Nathalie Tocci on the birth of a new Europe, and what it means for Australian security
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I can't think of a conversation in Europe on security and defense issues that will inevitably revolve around what's happening in Europe and Ukraine that does not mention China.

As we were talking about earlier, this is really front and center of the minds of people in the foreign policy community across Europe, that these things cannot be disentangled. So in terms of understanding awareness, we will not go back to the days in which

East Asia, yeah, maybe China a little bit nasty in East Asia, but you know, towards the West it's a nice teddy bear and only interested in the economy. Like those days have gone for good and there's no turning back.

Welcome to Stop the World, the Aspie podcast. I'm David Rowe. And I'm Olivia Nelson. We're talking today about Europe, which according to our guest is being born again as it reinvents itself for an era without America, with a deeply adversarial Russia and with global challenges including those in the Indo-Pacific region.

That guest is none other than Natalie Tocci, Director of the Instituto Afari Internazionale and one of the world's top experts on European foreign and strategic policy. Natalie wears several other hats and was previously a special advisor to EU High Representatives Federica Mogherini and Joseph Borrell.

during which she wrote the European Global Strategy and worked on its implementation. We chased Natalie down this week in part because of the gesture that EU President Ursula von der Leyen made to Australia in raising the prospect of a Europe-Australia security agreement.

During the conversation, Natalie gives us her assessments of the motives and merits of such a security partnership, the link between European and Indo-Pacific security, the China-Russia relationship, and her very useful theory about thick and thin norms as bases for international cooperation. Natalie also explains her confidence about European leadership, the centrality of Ukraine to European security, and the best and worst possibilities for US support to Ukraine under Donald Trump.

Natalie is a vibrant, deeply thoughtful and highly entertaining commentator on these very difficult but absolutely indispensable issues. We think this is an absolute must listen wherever you live. It is global thinking at its best. Enjoy Natalie Tocci.

So I want to start on this suggestion from the EU President Ursula von der Leyen to Anthony Albanese earlier this week for a Europe-Australia security and defence partnership. We can get onto the merits or otherwise of this in a moment, but first, just what does this signify that Europe is reaching out and looking to deepen partnerships in this way?

Well, I mean, I think this is part of the broader story, which is both European, but of course, not only European, in which, let's call it the rest of the West, is looking for ways and means, both economic and political and security, to really huddle together. So I think that's the sort of broader picture.

The more specific angle to this is that on the European side, as a consequence of Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine, on the one hand, and on the other hand,

the risk or rather the threat of a US uncoordinated disengagement from European security, or perhaps even a US betrayal. So you kind of have these two elements together, and this is essentially pushing Europe to really invest very significantly in its defense. Now, as part of that initiative,

Basically, the EU is now developing what is known as the SAFE instrument. So this is basically a funding program backed by EU loans, whereby groups of different European countries would basically work together towards producing military capacities that have essentially been identified as being essential to Europe.

Now, a big debate surrounding this question has been the participation of third countries. And yes, third countries, yes, can participate. But then the question is, under what conditions? Which third countries? You obviously can't open it up to everyone. And so...

Basically, where the EU has landed on this question of third countries is basically on the one hand, those countries that are currently candidate countries to enter the European Union, and on the other hand, countries which have, and here we come to the point, rather long-winded way of doing so, a security and defense partnership with the European Union. Now, at the moment, countries that have such partnerships are

include both neighborhood countries, Norway, Switzerland, but also South Korea. And we're obviously, Ukraine, you know, looking at therefore enlarging this on the one hand to a crucial country, which is obviously the United Kingdom,

That security and defence partnership was really the heart of the reset between the EU and the UK in the summit that took place only a few days ago. And so Australia being added to this, and it's, as I said, you know, it's not a huge...

group of countries. I mean, it's really a rather restricted group of countries. But it really, I think, speaks to this broader political drive of ensuring that the rest of the West stick together. Yeah, okay. And I think, look, that huddling together alone is an argument for in favour of doing something like this for the reasons that you've touched on there.

