Strengthening alliances with other global powers

The argument

A central argument that Europe can afford to stand up to China is that it need not do so alone: by strengthening alliances with other like-minded global powers, Europe can confront China from a position of collective strength that no single actor could muster. Europe shares concerns about China's trade practices, human-rights record and strategic ambitions with the United States, and with democracies across the Indo-Pacific such as Japan, South Korea, Australia and India, as well as Canada and others. By coordinating with these partners — aligning trade policy, technology standards, investment screening and diplomatic pressure — Europe can be part of a far larger coalition whose combined economic and political weight China cannot easily resist or pick off one member at a time. The argument holds that alliances transform the balance of leverage. Acting together, the world's democracies represent a majority of the global economy and the bulk of advanced technology, giving them collective bargaining power that dwarfs China's ability to retaliate against any one of them. A united front also denies Beijing its most effective tactic — dividing and pressuring individual countries in isolation — by ensuring that an economic or political attack on one partner is met by the response of all. Coordinated action on issues from supply-chain resilience to technology export controls multiplies each member's strength. From this standpoint, the question is not whether Europe alone can match China, but whether Europe and its allies together can — and the answer is clearly yes. By investing in and deepening these partnerships, Europe gains the backing and shared leverage that make standing firm both safer and more effective. Because strengthening alliances with other global powers provides this collective strength, this argument holds, Europe can afford to stand up to China.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Sceptics reply that the alliance strategy assumes a cohesion that has proved elusive. The prospective partners do not share a single China policy: the United States and the EU have repeatedly diverged on how far to prioritise security over trade, and the EU's own members split — some, wary of losing Chinese investment or export markets, resist a hard line, as recurring disagreements involving Germany's export sector and states friendly to Beijing illustrate. Each partner, moreover, carries its own economic dependence on China, which limits how much collective pressure it will actually sustain when retaliation bites. Beijing has shown it can pick off individual members with targeted incentives or coercion precisely because the 'united front' is a coalition of sovereign states with divergent interests, not a single actor. The argument establishes that a coordinated bloc would be powerful; the sibling position's point is that assembling and holding such a bloc against China's ability to divide it is exactly the difficulty, so shared leverage in principle does not show Europe can afford the confrontation in practice.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Collective leverage exists only if the partners act together, but each carries its own economic dependence on China that limits how much pressure it will actually sustain. [Rejecting P3] A coalition of sovereign states with divergent China interests is precisely what Beijing has shown it can divide, so a 'united front' is far harder to hold than to describe.