Instead of aligning with Beijing, the EU should strengthen democratic partnerships to counter Trump. While Trump’s approach to Europe is reckless, turning to China is not the solution. Doing so would play into Beijing’s strategy of weakening US-EU cohesion and ignoring Europe’s own security interests.
Former Slovak Minister and Presidential candidate Ivan Korčok’s call for greater EU cooperation with China in response to Donald Trump’s policies, made in an interview with Aktuality.sk, is misguided and risks further undermining already fragile transatlantic relations.
While the current Trump administration has weakened Western cohesion, this knee-jerk reaction calling for cooperation with China directly serves Beijing’s interests.
China’s long-term foreign policy goal is to undermine transatlantic relations and create a multipolar world order in which the US and the EU cannot present a united front against shared challenges posed by China.
Can Europe take a breather?
There is no doubt that Trump’s transactional policy is pushing Europe into an uncomfortable position, and the next four years will be difficult for Europeans. However, pivoting toward China is even riskier, potentially leading to the deepening of existing dependencies which can be exploited by Beijing to limit the EU’s space for navigating global affairs.
The existing sticking points in the EU-China relationship have not disappeared overnight with Trump’s election. On the contrary, they continue to overlap with US interests on a number of fronts.
Finding common ground on these issues remains in both sides’ interests. This fact needs to be recognised not just by Brussels, but also by Washington, which is unfortunately increasingly moving to a unilateral response to China.
The EU should identify these overlaps and persuade Washington that joint action still makes sense. Notably, this EU-level agenda now falls under Slovak Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič.
As far as potential policy responses to the current situation, a turn towards China is an overreaction and a political 180. Fortunately, we have other options on the table to balance the relationship with the US.
A suitable approach would be engaging in ‘internal balancing’ of the USA within the group of NATO allies and other like-minded partners across the world, chiefly in the Indo-Pacific.
Stronger democratic links with like-minded partners across Europe (like the UK), the Americas (Canada) and the Indo-Pacific (Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) will be the key to navigating the next four years.
Removing trade barriers, defence cooperation or broader policy coordination are all viable options on how to strengthen the EU within the existing alliance and partnership frameworks. As an added benefit, it will help Europeans to better understand the intertwined nature of European and Indo-Pacific security – an issue the US has actually been trying to get the Europeans to pay attention to for years.
An illusion of aligned interests
Zeroing in on Slovakia’s foreign policy interests, the country’s priority still lies in ensuring that Ukraine remains sovereign and its territorial integrity is preserved. There is no doubt that the Trump administration’s choices are quite damaging to Ukraine’s future – the meeting between Secretary Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in Riyadh is the latest proof of that. Would partnering with China help to alleviate some of the damage? Absolutely not.
When it comes to China’s relationship with Russia and Ukraine, Beijing has consistently sided with Moscow throughout the entire course of the war, having provided extensive diplomatic, economic and technological support to the invader.
At this moment, there appear to be no signs that Beijing will change its stance and use its leverage to pressure Moscow into a sustainable peace deal with Kyiv. There is a simple reason for this – such a move is not in Beijing’s interest at this moment.
Passing off a partnership with Beijing as a suitable response to US policies under Trump 2.0 also carries significant domestic ramifications for Slovakia.
Since the re-election of Robert Fico into his fourth non-consecutive premiership, Slovakia’s ‘all-azimuth foreign policy’ was pursuing the deepening of relations with China. This included elevating relations to the strategic partnership level, promoting economic cooperation in sensitive sectors and dismissing all security concerns.
By advocating for deepening ties with China, Korčok has unwittingly played into Fico’s hands. His stance effectively legitimises the government’s pro-China policy, which threatens Slovak security and economic interests.
Such advocacy is even internally incoherent. Korčok rightly criticised Fico for pulling Slovakia eastwards, outside the EU and NATO frameworks. However, advocating for closer cooperation with China in the same breath makes the criticism ring hollow.
Europe is facing uncertain times, with difficult dilemmas and even more difficult choices ahead. That is all the more reason to face the current situation with a level head, absent of panicked knee-jerk reactions.
Calls for EU-China rapprochement will probably be more frequent, especially from those who were already sceptical of the EU’s increasingly hawkish China policies before Trump’s second inauguration. This is an unintended consequence of current US policy. However, suggesting that a partnership with China is the best response is both misleading and irresponsible.
The article was originally published by Visegrad Insight.