Fond du Lien's remarks have prompted some debate in Australia, not a fierce debate, but some discussion back and forth

Anthony Albanese didn't exactly jump at the idea when it was put to him in Rome immediately after. Some commentators here have complained that it might distract Australia from our primary area of interest, which is, of course, the Indo-Pacific. Also complained that it might be a drag on our defence force, which is, some would say, less well-funded than it could be and a bit overstretched at the moment. Might even entangle us in a European conflict or crisis. I mean, the latter one, I think, frankly, is probably a bit improbable. But

What do you see as the merits, including for Australia? That includes practical merits and symbolic merits. Could you also explain what would the safe instrument actually be, the benefits and the obligations that that would involve? Interesting that actually it's raised criticism because the way I think one should look at the question is really turning it on its head.

This entire initiative, the whole sort of security and defense drive in Europe is really aimed at increasing, strengthening security and defense capacities. And obviously, it's mainly done internally, but the understanding in Europe has always been that we're obviously stronger together.

And so the whole point of the exercise is really aimed at making both the European Union and its partners stronger militarily by cooperating. And specifically, this basically means that this is why I was saying, you know, the whole debate over third countries

The rules are yet to be determined, but there is also a financial advantage that third countries like Australia would basically reap by participating in these programs. As I said, the rules are yet to be determined. It doesn't necessarily mean that Australian defense companies would have direct access to some of these funds, but there could be an indirect benefit to the extent that, say, for example, just for the sake of argument,

You have an Australian defense company, either it's based in Europe or it's not based in Europe, it's based in Australia, but participates in a multinational project to produce military capacity X, right?

And to the extent that the European companies in that same project may be benefiting from EU funding, the entire project basically would be better funded. And this would have an indirect benefit to the Australian company participating in this particular endeavor.

So there's only an upside, basically, in terms of defence and defence industry for Australia. But then there's the wider political question, which I think you're also pointing to, which is, you know, is there a trade-off between devoting your resources, political capital, security capital on Europe, Russia, Ukraine, everything that falls into that kind of box, as opposed to China, East Asia? Yeah.

And to be honest, I think if there's one thing that we've learned over the last few years is that actually we can't disentangle these two questions, right? There wouldn't be a war in Ukraine the way it is at the moment if there wasn't a very deep involvement of China in sustaining Russia's military effort.

We wouldn't be where we are if the relationship between Russia and North Korea was not what it was. I mean, you know, just think about even the symbolism of it. You know, I mean, there are Asian soldiers fighting a war on European soil.

I mean, this is something that has not happened for many, many, many decades, right? So obviously, and here we're talking about the war which has already sort of exploded, right, which is the one in Ukraine. And God forbid there won't be others. But I think it really, you know, Ukraine in itself really points to the fact that, as I said, we can't really disentangle Ukraine.

these questions. To the extent that Russia and China do not disentangle themselves, it doesn't actually make any sense for us to disentangle what is not disentanglable.

As I tweeted yesterday, I did a TV interview yesterday and I was cursing myself afterwards because I'd forgotten to use my best line, which is that if European security is unrelated to the Indo-Pacific, then somebody forgot to tell Beijing and Moscow because they're as thick as thieves right now. So anyway, I'm glad to be able to get that out there. So yeah, look, I definitely want to come back to the connectedness of the strategic regions in a moment, but just on the sort of political and atmospheric linkages between

like-minded parts of the world, democracies or rule-abiding countries, what you will. A common view in Australia in some foreign policy circles is that our key partnerships are in this region. That's understandable.

But the flow on thinking is that it means that shared values such as democratic values ought not to be overstated as a factor in relationships, given that some of our regional neighbors are not democracies, or at least are sort of suspicious of the idea that it's a fulcrum around which to orientate strategic relationships. From your point of view in Europe, to what extent do you think values should be a binding force between

Europe and say Australia. And what do you think the sort of prevailing view in Europe

at the moment, sort of irrespective of geography? So, I mean, I think we can probably kind of unpack it into two broad points. I mean, I think there's a story of the, let's call them thicker norms, right, which bind Europe and Australia. And here we're basically talking about liberal democracy in all of its kind of, you know, shapes and forms, but it's the separation of power, it's the rule of law, it's the independence of the judiciary, it's human rights, so on and so forth.

