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[This is an op-ed by Orville Schell, Director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society.]

Now that the old geopolitical order has been canceled, China and Russia are ready to step into the vacuum and create a new one. Unless Europe launches an effort to adopt the alliance structure that the United States has now abandoned, it will find itself in a world made safe for autocracy.

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Now that the old geopolitical order has been canceled, China and Russia are ready to step into the vacuum and create their version of order. But one is a deracinated Marxist-Leninist regime with lots of military hardware, geography, and natural resources, but an economy smaller than Canada’s, and the other is a rejuvenated Leninist one-party state with a massive economy, a thin-skinned leader, and a vibrant global tech hub. Does Europe really want a world made safe for autocracy?

Instead of remaining a “dish of loose sand (一盘散沙),” as Sun Yat-sen once said of post-dynastic China, Europe now must not only crank up its military industries to defend itself, but also seek to restore a modicum of democratic global order. After all, Europe is not without important resources it could share with others. There’s the French-British nuclear arsenal that could become an umbrella of deterrence for the continent; Germany’s Rheinmetall-like arms producers; Ukraine’s drone technology expertise; the United Kingdom’s BAE; France’s Airbus; and the Netherlands’ ASML, with its monopoly on the EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) technology needed to produce advanced microchips.

But Europe has yet to launch an effort to adopt the alliance structure that the US has now abandoned. By reaching out to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Australia, Europe would let China know that the world without the US at the helm is not theirs. Given Trump’s hostility to NATO, Europeans and Asians who care about democracy and world order need to awaken to the dangers of their dependency on the US militarily and on China economically, and build new kinds of a partnerships among themselves and like-minded countries. An ever-prickly India certainly agrees with that, and could become a cooperative partner as well.

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More negotiations, dialogue, trade agreements, cultural exchanges, and public diplomacy – the usual stuff of European Union foreign policy over the decades – will not transform the likes of Chinese President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin. They are not seeking partners for ensuring global peace and stability; they want to replace the US atop the world order – and then change the order itself.

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Mao was alarmed by what he called “peaceful evolution (和平演变).” He saw it as a “much more deceptive tactic” than open warfare, because it sought to corrupt, and finally overthrow, China’s Communist system. Xi, too, has always perceived the US as an inalienably “hostile foreign force (敌对势力).” So, Europeans must not delude themselves about China. The best guarantee of peace in a world of emboldened autocracies is deterrence through military strength, alliance unity, and economic influence. With the US no longer willing to lead the world’s democracies in this endeavor, Europe must step up. No one else can.