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At this point, the most unsettling question in respect to the future global order concerns the direction the USA might take following the presidential election on November 5. That will depend crucially on whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris emerges victorious. For too long the Europeans have counted on Joe Biden running again. That calculation has been upended by his poor public performances and the assassination attempt against Trump. And now Biden has ceased to be a candidate while Kamala Harris has taken his place. No one knows what the outcome will be.

»The European Union is not really prepared for another Trump presidency.«

However, the European Union is not really prepared for another Trump presidency – not for his protectionist economic policy, American pressure to sever trade relations with China in grand style, or a U.S. security policy that doesn’t follow any longer-term strategy but is defined by deals. Here, too, the United States will likely shift its dealmaking from the EU as a whole to individual countries. A second Trump presidency would not inevitably lead to the end of the trans-Atlantic relationship, but the latter would be different than it has been in the past.

As a metaphor for geopolitics, chess provides a variety of insights, among them the principle that, because one does not know what move the opponent will make, one must prepare for any of the moves that s/he could make in order to have a countermove at the ready for each that suits one’s own strategy. There is no reason to believe that the Europeans have thought in terms of those guidelines, let alone that they have prepared for what might come next. Incidentally, the same observation holds true for the German Federal Government.

Apparently, the favored shibboleth of the last few years, which holds that the worst-case scenario will never happen and that everything will go off without a hitch, still prevails. But anyone who plays that way will lose every match – against opponents like Putin, Xi Jinping and probably Trump as well. Of course, one might assume that the latter is not a good chess player because he can be diverted from his game plan by opportunism: seeking what appear to be more favorable prospects. But, like it or not, he has the stronger pieces on the board

The U.S. Retreat from Europe

In the medium term, even if the Democrats win the presidential contest, one should assume that the United States will withdraw from Europe, leaving worries about security and self-assertion to the Europeans themselves. For the USA, the Indo-Pacific region is the challenge of the twenty-first century, one that the country cannot avoid. And the Europeans will have to decide whether they will side with the USA in this region (there are currently some indications that they will), in order to hold on to the American nuclear deterrent as a quid pro quo. In other words, they must decide whether they see themselves as one component of the »Global West« or whether they will confine their activities to Europe, in which case they would be on their own in providing for their security. In the next few years, they will need to choose which move to make on the global chessboard.

»In the Global South, the autocrats are the more attractive option right now.«

In this context, of course, more is at stake than just the relationship between the United States and Europe. After two or three decades of unipolarity on the part of the USA, observers had the impression that the global order could gradually be organized according to Western rules and values. But in the meanwhile, we are once again confronted by an antithesis between authoritarian and liberal democratic powers. Beyond that, it is worth bearing in mind that the autocrats in the Global South are the more attractive option right now, and that the number of liberal democracies there is in decline. The great question raised in the U.S. presidential elections is whether the USA will continue to belong among the liberal democracies in the future or whether it will end up in the authoritarian camp – or perhaps oscillate between the two alternatives.
 

The notion of a »camp,« as applied to the group of authoritarian regimes, implies that they are a collection of actors but not an alliance capable of taking joint action. It makes sense to distinguish between regimes that are organized as authoritarian autocracies and those that tend to be authoritarian-technocratic. Furthermore, we should distinguish between those that may actually hold elections, but elections in which it is clear that the current power-holders will emerge victorious, and those in which the independence of the judiciary and freedom of the press may have been suppressed, but in which one cannot exclude the possibility that the authoritarian leader might go down to defeat, thereby losing power. Putin would fall into the first category, while Erdoğan and Orbán belong in the second. Xi has worked his way up into the first group.

Thus, quite different actors have been brought together in the camp of the authoritarians. They like to speak of their friendship, whereas in truth they deeply mistrust one another. Even in the one relationship that looks most like an alliance—that between Russia and China—we are dealing with a form of cooperation born of necessity, but one that the clumsy conduct of the »West« has aggrandized.

Preventing an alliance

Russia is dependent on China because it sells the latter raw materials and energy sources. Meanwhile, Beijing has used its New Silk Road strategy to pull some Central Asian countries into its orbit, even though Moscow regards those countries as belonging to its own sphere of influence. Within the camp of authoritarians, there are a few that unscrupulously exploit the problems of others. That gives the USA and the EU an opportunity to make sure that the authoritarian states remain a camp and that no alliance emerges from them. This is the imperative that should guide the grand strategy of the Global West.