And, you know, to be honest, and this is why this is, you know, increasingly a story of the rest of the West. I mean, you know, it's not a huge number of countries, right? And to the extent that we actually think that these things are important, and by the way, I think that the discussion that we were having a moment ago is essential to this because, frankly speaking, it makes no sense whatsoever to invest in defense

if there isn't clarity of what is it that you want to defend, right? And so I think the values discussion is really the kind of flip side of the coin of this kind of tougher security and defense discussion that we're having. Just think of,

Again, the kind of symbolism when Russia's invasion of Ukraine began. I don't know if the image ever reached Australia, but there was this super powerful photograph weeks later when the massacres in Bucha took place of a woman, her carbonized hand, she was dead, holding a key holder with the flag of the European Union.

I think this really brought home the way in which war and peace and democracy and defense are really part of a single story here. Defense, democracy, two sides of the same coin.

I think it is fair to say that there are also thinner norms. This is perhaps the story of Australia and some of its partners in the region, but also Europe and some of its partners in the region. We no longer, perhaps unfortunately, perhaps fortunately, depending on how one looks at it, but we no longer have the power to wag our fingers and tell others how they can govern themselves.

And so, in a sense, we don't have the power perhaps to influence those thicker norms of what happens within a nation state. However, I think that we can agree, hopefully, even with these countries, otherwise, presumably, they wouldn't be partners.

that some of the very basics of international law, like sovereignty and territorial integrity and the fact that you don't invade your neighbors, for example, right? You don't need to go beyond the first couple of articles of the UN Charter, right? And that surely is the thinnest

baseline on which these partnerships are built, even if those thicker norms are not shared. Yeah, I think that's a really, really fantastic, clear way of laying it out. And sometimes I feel as if the two things are confused. I mean, certainly we can work very constructively with countries

with whom we share those thinner norms, even if we don't share the thicker ones. And it's not gonna help us convince them or persuade or even pressure them to adopt the thicker norms, but it is still constructive work that can be done. And you are improving the overall prospects for peace

prosperity and stability in the world by doing so. So, no, I think you've laid it out really well. You wrote in mid-March, you wrote, I think what is a serious contender for my favorite line of the year so far. You wrote, I'm going to quote it here because I think it deserves a wide audience. "Saving Ukraine is a necessary condition for securing Europe. Can they succeed?

If they can muster a fraction of Winston Churchill's strategic vision, Volodymyr Zelensky's courage and Barack Obama's hope, then yes, they can. I love it. And I hope our audience appreciates it. I want to get your views on, I mean, that was in mid-March that you wrote that, two months on, how is it feeling? How is European leadership feeling? It's sort of from over here in Australia, I get these sort of glimpses of

and flashes of inspiration and heroism, but then it sort of feels as if things drop off again. Are you confident at the moment that the national leaders and some of the ones that you mentioned in your piece, and we saw those great photos recently of the four European leaders with Zelensky, what was it? Donald Tusk, Merz, Starmer, I mean, Starmer in the UK, obviously, and Macron. And so, you know, clearly they are all playing an important role. But are you feeling confident right now about that kind of leadership? Yeah.

Actually, yes. I feel confident both if I look at, well, if I look at several things. Well, firstly, if I look at, you know, in the big scheme of things, right, and I think it was Donald Tusk that put this in, I think, a really compelling way. Does it in any case really make sense for 350 million Americans to defend 500 million Europeans against 140 million Russians?

And those 140 million Russians, frankly speaking, over the last three and over, you know, three and three months time have not exactly demonstrated incredible military might. Yeah. I mean, here we are three and a half years on and Russia has essentially conquered Russia.

4% more of Ukrainian territory compared to what it had taken back in 2014. So not exactly. And this has been happening with both Americans and Europeans and others. Yes, some assistance, but frankly, we need to be careful. Otherwise, we're going to get to nuclear Armageddon and what have you.

So if I look at the end of the story, I'm actually very confident that yes, we can. Yeah. I mean, it's inconceivable that we can't, to be honest. Now, the kind of pessimism obviously is in the process because as I think your question was kind of hinting at, it is and sometimes it does feel a bit sort of stop and go, right? And also there's not,

too much clarity exactly in what is the actual format within which this will take place. You know, at the moment, we have, you know, this coalition of the willing for simply a lack of a better term. And this coalition of the willing, you know, what is it exactly? Well, I mean, there's a

core of countries, France, Germany, UK, Poland, very clearly in the lead, alongside, I would say, the smaller but extremely committed Nordic Baltic group. And that's actually a significant core.

