There's a lot to recommend about that article, although I'll strongly caveat the part about the European Union being a partner in resisting China. The EU can be a partner if it stops trying to supplant NATO and the American influence and power on the continent that comes with NATO.
I start with that quibble because it is important to this statement by the author:
To get through this, the family of free nations in the transatlantic community can’t be neutral in our approach to global affairs and China’s role. After all, we believe in popular sovereignty, human rights, and free enterprise. The Chinese Communist Party does not. If we do not stand together and defend these equities, we will lose the world we love.
Europe can stand with America as part of a family of free nations now only because of American influence in Europe since World War II created that common belief in popular sovereignty, human rights, and free enterprise:
I've noted that the Western tradition did not fully embrace democracy until after America entrenched in Europe following World War II and spread our influence. As I wrote in this post about the threat to America that could arise in Europe:
We forget the role that America played in creating the free and democratic Europe that we wrongly assume is the natural state of now-free Europe[.]
Europe isn't an automatic ally in a fight against autocracy that China promotes. Europe as we know it today, because of American influence, makes Europe a seemingly natural ally against autocracy.
Without American influence, I don't assume Europe in general will remain part of the family of free nations. Even if we weaken the EU's political ambitions and thwart the rise of that proto-imperial body trying to lop off the prefix, parts of Europe could become over time neutral or worse in the free world struggle against the People's Republic of China.
We may actually be lucky that the Xi Jinping Flu led China to drop their mask of peadeful growth a decade or more before they may have figured that they can afford to be more open about their ambitions.
Let us work to keep Europe in the "free world" column. If Europe loses that identity, there would be nothing natural about a European-American partnership to resist communist China.
UPDATE: For the proto-imperial European Union, China's censorship may be "regrettable" but it won't be "unforgivable."
