Russian Roulette—Trump Is Losing Europe and Strengthening China Instead of Isolating It | Opinion

When Donald Trump told Tucker Carlson last October about the need to “un-unite” Russia and China, many dismissed it as just another hollow statement from a famously outspoken presidential candidate. Now, with Trump’s secretary of State extolling the “incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians geopolitically” and each diplomatic move by his administration appearing to play into Moscow’s hands, it is evident the plan is well underway.

Trump may imagine he is reenacting the deft maneuver by President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger more than half a century ago—driving a wedge between the Soviet Union and China—to bolster America’s position on the global stage. Yet he could not be more wrong.

While Nixon did manage to turn an adversary’s ally into a rival, he did not simultaneously abandon his own closest partners. Trump might contend that he has done nothing of the sort, but that is certainly not how Europeans see it. Vice President JD Vance’s Munich speech was widely perceived in Europe as one of the most arrogant statements ever uttered by a supposed ally. Billionaire Elon Musk routinely hurls insults at European Union (EU) governments. President Trump himself cut Europe out of recent talks with Russia, has not ruled out taking Greenland by force from Denmark—a fellow NATO member—and sided with Moscow against U.S. allies in a United Nations vote. On the economic front, 25 percent tariffs on the EU are to be announced “very soon.”

All this contrasts sharply with the ostentatious respect shown to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The problem is that the dynamic between Russia and Europe has shifted more than Trump seems to appreciate. America may view Russia as an adversary; the EU regards Putin’s regime as an enemy. That is not the same. An adversary competes; an enemy seeks destruction. And threats of destruction are what Europeans have been hearing from Russian politicians, ideologists, and Kremlin-approved media over the past three years.

Animosity toward Europe, coupled with courtesy toward its principal foe, has fueled a widespread feeling across the EU that the United States under the MAGA banner can no longer be trusted as an ally. “It became clear that the free world needs a new leader,” said the Vice President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas. When both Elon Musk and Senator Mike Lee recently voiced support for a U.S. withdrawal from NATO, it barely caused a stir—Europeans simply do not expect American support anymore, with or without the Alliance.

Acknowledging this new reality does not make it any less troubling. Europe is wealthy, but its largest economies struggle with stagnation, and a looming trade war with the United States could only make matters worse. While Europe’s militaries look formidable on paper, they have serious gaps in capability and a limited pool of battle-tested personnel. Russia cannot threaten the EU as a whole, yet there are fears that without America, the West would be hard-pressed to defend vulnerable nations like Estonia or Latvia, which the Kremlin still views as part of its historical domain.

With America out of the picture, Europe is beginning to contemplate moves that would have been unimaginable mere months ago. “Europe must take its own decisions, on its own. And we have to decide when China can be a partner and when China is a competitor,” said Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, reflecting on the widening rift between the United States and Europe.

In private, European officials speak even more bluntly. Several diplomats and government representatives, all of whom asked to remain unnamed, told Newsweek the same—like it or not, we may need to work more closely with China, which currently remains under several EU sanctions. Both sides could benefit substantially from deeper cooperation in areas such as technology, but the true game-changer would be Chinese involvement in European defense.

China is still seen by many in Europe as a security threat, not least because of its support for Russia. Still, even if Europe’s defense budgets rise in the near future, EU nations lack the industrial base and manpower to deter Putin effectively for several more years. China, on the other hand, has plenty of both.

Publicly, EU leaders continue to express hope for keeping the Euro-Atlantic partnership alive. Any alliance between China and Europe would be uneasy at best. Nonetheless, Beijing does not pose the same immediate threat as Moscow and is far more predictable than Donald Trump. “Russians want the world to fear them. China is more interested in respect. They don’t want to conquer other nations; they prefer to buy them instead,” explained one senior EU diplomat.

And so it happens that Trump’s grand plan to isolate China and make America great on the global stage is slowly turning into the exact opposite. America is on the verge of jeopardizing its ties with scores of close allies, while inadvertently strengthening a once-fractured relationship between its main adversary and the EU—which, for all its faults, remains the world’s largest trading bloc. Because, as another European diplomat put it, “Who else is there left for us?”

Josef Bouska is a writer and communications consultant.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.