In the sense that if you actually do the math, we're talking about more or less 260 million people. In Europe, as often as the case, once you get a critical mass moving in a certain direction, you then have other countries jumping on board.

So, say for example, my own country, Italy or Spain, maybe we're not there at the forefront of these discussions, but you don't want to miss the train if you see it leaving the station, as well as obviously the involvement of other partners, including Australia. So, on the one hand, you kind of see this dynamic happening. On the other, it's not quite clear what is the institutional format within which it's happening.

because it's not the European Union, right? The problem that we have in the European Union is that we have a number of countries, still a sort of small minority, but election after election, we're always there kind of waiting to see what happens.

which are basically they've kind of passed on to the dark side, right? I mean, countries like Hungary, like Slovakia, we very nearly lost Romania. At least that came out well. Well, exactly. So basically what US Vice President J.D. Vance calls the threat from within, I call it the reverse threat.

you know, Vance threat, right? I mean, it's not the threat as he imagines it of these kind of dangerous kind of woke liberals, but it's the threat of far-right forces, which basically means that this thing that is happening, this coalition of the willing cannot really happen within the EU.

But at the same time, it requires involvement of EU institutions and in particular of the European Commission. We started this conversation talking about SAFE. The Commission equals money, right? And money for these things is actually an important thing. So, it's the EU but it's not the EU.

Then it's kind of NATO, but it's not NATO. It has an element of NATO because many of these countries, in fact, all of these countries are NATO allies and also because other countries in the coalition are willing. Think about Canada.

Think about Turkey. Think about Norway. They are important members of this grouping, and they are NATO allies. But at the same time, this is happening because the US goes back to this kind of risk of indifference or betrayal, because the US risks checking out politically from NATO. And so it is and it isn't you.

It is and it isn't NATO. So it's not really, it hasn't taken a kind of consolidated institutional form. So at the moment it's kind of meeting after meeting, summit after summit. But to be honest, there comes a point where something needs to happen between one summit and the next, yeah? And that something means institutions. And so there will come a point where the institutional question I think will be posed. We're not there yet,

But coming back to the beginning and the optimism, as I said, I really struggle to think that given the existential threat that we face, this is actually not going to work out one way or another. Yeah. Okay. So just to be clear though, I mean, are we talking there about a standing institution post-United States or are we talking about a specific coalition of the Willings Foundation?

for Ukraine that might then, I suppose, pave the way for a longer standing institution. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think these things are in many ways kind of, you know, entangled with one another, because obviously the urgency of the here and now is Ukraine.

And it is about, you know, if the U.S. kind of, you know, if Donald Trump gets bored in the best of circumstances and just decides to concentrate on other things, this basically leaves a big void, right? It's not an unfillable void because, you know, at the moment, over the last three years, you know, initially the U.S. really did the lion's share of the support for Ukraine. Today, it's not. You know, today we would need to fill

around 25%. It's not insignificant, but it's not impossible either. So, it can be done, but obviously, it has to be done. So, there's a kind of immediate urgency that surrounds Ukraine.

Incidentally, actually, it also means that Ukraine itself will be integrated in these efforts, both because obviously it's on the recipient side, but also because, and this is something that I only realized a few weeks ago in my last trip to Ukraine, which was a couple of weeks ago,

that there's actually a growing European interest in involving Ukraine because, you know, to be honest, there are only two armies that know how to fight a war in Europe. One is Russia and the other is Ukraine. And so there's an interest in getting that expertise, both in operational terms, but also in defense industry terms. Yeah. I mean, think about Ukraine's drone industry, for example. Absolutely.

So basically, okay, the urgency is Ukraine, but as this thing steps in to address the urgency, it will inevitably then shape the broader conversations about a future European security architecture. Mm-hmm.

