Europe must de-risk from MAGA America and cooperate with China

As Trump's return seems inevitable, Europe must realise America is no longer a reliable partner. Warm Sino-European relations is key to our future security, economic success & strategic independence

FOR Europe to successfully navigate a multipolar world, prioritising its own geopolitical interests, it must end its reliance on the United States.

The Ukraine war continues to burn brightly with little evidence of Putin willing to backdown. Meanwhile in Washington DC Trump 2.0 seems an inevitability, with all of the geo-political consequences for Europe Not least once again underscoring the reality that the US is no longer a reliable partner. Yet, even without a second Trump presidency, it has long passed time for an adoption of an independent European posture.

Henry Kissinger once said - in his iconic German accented drawl - the only thing more dangerous than being America’s enemy is being her ally. In the context of a multipolar world, where a Washington consensus exists on pivoting to Asia and worryingly ‘containing China’, Europe must put her own regional interests ahead of an increasingly unreliable American partnership. An America which all too often witnesses ‘America first’ coming at Europe’s expense.

Europe should be ‘de-risking’ from America as opposed to China.

Morning tweets over my coffee

My morning was supposed to start with a clear plan: I was to write an in-depth analysis of the rise of Trump. It was going to be a follow-up on my previous piece rebutting David Frum’s Atlantic essay.

The research had been meticulously done last night. My delicious black coffee aroma rose to titillate my nostrils as I glanced at my twitter feed. That’s when I saw it, Blair McDougall’s tweet on ‘X’, formerly known as Twitter.

As an academic preparing to return to China to resume my lecturing life in September, European-China relations in the context of American foreign policy is of particular interest to me. I knew I had to explore the issues he raised, being fully cognisant that my views stressing the importance of Sino-European engagement rather than ‘strategic rivalry’ likely makes me unfashionable.

“Relations between China and Europe are key to the stability of the world order and prosperity of the Eurasian continent," - Xi Jinping to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, November 2023

If we assume Xi Jinping is correct - and I insist that we do - then Sino-European relations will likely remain stuck in an impasse unless or until European capitals and Beijing both undertake a geo-political rethink. After all, the issues causing friction between Europe and China are imminently soluble, so long as we guard against cynical US interference whose interests increasingly are de-aligning with European priorities.

But before I outline my thinking on how we got to where we are and what we can do to get out of our impasse, first we should undertake a quick dispassionate evaluation of the core dynamics underpinning Sino-European relations.

At the core of Sino-European relations 2024-25

At the core of the relationship are three prongs which should always be taken together in the round (as they are not mutually exclusive interests, rather interlinked).

Firstly, trade. Europe’s growing trade deficit with China going forward will be a key factor in the bilateral relationship. Naturally in trade there are always winners and losers, in yesteryear Germany was a global champion of exports. The issue here is not that economic champions create trade surpluses with its trading partners. For Europe, the trade deficit with China is not the problem merely a symptom of the problem at hand. The issue is that in China and Europe the rules of engagement for government intervention in the economy is vastly different. This will need to be resolved in future trade bilaterals in the future, and will prove a difficult pear to peel.

Secondly, security considerations. On the military security side Europe needs to ensure China understands its fundamental red lines vis-à-vis the war in Ukraine. On the positive side, the officials in Zhongnanhai (中南海, Chinese leadership compound) clearly understand that China must not deliver weapons in support of Russia’s war effort against Ukraine should a deterioration in relations be avoided. However, Europe will also need to better comprehend Beijing’s needs geopolitically. A consequence of America’s needlessly aggressive policy of containment and rollback of China in Asia-Pacific has been a greater urgency for Beijing on ensuring Russia is ‘on side’.

Regarding economic security, this is generally connected with the first issue (trade). Europe needs to figure out how to solve the issue of Chinese overproduction driven by its economic model (which is a hybrid model). The current posture of ‘de-risking’ is however a risky solution in of itself as it has and will continue to expose EU member-state disagreements. Not least since countries such as Hungary and Greece in recent years have explored a deepening of economic ties with China as opposed to western European capitals.

Thirdly, technology competition. From a European perspective the return of China to global pre-eminence has compelled European governments to reconsider the cost-benefit analysis of technology in a national security context. China has largely succeeded in overcoming its century of national humiliation and has returned economically as a central player to the global economy again. For Sino-European relations however it means European governments must risks and opportunities. From green technologies to critical infrastructure the huge benefits of European-Chinese engagement are obvious, but as are the risks. Not least since Europe is compelled to have to babysit US feelings in this important domain going forward.

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Exploring the issues in detail

1/ TRADE

Digging into the Sino-EU trade disputes in more detail highlights two things which I hope to make clear to the reader. Firstly, they are fixable (we’ve seen all of this before) and secondly, the unreliability of MAGA America necessitates that we rethink our thinking.

