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An internally split Europe can never fully engage China and Asia
The Brussels effect is real but so is Europe’s strategic subordination to the US. For China, and Asia, this means proceeding with pragmatism
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Li Xing is a Yunshan leading scholar and a distinguished professor at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and an adjunct professor of international relations at Aalborg University, Denmark.
When contemporary Europe engages with the world, it increasingly presents as two distinct Europes operating within the same institutional framework. This duality – a Europe of strategic dependence vs a Europe of normative assertion – creates a contradiction.
For partners, particularly in China and across Asia, this is not merely an abstract identity crisis but a practical geopolitical puzzle that complicates engagement and challenges assumptions about Europe’s global role.
One Europe, embedded within Nato and the US-led transatlantic security architecture, anchors its survival to American military power and strategic priorities. This “Nato Europe” has internalised a position of security dependence, solidified through decades of integrated defence planning, intelligence sharing and military procurement tied to Washington. Its strategic subordination means its positions on critical issues – from technological competition, trade and tariff issues, and sanctions policy to the Taiwan question – are often structurally pre-aligned with US objectives.
The other “sociopolitical” Europe sees itself as a post-militarist, normative power. It projects influence through regulatory standards, values-based diplomacy and regulated capitalism, positioning itself as a moral and civilisational counterpoint to American unilateralism and other global models.
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