Now, as I said, there is an ideal scenario, which is a scenario in which, you know, the US's disengagement from European security is gradual, it's coordinated, it's partial. And in that scenario, I think basically what we're thinking of is, you know, how to, quote unquote, Europeanize increasingly NATO.

right? But there is also a different scenario. And the different scenario is one in which that disengagement is not gradual coordinated, but it's abrupt and angry, right? And in that alternative world, which is obviously a worst-case scenario, but, you know, I mean, we need to think about the worst-case scenario as well. Inevitably,

it will not emerge from within NATO because NATO has the US around the table, right? And so it cannot be the place in which you think about an alternative almost endemically by definition. And I think this kind of also raises this deeper question of, you know, an alliance like NATO, which has been and continues to be an absolutely formidable alliance,

in terms of addressing external threats, Russia today, China perhaps tomorrow, it is endemically incapable of addressing, back to Vance, the threat from within, right? Almost by definition. And I think this raises a real, you know, we had never even contemplated the possibility. And now, as I said, you know, maybe it's not possible

probable. In fact, I hope it's not probable. But, you know, it's probably something a little bit more than simply a black swan. You know, I think it's something that looks a little bit more like a grey rhino. And if we're talking about a grey rhino on something so, as I said, existential, somehow we need to find a place and a venue to, you know, begin planning for it, basically. Yeah. I mean, the number of things that we hadn't...

conceived of or anticipated. I suppose the speed at which we're having to have these very, very necessary conversations is sometimes dizzying. I remember I was reading a piece in the Financial Times a few weeks ago about interviewing a Canadian military expert who was talking about what

adept and effective insurgency personnel the Canadians would make up in the event of a US invasion of Canada. And I just remember thinking, I cannot believe I'm reading this. It's not in The Onion, it's in The Financial Times. I cannot believe I'm reading this piece. But that segues quite nicely into what I wanted to cover next, which is just to talk about those possible

based on, frankly, Donald Trump's decision whether he gets bored in a slower way or whether there's a fast and much less pleasant disengagement that just means kind of ripping the US out of the picture. I mean, clearly, Trump has made it obvious. He went into it again in his Truth Social post on

on Monday after his two-hour conversation with Putin, in which he asked Vladimir and Vladimir said no. He's made it clear that he considers a normalized relationship with economic benefit, with Russia as being more important than the fate of Ukraine. But there is still a big difference between sort of remaining in half-heartedly and

continuing particularly to provide things like the intelligence surveillance, reconnaissance capabilities, air defence support, et cetera, for Ukraine and keeping existing sanctions on Russia. A big difference between that and throwing Ukraine completely under the bus in such a way that it either noticeably accelerates Ukrainian losses in a way that's sort of heart-wrenching for the rest of the world to watch or even leads to a quick Russian victory despite

the best efforts of the Europeans to try and pick up the slack that's left. If it is the former US allies might find Trump objectionable and they might, well, they would think that they can continue to work with the US in those circumstances. If it is the latter, it's hard to see it as anything but a complete shattering of an order of magnitude beyond what we're already feeling. I mean, if it is the latter case, and I realize I'm game planning and speculating a little bit here, but what would you see as unfolding if it is the latter?

Well, firstly, I totally agree with the framing of this. I mean, I think these are basically, broadly speaking, the two big options. And I think actually the real purpose of the diplomatic work that Europeans and Ukrainians and other partners have been doing over the last few weeks is

have really been aimed at revealing that the Emperor Putin has no clothes, right? And that there isn't going to be a ceasefire because Russia doesn't want it.

Now, had those diplomatic efforts failed, and of course, we always have to thank Vova for making life easy for us, right? Because, I mean, his demands over the top, in a sense, kind of make that diplomatic work a lot easier. But had that diplomacy failed, I think Trump in his heart of hearts would have been really quite happy to throw Ukraine under the bus and

move ahead with a bilateral agreement with Russia, regardless of an ongoing war in Ukraine. And of course, I think that still is a possibility. I don't think it's a probability. And I think this, as I said, is largely due to the effectiveness of the last few weeks in kind of revealing how things actually are.