As noted above, Europe’s growing trade deficit with China is a symptom of a wider problem. One of the issues at the core of the issue is the differencing perspectives of the role of governments. In the EU for example the job of governments is to set framework conditions and intervene under special circumstance. That’s it. But not in China’s hybrid (or mixed) market model. Beijing prefers a more active governmental influence. Utilising State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) to prod its huge internal market into certain directions. It also maintains a complex layer-cake of informal ‘buy Chinese’ obligations inside its domestic supply chains. As a result, Europe is confronted by said informal ‘buy Chinese’ obligations coupled with restrictive access to certain areas of the economy.

None of this is new however and it would be a mistake to imagine European and Chinese economic systems are simply too incompatible to cooperate internationally. Equally, only a fool imagines that Europe can win a trade war with China to resolve these disputes as opposed to bilateral engagement.

Some of us are old enough to recall how a decade ago the EU previously luanched a trade war with China, and lost. Back then, the EU to loud fanfare launched a 48 per cent tariff on Chinese solar panels on the basis they were eroding the EU’s own production.

However, as soon as Beijing threatened to target EU wine and car imports, Brussels climbed down. Lesson? A confrontationalist approach to China does not pay dividends, something we can already see playing out right now.

The EU (at French instigation) has embarked on a probe into Electric Vehicles (EVs), in response to which Chinese leaders have threatened a dumping probe of its own into “wine-distilled brandies from the EU” a.k.a. French cognac.

Guess what will happen? Answer: same thing as a decade ago, those facing collateral damage will push back on Brussels hard forcing a climbdown. A decade ago, over the solar panels trade war, China threatened to respond by targeting the EU auto industry imports. Naturally German manufacturers compelled am embarrassing Brussels climbdown.

Mark my words, if the EU insists on repeating history today over EVs, it’ll be China who wins. A better and more productive path is on comprehensive bilateral negotiations to establish the rules of our trade. The EU itself realised this was a first preference solution, attempting to negotiate the ‘EU-China Investment Agreement’.

That areement, which went into the deep freeze from 2021 forward would have resolve many of these structural issues between European and Chinese trade problems. It would also have deepened the economic interdependence, which would have induced China to take a less friendly approach to Russia. So why did it fail? Let’s talk about dear old Uncle Sam.

The Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) was the result of extensive bilateral negotiations between the EU and China since 2013, and remains unsigned in no small part to US opposition and interference.

Back in 2021 US officials launched a firestorm of burning criticism of the EU Commission, influencing thinking the EU parliament. Their complaint was that the Europeans dared to undertake the CAI without first “consulting” Washington (as if we Europeans require American permission to defend our own trade interests globally)

And it was not just a Trump era phenomenon, the Biden administration has equally undertaken huge efforts to sink any possible CAI which would have resolved much EU-China structural trade disagreements.

In December 2020, Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, mused to Europeans he would “welcome early consultation” on China. Thankfully at the time Brussels showed some spine and pushed ahead with the CAI rather than holding off for Biden to take office. Biden soon insisted that the US is “at the head of the table again”, which should only be viewed as an American threat to the EU's goal of strategic autonomy.

The Americans under Trump and Biden expect Europeans to return to the status quo ante and play second-fiddle to Washington. They accomplished derailing the CAI, thereby undermining Europe’s strategic goal of resolving Sino-European trade problems rather creatively.

In March 2021, the US convinced their geopolitical satrapies - UK and Canada - to push the EU to join them in imposing sanctions on four Chinese officials alleged to be involved in human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The creativity of Washington (which ran a global torture program during the ‘war on terror’) to weaponize allegations of human rights abuses in China, displays US cynicism in real time.

Naturally back in 2021 China felt compelled to respond with counter-sanctions on 4 EU entities and 10 EU officials. Critically, 5 were members of the European Parliament (MEPs). And hey-presto the CAI which the successive US administrations had detested as undermining US goal of encirclement of China was undone.

Europe lost out, China lost out but America got what it wanted. Namely, the EU failing to resolve its complaints over trade with China opening the door to today’s more confrontational dynamics (which, I repeat, history shows Europe will lose).

2/ SECURITY

Time to talk directly about Russia-Ukraine war and Europe’s existential self-interests.

Some more cynical China experts such as Nicholas Bequelin (Senior Fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Centre) believe the security equation for Europe all depends on the personality of Xi Jinping. But this is entirely in error, not least since international relations is rarely about individual personalities of leaders and far more often focused on hard power in an anarchic international system.

So if it’s not personality causing the rupture in Sino-European relations, what is? The conventional wisdom holds that it’s Beijing’s refusal to acknowledge, even less address, the existential importance of the Ukraine war. We can see this most notibly in the posturing taken by EU Commission President (and failed German defence minister) von der Leyen. When she makes clear, “…the way China positions itself on Russia's war will define our mutual relationship for the years to come”, she is insisting the ball is in Beijing’s court.

