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China shouldn’t view a tired US as signifying a Europe ready to pivot
As fractures within the US’ network of alliances deepen, China’s strategic window opens a little wider, with some key caveats
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Sophie Wushuang Yi holds a PhD in Chinese studies (international relations) from King's College London, where she specialised in Sino-US relations, military and strategic studies, and South China Sea geopolitics.
When US President Donald Trump announced that 5,000 US troops would leave Germany, the immediate reading in Western capitals was political: another round in Trump’s running quarrel with European allies, triggered by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s criticism of Washington’s handling of the war with Iran.
For Beijing, the more interesting reading is structural. The drawdown coincides with a period in which Foreign Minister Wang Yi has spent much of 2026 cultivating a “partners not rivals” framing with European counterparts. Transatlantic friction creates an analytical opening. But the strategic window is narrower than the optics suggest and reading which constraints are durable and which are negotiable is the harder task.
What Beijing sees as encouraging is real. The 2026 US National Defence Strategy, shaped by US undersecretary of defence for policy Elbridge Colby, explicitly downgrades Europe to “more limited” conventional support. Trump’s threat to “probably” pull troops from Spain and Italy, and his characterisation of Nato as a “paper tiger”, has accelerated European contingency planning.
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