Europe has had much to say, in the weeks since war has erupted, about its sympathy for Ukraine as a fellow European state. Much, too, has been made of European unity. Yet while President Putin might have revived a sense of solidarity on the continent, the idea that the Russian war will solve Europe’s problems already looks like a forlorn hope.

Europe’s troubles are many and varied. Among them is a waning sense of identity that is compounded by the relentless march of centrists á la France’s Emmanuel Macron. They are unsettling not so much because of their political ideology, but because they lack any noticeable ideology at all.

In the French presidential election we heard much about the views of Marine Le Pen, Éric Zemmour, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, yet little about Mr. Macron’s. Apart from vague references to restoring prosperity to French workers and advancing Europe’s “strategic autonomy,” the French incumbent’s selling point was, essentially, his lack of any platform. Little wonder that about one-fourth of French stayed home.

It was not always like this. The Gaullist Party, say, was not just an exercise in transcending left and right, but a nationalist party rooted in a Napoleonic French view of the state that was, for the most part, willing to champion the French cause at home and abroad. In Germany, too, where Chancellor Scholz’s response to war has lately disclosed Berlin’s lack of a backbone, politics had maintained a distinctly pro-German flair.

No longer. Today’s European centrists are largely bereft of political dogma. Lacking their own, they seem to have onboarded globalist visions that ostensibly outsource statecraft to supranational organizations and whoever else is willing – if not able. They are politicians malgré lui – despite themselves. Mr. Macron did, after all, want to be a writer.

Messrs. Macron and Scholz extoll the birth of a “new world order,” a Zeitenwende – a turning point in international affairs. Mr. Macron has long advocated European “strategic autonomy,” by which is loosely meant a Europe unto itself. France “is a vassal of neither China nor the United States,” Mr. Macron said earlier this month. It has been taken by the notion of a multipolar world that could counter American “hyperpower.”

Yet in the absence of any distinguishable ideology, Europe is being weakened. Its centrists are paving the way for competitors and opponents of Western powers to define and shape the emerging global narrative and supposed “new order.” The Communist Chinese party boss, Xi Jinping, in his congratulatory call to Mr. Macron, urged France to maintain its “strategic autonomy” and pursue positions independent of America. “China and France are both great nations with a tradition of independence and autonomy,” the Chinese strongman said.

Mr. Macron would likely agree. He has previously called Communist China a “partner, competitor, and systemic rival” – a view that, stripped bare, is not much of a view at all. He has cautioned against “a situation to join all together against China,” and has advocated a “third way” for Europe between Washington and Beijing. In February, Mr. Macron signaled his desire to revive the stalled China-EU Comprehensive Investment Agreement.

The Chinese Communist Party has looked at Europe’s centrists in recent years and seen these increasingly nebulous and flailing societies. Beijing has done what it can both online and off to exacerbate this tendency. It thinks the West is awful and irredeemable, and is delighted if Western leaders cannot convincingly assert otherwise. Better still were they to share in the party’s aims. Multipolarity, say, is also central to the “new world order” envisioned by Beijing. 

Where once European nations were rooted in national pride and heroism, many are now regarded through -isms and other supposed ills. Centrists like Mr. Macron struggle to articulate any discernible ideology, and Europeans are at once being persuaded that much of what they believed to be good about themselves and worth preserving is not. “Decolonizing” European history, say, remains a much-debated topic. 

The effect of this is that China is stepping in to fill the ideological void. In December, Beijing issued a white paper titled, “China: Democracy That Works.” The paper criticizes Western powers for “monopolizing” democracy and proposes China as a worthy example. In similar fashion, Beijing aims to redefine human rights, security, and the Western liberal order itself. 

The war in Ukraine is likely just the first test of Western powers. Communist China is likely to be the second, and it could prove a much larger challenge. Would Europe rise to the occasion? Only if it will have a dogma worth defending. Only if it can push past globalist visions increasingly defined by its opponents. In this, Mr. Macron will play a leading role. 

Perhaps he might yet become a Gaullist.