A majority of Europeans believe a new cold war is under way between the US and its chief geopolitical rivals, China and Russia, according to a report – but few view their own country as a direct participant.
Based on polling in 12 member states, the study by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found, however, that more Europeans believed the EU leadership in Brussels was a party to the new international conflict.
… “The European public thinks there is a new cold war but they don’t want to have anything to do with it,” said Mark Leonard, a co-author of the study and ECFR director. “Our polling reveals that a ‘cold war’ framing risks alienating European voters.”
If Washington and Brussels were preparing for an “‘all of society’, generational struggle against autocracies in Beijing and Moscow”, they could discover they “do not have a societal consensus behind them,” wrote Leonard and his Ivan Krastev, an ECFR board member.
