Nations and international organizations—it had made a decisive contribution to the magnificent and progressive destiny of humanity. A profound disillusionment for Europe, which had believed in the chimera of the advent of a new era of milk and honey, promising the "End of History," pathetically prophesied by Francis Fukuyama in the early 1990s. Today, Europe, divided and institutionally incomplete, is forced to accept the end of a long-cherished dream: that of becoming the world's third geopolitical power. In a world where only the law of the strongest and the jungle now reigns, a united Europe remains a commercial giant but a geopolitical dwarf. A continent that for decades has outsourced its military defense to NATO and the United States and (to a large extent) its energy supplies to Putin's Russia, and therefore lacks the bargaining power to free itself from its humiliating status of vassalage to Trump's America. It is therefore incapable of defending, in the face of Trump's fury, that liberalism based not on the law of force but on multilateral agreements that has characterized the last eighty years of international economic relations.
Looking at Trump's actions – totally unpredictable but perhaps not as irrational as it appears at first sight – one is reminded of the theses of the Austrian economist who took refuge in the USA Joseph Alois Schumpeter, who defined the founding principle of capitalism as "creative destruction." "The process of transformation that extends from the artisanal factory to large industrial complexes illustrates (...) an organic transformation of industry that incessantly revolutionizes economic structures from within, ceaselessly destroying the old and ceaselessly creating the new. This process of creative destruction is the essential fact of capitalism, what capitalism consists of, the framework within which the life of every capitalist complex is destined to unfold..."
Like a phoenix, it dies and rises again. Schumpeter identified the creative destruction produced by capitalism not as a threat but as a force for entrepreneurship, which is called upon to continually innovate not only in technology but also in ideas and production and organizational processes. The true key to the system's success lies not in "how capitalism administers existing structures, but rather how it destroys them and creates others." This creative destruction in a context of constant competition, he argued, brings about continuous progress and maximizes economic well-being. According to him, even "a certain amount of monopolies" is preferable to "perfect competition," since they represent "a constant threat that fosters discipline before it attacks." It is difficult to see the Trump Administration's (economic and political) conduct as a coherent economic policy plan.
From what it seems, what prevails is the immediate instinct and constant contradictions typical of those accustomed to a tug-of-war in pursuit of the best deal, without fear of imposing the law of the strongest. And yet, this total unpredictability, this constant conflict, this creative destruction (if it ever turns out to be creative and if the MAGA Will it succeed in its attempt to relaunch the American superpower) represent perhaps the worst poison for the Confucian philosophy on which the ancient Chinese empire was based and which continues to permeate the profound mentality of the new communist Chinese imperial government, led with full powers and an iron fist by Xi Jinping? A philosophy based on the concept of harmony (which turns into violent censorship for those who challenge its current political interpretation and demand freedom of opinion and criticism, freedom of individual, political, or ethnic expression).
By overturning the rules of a globalization based on multilateralism and international organizations, and imposing a strategy of confrontation between new empires based on the law of the strongest, Trump is imposing a structurally disharmonious environment on China, uncongenial to China's socio-cultural foundations. The ancient warning of Sun Tzu, author of the "Treaty on War," is well-remembered by the new Communist emperor, Xi Jinping: "Know your enemy's moves in advance, and do not enter the fray until you are certain you will win the war." With Trump, all of this is objectively more difficult. It cannot be denied that the glorious era of multilateralism, regulated trade, and international organizations—precisely because they are based on clear and shared rules—has allowed China to develop at an extraordinary pace and expand its control and economic hegemony across entire continents, particularly in Asia, emerging countries, and trade routes around the world.
Aided by the naive benevolence of the United States and Europe, in the era of multilateralism, regulated markets, and international organizations, China has exploited its developing country status (which its economic strength no longer justifies) and its most-favored-nation clause (granted in defiance of its authoritarian regime) to become the world's second-largest power and prepare to become the first. And this, in defiance of the principles of multilateral free trade, by stacking the deck and without truly transforming its economy into a market economy.
Xi Jinping's China has strengthened its dirigiste state system, completely controlled by the Communist Party, over industry and has created a very powerful network of gigantic state-owned enterprises (see Le multilateralisme à l'épreuve, Institut Jean Monnet 2023). It has also succeeded in having a series of international treaties rewritten and reinterpreted in its favor and in proposing (in particular to the Asian and BRICS countries) a reorganization of the world economic-financial system as an alternative to the one currently dominated by the dollar. In short, proposing itself as the hegemonic power of a new world economic-financial order of which the Renminbi (which means “people's money”) is the reference currency.
Europe's dilemma is therefore only apparent. Reluctantly, humiliated and with its fists in its pockets, it is forced to accept the American law of the MAGAIt must take care of its own defense by increasing its military budget by 800 billion (purchasing the majority of its weapons and military technology from the US...). And by purchasing hundreds of billions of dollars in liquid gas... also from the United States. Its dependence on the US is inexorable. A Third Way is nowhere in sight.