But she - unsurprisingly - is wrong. Beijing faces a hostile USA which insists on waging a technology and trade national security cold war. Zhongnanhai must grapple with a concerted US attempt to contain and rollback China in her own region of the world. A result of the United States aggressive anti-China foreign policy is the make a friendlier relationship with Russia an existential priority for Beijing. Put simply, the harder America is pushing China, the more China feels an obligation to lean into a relationship with Russia to avoid isolation and encirclement.

America’s likely next President Donald Trump’s ‘Project 2025’ threatens to escalate matters even more, pledging to up the ante vis-à-vis Taiwan. In truly blood-chillingly belligerent rhetoric Trump-Vance 2024’s Project 2025 nightmare promises the following (‘Mandate For Leadership’, Project 2025, page 94)

“This focus and priority for U.S. defense activities will deny China the first island chain.

1. Require that all U.S. defense e"orts, from force planning to employment and posture, focus on ensuring the ability of American forces to prevail in the pacing scenario and deny China a fait accompli against Taiwan.

2. Prioritize the U.S. conventional force planning construct to defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan before allocating resources to other missions, such as simultaneously fighting another conflict.”

It also adds a veiled threat to America’s NATO ‘allies’

“Increase allied conventional defense burden-sharing. U.S. allies must take far greater responsibility for their conventional defense. U.S. allies must play their part not only in dealing with China, but also in dealing with threats from Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

1. Make burden-sharing a central part of U.S. defense strategy with the United States not just helping allies to step up, but strongly encouraging them to do so.

2. Support greater spending and collaboration by Taiwan and allies in the Asia–Pacific like Japan and Australia to create a collective defense model.

3. Transform NATO so that U.S. allies are capable of fielding the great majority of the conventional forces required to deter Russia while relying on the United States primarily for our nuclear deterrent, and select other capabilities while reducing the U.S. force posture in Europe.

4. Sustain support for Israel even as America empowers Gulf partners to take responsibility for their own coastal, air, and missile defenses both individually and working collectively.

5. Enable South Korea to take the lead in its conventional defense against North Korea.”

What all of that states, to put it simply, is that Europe cannot possibly expect America to have our best security interests at heart. Von der Leyen might be permitting the American tail to be the wagging her EU Commission dog, but the rest of us must urgently push back on all of this.

If Europe wishes to ensure China appreciates the red lines concerning Ukraine, and potentially play a more helpful role then Europe should be pushing Washington hard to cease and desist on its fools endeavour to prevent the return of China to global pre-eminence. 18 of the last 20 centuries of the earth saw China, India and the pacific spice islands represent the heart of the global economy. The last 200 years of what the American’s - hubristically - like to term the ‘rules based international order’ is the deviation from the norm. Since WW2 finally ended the horrific era of European imperialism, genocide and slavery, we are witnessing the return of (not ‘rise’) of China and Asia once more. Free from the looting of their civilisations by greedy westerners, they have rebuilt economically, politically and geopolitically.

Europe needs to realise that to prevent future Russian aggression we must work more closely with and construct a vibrant partnership with China. We’re only in this mess, where China is uncomfortably close to Russia and reluctant to upset that partnership to help European interests, because of America.

If future of European security is to be realised free from the threat of Russian aggression, Sino-European cooperation is the key. And to hell with Trump, JD Vance and their MAGA Washington DC.

American cynicism and European naivety

If we examine these issues beyond the surface level, we quickly understand that the greatest obstacle to Sino-European relations - and resolving the Russia problem - is America.

So, Blair McDougall MP is correct when he observed that Europe needs to be less reliant on an unreliable US and fast. However, I continue to believe that he and other politicians, policy makers and influential figures must go further.

The key to European strategic independence, security and economic success (free from the dangers of the populist far right and left at home) is to view China as a strategic partner as opposed to strategic rival.

Trump’s Project 2025 imagines turning NATO into a tool to aid their aggressive posturing in the Asia-Pacific, risking pulling Europe into conflict over the south China seas. How does it serve European interests whether they be trade, security or technological competition if we allow ultra-MAGA America to yank us into defending America’s ‘first island chain’ obsessions.

Why should we risk dying for America’s fading global hegemony? If Washington DC imagines China can be contained, rolled back and denied a position of global leadership then they are no different from Don Quixote. Europe must avoid becoming subsumed by America’s paranoid and quixotic ambitions to remain the only global hegemon and ‘great power’ in the international system.

If Ukraine is to be saved, Russian aggression contained and European security and trade self-interests met, we cannot any longer rely on America. Far from de-risking our reliance on China, we should be de-risking from unreliable, cynical and paranoid America

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