But of course, I think, as you say, we can't entirely rule out that possibility. I mean, it's not as probable as it looked only a couple of months ago, but it's not to be ruled out. If that were to happen, I think that it's difficult to see how exactly it would play out. Well, firstly, I would say, as far as the European resolve in kind

kind of assisting Ukraine, it would depend on whether that, let's call it hostile scenario, is hostile to the extent of, let me take it to the extreme, the US not only lifting its own sanctions on Russia, but threatening sanctions on Europeans if they don't lift their sanctions, or on Australia if they don't lift their sanctions on Russia. So you can really take it to kind of, you know, very extreme levels.

In that scenario, we crack. But that's a very, very extreme scenario. In the hostile, but not so hostile scenario in which the U.S. checks out, intelligence cooperation is suspended, and the U.S. does not allow Europeans and other partners even to acquire U.S. military capacities for Ukraine.

I think that's the scenario in which Ukraine loses significant amounts of other territory. But I actually don't think that it's a scenario that would see the end of Ukraine as an independent country altogether. So kind of bad, bad, but not catastrophically bad.

And then you have, I think, the other scenario that you were pointing to, which I really do think is the one where we're headed. And I call it, you know, the scenario of benign indifference. So basically, you know, this is a scenario in which the US checks out, it continues to provide what cannot be bought, i.e. intelligence, and it allows Europeans and others to buy those capacities that they can't produce themselves.

But basically, we're talking about satellites. We're talking about, to an extent, not completely, because there are some air defense systems which are European, for example, the Santee system. But obviously, patriots are important, both the systems and the interceptors. So we're talking

of satellites, we're talking of air defense, and we're talking to an extent of long-range missiles, so the Atacams and the HIMARS and everything else. So I think in that benign indifference scenario in which basically Europeans can buy or buy on behalf basically of Ukraine those capacities,

It will cost, obviously, a bit more, but we're not talking actually about incredible amounts of funding. I mean, at the moment, Ukraine costs 50 billion euros per year, and actually, 35 billion of that is support for the state. So this is essentially kind of fiscally keeping the state running. It's only 15 billion that is on military capacities.

And only 25 of that is actually coming from the US. So it's kind of doable. You know, I mean, it goes back to my earlier point of where, you know, 30 odd fairly rich countries like, yes, we can, you know. So in that scenario of benign indifference, which, as I said, I think it's a trajectory that we're on.

I think we are more or less okay or not very different from how things stand today. Then I think the added, the additional question is in that scenario where the war goes on, does the US strike a bilateral deal with Russia anyway? I don't know.

I kind of have my sort of, depending on the day you ask, actually yesterday I was in a very interesting meeting in Berlin with a number of kind of Republicans from the US coming over and they actually thought it was extremely unlikely that Trump, even if he wanted to, would be able to strike that bilateral deal in the context of a war, especially if he failed to

to demonstrate that the reason why the war is going on is because of awful Zelensky and the fact that he wants to continue. If at the very least, the narrative that emerges is that, okay, Zelensky, we don't like him, but I mean, Putin also is not great. In that scenario, given that also Trump has spoken out so much about kind of peace and all the rest of it in the campaign,

it would probably be difficult to go as far as kind of, you know, sign a kind of business deals with Russia, regardless of the war. But, you know, I mean, never say never, obviously, when it comes to Trump. Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm curious, what did they indicate? What they thought the constraints on him might be in signing those sorts of deals if the war is going on? Well, basically, the Republic

party in Congress. Political constraints. Yeah, political constraints. I mean, the fact that actually there is movement in Congress on sanctions and a new package of sanctions by the US. Now, we don't know whether this is going to come about or not, possibly not. But it really speaks to the fact that there's a growing... I mean, firstly, I would say that in US public opinion, although support for Ukraine has gone down, it remains actually quite high.

And so it would be really a bit of a hard sell if in the context of that still public support for Ukraine, you kind of do the deal with the bad guy as the war continues. No, no, no. That's fair. And I should have mentioned in my original question, just to be fair, Trump has indicated that he would not be pursuing those deals until the war is over. So, I mean, we can...