»It is high time to undertake a critical reassessment of the instrument of economic sanctions.«

In this context it is high time to undertake a critical reassessment of the instrument of economic sanctions, one which currently enjoys a high degree of popularity, but which has not worked very well. For what reasons and purposes are sanctions being imposed? Is it possible that sanctions lead certain actors to cooperate, even though it would be better if they remained at arm’s length? Do we want to use sanctions to make the world a better place? Or is it really all about geopolitical and economic-policy goals of a kind that make it seem advisable to maintain robust relations with a government even when the regime in question does not share one’s own values?  And what price has to be paid when one no longer has any influence in certain regions such as the Sahel?

If an era of unipolar arrangements is coming to an end, as now appears to be the case with the United States‹ withdrawal from global responsibility, and the project of a rules-based, values-supported world order is to be replaced by a multipolar system, then the rules also will change that define how the pieces are to be moved around the geopolitical chessboard. The reach of normative imperatives is diminishing, while the mechanics of the struggle for power and influence weigh more heavily in the balance. That is regrettable, since with it one of humanity’s hopes that appeared tantalizingly close at hand has dissolved into nothingness. We can mourn its loss, but in doing so we would be abandoning our place at the chessboard and taking a seat on the spectators‹ bench. There, we would indulge our underlying melancholy as we waited for the rules of the game to change again. Concretely, that would mean that the Europeans and the Germans among them would not sit at the table; instead, they would be pushed around by the others. At best, they would be relegated to the second row. 

»The EU must be in a position to eject from the game member states that work against it.«

 If that is not what we want, then, over the next few years, the EU will need to develop a capacity for taking action that it currently does not possess. The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who is inherently a political dwarf, has taken advantage of his turn as president of the EU Council to travel around and play his own game on the global political stage. That is the most recent example of how really unimportant actors in the European Union seize the chess pieces and do as they wish with them. If the EU wants to be a global actor, it must enact two reforms: establish an internal hierarchy and create a tiered membership with different rights and duties. In any event, it must be in a position to eject from the game member states that are only in the EU to work against it. We can afford horizontal authority only if every member that takes its turn at the helm follows the rules and adheres to the majority position. Where that is not the case, the element of verticality must be strengthened, so that – at least to a certain extent – a joint strategy can be pursued. There is no question that Germany would be assigned a key role in a more hierarchical EU. 

The German Federal Government must develop keener ambition for European-level politics than it has shown hitherto, and this for several reasons: the paralysis of French politics which will probably last for quite a while; the narrowly-defined self-interest of the Italians, who see the EU as little more than an aid-donor to help solve their own problems; and the options in security policy that have emerged with the new government in London.

Overcoming the self-blockade

But is it at all important for the EU to become an actor that can really get things accomplished? Or is it enough that it should remain a large market? And what will it mean if the EU regresses to the status of an aggregation of nation-states, i.e. a mere camp, which is the goal of the right wing in the European Parliament? Historically, when a unipolar order that once encompassed what counted as the »world« at the time collapsed, the political order became regionalized, and several centers of power began competing with one another. That was the case when the empire of Alexander the Great fell apart, to be followed by the wars of the Diadochi, Alexander’s former generals. It also happened when the western Roman Empire went into terminal decline, which led to the rise of Germanic kingdoms, and when the Habsburg Monarchia universalis project collapsed, giving rise to the European state-system. And this pattern has recurred as the American unipolar order loses momentum. Russia and China have concentrated on expanding the territories they control, the Russians, by using military might, and the Chinese – for now anyway – by relying on economic and financial power. The USA still maintains its usual sphere of influence, while India attempts to unite the Global South under its leadership. And the Europeans? They are busy blockading themselves. 

»Multipolar world orders demand close attention, resoluteness, and the capacity to act.«

However, that is something they can no longer afford to do for many reasons. For one thing, they are faced with the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine on their southeastern flank, which itself is but one element in a project of restoring imperial power that also includes putting pressure on the Baltic countries. Furthermore, the Balkans remain unstable, so if Putin succeeds in redrawing borders in Ukraine through violent means, others in that region may be inclined to follow suit. Then there is the Middle East, which is threatened by a major war that could impose a new order and hegemon in the region. Finally, we should not neglect the instability plaguing the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea or the role that Russian mercenaries are now playing in Africa’s Sahel zone. Whether we look east or south, it’s clear that Europe cannot afford to lapse into provincial complacency, however attractive that prospect might be for those inclined to pacifism. Multipolar world orders demand close attention, resoluteness, and the capacity to act.