A westward course for Beijing and Moscow, by Dario Pio Muccilli

Whatever the Chinese government may say, there is not a country with better weapons to face the outbreak, but only countries with better or worse transparency. As never before, sharing information among governments is vital to save lives, and it is a demonstration of solidarity by far bigger than sending medical equipment – which is clearly useful but is not the solution to the global crisis.

For now, China and Russia use humanitarian medical aid to expand their influence in the West, which is fascinated like a kid by the friendship the Eastern powers are showing.

Europe in particular is the center of this strategy, as Beijing and Moscow send face masks almost once a week to European Union countries like Italy, ruled by a center-left government that is closer to China and Russia than it wants to admit. In fact, Italy has been the main European sponsor of China’s Belt and Road initiative, the commercial plan that the Chinese Communist Party has formulated in order both to flood (even more than now) the Western market with Chinese-made products and to control European harbors like Trieste in Italy, already strategic for connections with Asia.

Xi Jinping and Putin know that Europe is the key to strengthening their economic power in the West and supplanting the United States. If now they are sending medical help, tomorrow they will send money, with state loans becoming the new weapons to consolidate dominance over smaller countries.

Nevertheless, many European politicians push for a stronger relationship with the two Eastern powers, believing that they can play chess together without seeing their kings captured. The main reason this approach is so widely promoted is that Asia is such a fertile market, whose work rules are less tough than elsewhere.

Many governments in Europe are like sailors who navigate a sea populated by sirens without covering their ears. Wishing to assert their legitimate claim to independence from American foreign policy, they make alliances with countries that could represent a threat to their freedom.

USA must emphasize its role as the guarantor of European freedom in order to persuade the old continent that the Atlantic alliance is the best one. This outbreak may be fundamental to establishing the geopolitical structure of European Union, as it will choose its allies according to the amount of help received.

US officials have quite understood this, which is why they are trying to push European public consciousness in favor of Washington, where Mike Pompeo released interviews on April 9 to eight European newspapers, saying, “No one will help you like the USA.”

But he is not the only one who has a voice on media across Europe, as there are many websites and TV programs that host intellectuals like Diego Fusaro, an Italian philosopher well-known throughout Europe, who believes that the US has shown a lack of solidarity with Europe because of the recent NATO exercise “Defender Europe 20” in Germany and Poland. He said that while USA was sending 6,000 soldiers, China sent medicine.

Fusaro is historically a supporter of Russia, linked to the Italian extreme right, as he wrote articles with titles like “Praise to Putin’s Russia.” He’s now trying, like a thousand others, to undermine American prestige with conspiracy theories about an alleged invasion of Europe supported by NATO. US diplomacy should not underestimate the power of such influential opinion leaders, who are hosted on TV talk shows every day.

The virus is posing a challenge to America’s global standing. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, what has mainly changed is the spread of capitalism in both formerly communist and formally communist countries like Russia and China. For this reason, Europe does not have to choose alliances based exclusively on a shared economic and political model – it becomes a question of convenience.

So USA has to persuade European governments that there is still a difference between Washington and Beijing or Moscow – the difference being freedom, which Europe cannot expect to defend alone with an army out of NATO or with a political strategy unpopular on the other side of the ocean.

Europe’s proposal to make alliances with the Eastern powers, without danger to its freedom, is arrogant and unreal. The coronavirus crisis must not hide this basic truth, whatever help China and Russia can send to the continent.

Dario Pio Muccilli is the Star-Revue’s Italian correspondent, based in Turin. Email him at [email protected].