As you say, never say never. All right. Look, in the time that's left, and I'm sorry, I risk going a bit over here, but I do want to just come back to the Indo-Pacific Euro question that you touched on before, or you went into some detail about before, but I just want to expand on it a bit. So you've talked about in your recent writings, a new Europe is being born. I'm curious to know, I guess, what the capacity of the European Union is now,

Well, within its foreign and security policy for attention on the Indo-Pacific. The Indo-Pacific seemed to be something that Europe was feeling to be more important in recent years. I remember Jens Stoltenberg when he was a NATO head, he was talking up the importance of the Indo-Pacific quite a bit. I just wonder if that remains the case now.

given the pressures that are on Europe, the peril that Russia poses, the abandonment by Trump? Does it have the capacity? Does it still see the Indo-Pacific as sufficiently important in the sense of that connectivity of the two security realms to invest in? Yeah. So, I mean, I can't think of a conversation in Europe where

on security and defense issues that will inevitably revolve around what's happening in Europe and Ukraine that does not mention China. So

As we were talking about earlier, this is really front and center of the minds of people in the foreign policy community across Europe, that these things cannot be disentangled. So in terms of understanding, awareness, we will not go back to the days in which

East Asia, yeah, maybe China a little bit nasty in East Asia, but towards the West, it's a nice teddy bear and only interested in the economy. Those days have gone for good and there's no turning back.

As also, I think, a related and perhaps even deeper question is that this new Europe that is being born, and of course, it would have been nice for it not to be born in many respects, is a Europe that is born in war.

The old Europe, which was a great Europe, right, was a construct for peacetime. Yeah, I loved it. I liked the old America too. We had a great time. But tragically, that peacetime is over. And so as you develop in terms of your thinking, your politics, your institutions,

the overall strategic culture, as it basically kind of resets itself for a different context in Europe, inevitably, it will be increasingly likely to view developments in East Asia with that lens as well. So that's a kind of very broad point, but I think it is the meaningful point.

But yes, you're right, it is obvious that as Europeans scramble to defend themselves in the context of a war in Europe without America, if a war were to erupt tomorrow morning in East Asia, it

It would be complicated, right? But I think we can somehow, I mean, these things are not obviously separate, but we can to an extent separate them. I mean, one is a story of the will and of the mind of where are we in our thinking? And then inevitably, there are constraints on the capacities. And inevitably, the priority in the here and now is Europe.

But as I said, I don't think that there's a going back. I mean, the problem that we used to have was not one of capacities. The problem that we used to have was a problem up here in the head, right? Not in the muscle. The muscle didn't follow because the head wasn't kind of, you know, wired in the right way. And I think, as I said, that has changed for good. Yeah, okay. So presumably, I mean, we do hear some speculation that US withdrawal could even sort of nudge Europe further

a little bit back more towards China. I hear it probably a bit more on the trade side, particularly tariffs and this kind of thing, that Europe might think, okay, well, we actually do need to deepen our economic relationship with China then. And then that brings all sorts of economic security risks. And I guess things go from there. But presumably, you don't think that that's a serious prospect? No, I mean, you're right. There are some that suggest this. I think that they are still in a minority. I think the prevailing view actually in Europe is that as the US...

China relationship, including trade relationship. I mean, now, okay, there's a deal, a first deal has been struck, but still it maintains tariffs at extremely high levels. And so, actually, there's a big concern that the Chinese overcapacity, which was already a problem, could actually exacerbate even further in terms of the dumping onto European markets. So, I mean, the alarm bells are on.

Now, I think you're right in the sense that at the same time, this also sits together with a kind of overall understanding that we can't have trade wars on all fronts. And so, if indeed the trade relationship with the US were to, you know, I mean, if it were to kind of, you know, not reach a deal, if things were to kind of, you know, worsen, exacerbate over time, obviously, this is where the attention would be focused.

And so I think that there is indeed a risk that we lower our guards a little bit when it comes to China. But as I said, I think at the moment, probably the prevailing view is that while, of course, we want to cooperate with China and trade and all the rest of it, but we're not putting our rose-tinted lenses back on.

Right. Okay. Fascinating. Fascinating. As has been the whole conversation. Look, I will let you go. I could talk for hours. I've really enjoyed this. Natalie, thank you so much, but I'll let you go. Yeah, you've got a job to get on with, so I'll let you get on with your day. But thanks for coming on Stop the World. Lovely talking to you. Thanks for listening to another episode of Stop the World. We'll be back next week. Ciao.