What Trump's Attacks on Europe Are Doing For China - The Global Gambit - Pyotr Kurzin

[TexasTowelie]

China’s growing presence in global affairs isn’t a sudden rupture — it’s a slow recalibration that many in the West are still misreading.

What is often framed as China’s “rise” or strategic assertiveness is, in reality, a more complex and uneven process shaped by economic leverage, technological reach, and Western uncertainty. Beijing is not charging head-on into confrontation. It is exploiting ambiguity — allowing others’ assumptions, divisions, and short-term politics to do much of the work for it.

This tension is increasingly visible in the U.S.–China relationship.

Debates around platforms like TikTok are not merely about data or content moderation. They reflect deeper anxieties over technological dependence, information control, and national security in an era where economic integration and strategic rivalry now coexist uneasily. Social media has become another front where geopolitics, domestic politics, and public opinion collide — often without clear rules or shared norms.

Europe, meanwhile, finds itself navigating an uncomfortable middle ground.

Long accustomed to American security guarantees, European states are quietly hedging. Defense spending remains uneven, strategic coordination incomplete, and confidence in U.S. leadership increasingly conditional. The result is not a clean break from Washington, but a gradual diversification of partnerships — economic, diplomatic, and in some cases strategic — including with China itself.

This is where unpredictability matters.

Trump’s foreign policy legacy — and the possibility of its return — looms large over European calculations. Abrupt shifts, transactional diplomacy, and skepticism toward alliances have forced allies to think in terms of resilience rather than reassurance. NATO still exists, but its future credibility rests less on formal commitments than on political will — and that will is no longer taken for granted.

The balance of power, as a result, is becoming harder to pin down.

Asia’s growing economic gravity is pulling allies eastward even as security concerns push them back toward the transatlantic framework. These pressures are not easily reconciled. They produce a geopolitical landscape that is fluid, fragmented, and increasingly shaped by trade-offs rather than clear loyalties.

At its core, this moment is not about choosing sides.

It is about whether Western institutions — NATO included — can adapt to a world where influence is exercised as much through markets, platforms, and supply chains as through troops and treaties. China understands this shift instinctively. The question is whether the West can respond with the same strategic patience — and coherence — before the center of gravity moves decisively elsewhere.