Sometimes the tragic situation of the world is actually good for a laugh. It has recently come to my attention that while the US was ‘pivoting to Asia’ in an effort to contain China — making an issue over its build-up of tiny islands in the South China Sea for military purposes — China was creeping into Europe through the back door, creating an economic and political organization with the sixteen of Europe’s 28 countries are in the East. While the US keeps up a steady barrage of warnings about Russia taking over Europe, China has set up an organization called 16plus1, some members of which are not members of the European Union.
After the various European springs which, in the late eighties, secured the independence of the formerly Warsaw Pact countries, four of them, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, got together as The Visegrad Four in February, 1991, ten months before the collapse of the Soviet Union in December of that same year, “for the purposes of advancing military, cultural, economic and energy cooperation with one another, along with furthering their integration in the EU.” This suggests that they knew that the Western European countries would require them to travel an arduous road before they could join the club, which indeed they did.
Most outsiders are unaware that the eastern part of Europe was under Ottoman control for centuries before becoming part of the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence after World War II — or that it took more than a dozen years after the Soviet collapse for the first Eastern European states to be admitted to the high table in 2004, with others following in 2007 and 2013. Aside from the main divide between east and west which is economical, as it was before the fall of the Berlin Wall, while continuing to provide cradle to grave protections, the east is still not as developed as the West, hindering ascension to the EU.
Poland was the first to quarrel with Brussels over the wording of a proposed European Constitution, which they said must include a reference to God, in a first hint of an east-west religious divide succeeding upon the former political division. in 2015, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the doors of her country to a million Muslim refugees, Brussels ruled that the other countries had to take their fair share. However, in the name of their Christian heritage, the Visegrad Four set themselves against the human rights tradition of Western Europe, and they have not budged since.
What better group of European countries, then, for China to team up with than those anxious to advance their status vis a vis the old-timers? China’s answer to Teddy Roosevelt’s “speak softly, but carry a big stick” is Deng’s “keep low profile and bind your time”. Accordingly, it approached the Visegrad four in 2012, creating the group known as 16+1 the following year, a decision that would make perfect sense even if it was not a prelude to the most ambitious infrastructure project the world has ever seen.
One Belt, One Road was also mooted the following year during Xi’s visit to Astana, Kazakhstan in 2013. It is the biggest infrastructure project ever undertaken, linking the Far East overland and by sea to the Atlantic. China’s privileged relations with the 16+1 foreshadow the participation of these (mainly landlocked) in the rail link’s path through Europe.
Deena Stryker is an international expert, author and journalist that has been at the forefront of international politics for over thirty years, exlusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook”.
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