There’s one question everyone should always ask themselves: who needs me? Anyone who answers “Nobody” is in great danger. Because, in the end, we are only defended, supported and protected by those who, for rational or emotional reasons, have an interest in doing so, i.e. by those who need us. And we’re not defended when we can’t put forward reasons for being defended, and when we can’t threaten the other with reprisals by depriving him of what he would need from us in return.
The need can be material or emotional: we need bread, protection, as well as love and gratitude. This is the case even in the most apparently altruistic situations, such as the relationship between parents and children: parents look after their children because they see an emotional or material benefit in it. And children only find support from their parents when they demonstrate that they are useful to them.
A social situation is therefore only balanced if each needs the other. So a person, a family, a company, a nation, who needs no one is in great danger.
A person, or a family, that has not taken care of its ascendants and descendants, is threatened. A company that no one really needs is already dead. A nation is only powerful if others need it, and therefore have an interest in protecting it.
We Europeans face this question today in a crucial way: who needs us?
In the East, Russia and China are threatening to invade or vassalize us, while we are still too dependent on them for many raw materials; in the South, waves of climatic and economic migrants are on the horizon. In the West, the United States is threatening to withdraw from NATO, to bar many European companies from their markets, to occupy Greenland, to inundate us with fake news, to impose governments at their command.
More generally, Europe needs the world, while the world thinks it no longer needs Europe, that none of its products are irreplaceable, that none of its armies are useful, that none of its media, ideas or values are necessary.
We will only be able to counter these threats if we are able to show others that they need us too.
In particular, while it is clear that Europeans need the United States for their defense, and for many other things, this is no longer the case in the opposite direction. For a long time, the United States needed Europe to defend its democratic and liberal model, to sell it arms, agricultural products and much more. Today, the European market is an almost insignificant fraction of the world market, Europe’s geopolitical position is no longer an argument to curb American imperial ambitions, and American values drift light-years away from European ideals.
We won’t be able to refuse any American, Russian or Chinese demands if we are unambiguously dependent on them. As long as we are dependent on American armaments and Chinese rare earths, without them being dependent on us for anything other than perfectly substitutable goods, Europe is heading for disaster; in particular, it will have to give in to every American whim, which will impose governments in their boots.
The necessary strategy is therefore clear: if Europe wants to regain its freedom, it must once again become necessary to the world. And depend less on it. In particular, it must depend less on its main ally, and be more useful to it, if it is not to become a colony. Protect our democracies against attempts to destabilize our societies. Build a European defense industry. To become irreplaceable in certain sectors of high technology, the environment and other dimensions of the life economy. This is the key to our survival. It’s more than urgent.
France offering Liberty to America, 1784 Jean Suau