Pompeo pushes to curb China and Russia in Europe

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began on Tuesday a key tour of Europe with a wide-ranging economic and political agenda. While he will be in the centre and east of the continent, the real focus of the trip is China and Russia.

Mr Pompeo said in a visit to the region last year that Moscow and Beijing pose twin threats to the democratic and economic gains made there since the end of the Cold War. So the trip - which includes stop-offs in the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland, and Slovenia - has a dual agenda to mitigate Russian and Chinese economic and political influence there.

On Russia, one key theme of his tour is eastward redeployment of US troops in Europe. This follows confirmation last week that the Trump team will permanently station 1,000 additional troops in Poland, bringing the total US contingent there to 5,500, only days after the Pentagon formally announced plans to withdraw 12,000 from Germany.

Poland is one of the five Nato members that spends the 2 per cent target of GDP on defence, and the Polish government has been much more welcoming of Mr Trump than Germany and many other counterparts in western Europe. So much so, in fact, that Warsaw even proposed in 2018 to name a military base in the country 'Fort Trump', in return for the US president bolstering the nation's defences.

Yet, it is not just the military threat from Moscow that Mr Pompeo is worried about. He also believes that central and eastern European countries are particularly vulnerable to dependence on Russian energy with this exemplified by Hungary which imports most of its gas, providing significant leverage for Moscow in bilateral relations.

On China, Mr Pompeo and fellow hawks in Washington appear, belatedly, to have woken up and 'smelt the coffee' of Beijing's growing influence in central and wastern Europe. The US Secretary of State will make clear his concern about this and, as he is doing in western Europe too, pushing back against countries using Chinese-headquartered Huawei telecoms technology in 5G networks.

Yet, Beijing's ambitions in the region go well beyond this: Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, for instance, has regularly met Eastern and Central European leaders for '16+1' summits in recent years to discuss deepening economic investment, and political influence across the board, including in areas like infrastructure and green technologies. The states involved in these talks, aside from China, are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Buttressing this 16+1 initiative (which is becoming the 17+1 with the addition of Greece), a number of states have also signed memorandums of understanding with China on its mammoth, US$1 trillion-plus Belt and Road Initiative. These include Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Greece.

In response to this perceived threat, Mr Pompeo and US President Donald Trump have said they will give greater attention to the region reversing many years of what the Secretary of State calls "US disengagement". Beyond security, this includes doubling down on energy and wider economic ties.

On these fronts, top US officials, including Mr Trump, have spoken at 'Three Seas Initiative' conferences in recent years. These feature the nations strategically located between the Black, Baltic and Adriatic Seas: Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, with the intent of boosting regional connectivity not just in energy but also in transport and digital too.

Yet, it is not just Washington which is concerned by Beijing and Moscow's jockeying for political position in eastern and central Europe. Brussels has long been concerned by other world powers 'dividing and ruling' to undermine the continent's collective interests, and is increasingly aware that the popularity of the EU is waning in a number of key states in the region.

Indeed, while challenges to Brussels are often seen through the prism of Western European states, especially with Brexit, central and eastern European states are also proving big thorns in the side of the EU. There is rising economic inequality and significant corruption in the region with backlash witnessed by the growth of what has been called authoritarian anti-liberalism in several states, especially Poland and Hungary.

EUROSCEPTICISM

While increasing euroscepticism is now prevalent over much of the EU, what is striking about Budapest and Warsaw, in particular, is the rise of right-wing populism. This is illustrated by Poland where President Andrzej Duda, narrowly re-elected last month with Mr Trump's help, is forcefully promoting values that often clash with standards promoted by Brussels on democracy, the rule of law and wider freedoms.

Yet, Poland is by no means the only problem for Brussels in the region. Take the example of Hungary, a country with a population of around 10 million, which was at the forefront of Europe's migration challenges of recent years. Indeed, there are growing concerns in Brussels that the nation, under Prime Minister Victor Orban, is following a so-called Russian model by weakening democratic norms, including clamping down on press freedoms.

Problematically for Brussels, Hungary and Poland are leaders of wider groups of countries, including the Visegrad which also includes Slovakia and the Czech Republic with a collective population of around 65 million. While Visegrad countries are by no means a monolithic bloc, they have agreed joint positioning pushing back at proposals being floated for more, post-Brexit integration amongst the EU-27.

It is in this troubled, changing economic and political landscape that world powers are looking to build influence in central and east Europe. With Brussels on the backfoot, US engagement increasing again, and China and Moscow jockeying for position, perhaps the only certainty in the 2020s is that international interest in the region is now only likely to increase significantly as it becomes a growing geopolitical prize.