Salman Rafi Sheikh

Since November 2022, a number of important European leaders – Olaf Scholz of Germany (November 2022), Pedro Sanchez of Spain (March 2023), Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission, and Emmanuel Macron of France – have visited China in what can be considered a policy move that clearly contradicts concerted US attempts at “do-coupling” from China. When Macron visited China, he was accompanied by a business delegation of more than 60 executives from French enterprises, including Airbus, with many seeking deep cooperation with China…

In February, on an unusual visit to Japan, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg emphasised the need for NATO to have more “friends” in the region. The obvious justification was, as Stoltenberg explained to his audience at Keio University in Tokyo, the fact that Russia and China were “coming closer” and the direct threat this alliance poses to the US-led international order. More obviously, what Stoltenberg said exposed active US attempts to expand the scope of its rivalry with Russia and China beyond Europe to include the Asia-Pacific region. At least this is how Beijing and Russia understood it. Responding to Stoltenberg’s projection…

When the Trump administration announced a policy suggesting a “decoupling” from China in the sense that the world’s two biggest economies will no longer do business together, his idea was to turn “America into the manufacturing superpower of the world, consequently ending its “reliance on China once and for all.” This was thought to be crucial for maintaining the US hegemony in the world in the face of proactive attempts by China – and Russia – to shift the global political and economic system towards multipolarity. In forming this policy, policymakers in Washington…