Introduction

This chapter examines how Europe is both a site of and participant in contemporary US–China geopolitical competition. As one of the richest and most technologically advanced regions in the world, the US and China compete for economic and political influence across the continent. At the same time, in everything from trade to investment to emerging technologies, US–China competition increasingly shapes Europe’s policy choices and strategic priorities.

For Europe—defined here as the European Union (EU) and European members of NATO—US–China competition differs in many important respects from US–Soviet competition during the Cold War. During that period, Europe was the main site and prize of US–Soviet rivalry. The continent was divided economically, politically, militarily, and ideologically. An Iron Curtain had descended across Europe, “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic.” Both the US and the Soviet Union devoted enormous resources to secure and defend their respective parts of the continent (Hanhimӓki 2012).

Europe today is neither the main site nor the main prize of US–China competition. The key flashpoints lie not in Europe but in East and Southeast Asia, including Taiwan and the South China Sea (Shambaugh 2021). Nevertheless, both the US and China view Europe as an important strategic partner, and the continent has become an increasingly active economic battleground between the two countries (Brandt and Taussig 2020). In this new era of great power confrontation, therefore, “Europe has a comparable position to that of Japan before 1989: a reliable American ally, but one outside the main field of confrontation” (Krastev and Leonard 2021b).

This chapter analyzes Europe’s role and place in US–China competition with a focus on Huawei’s presence in Europe’s fifth generation (5G) wireless networks. This case reveals three broader features of Europe’s role in US–China competition. First, European countries’ desire to expand and deepen their economic links with China while continuing to depend on the US for their defense represents the central challenge they face in this new strategic environment. Second, while US and European views on China have converged in recent years, they are not identical, and European countries are unlikely to take as firm a position toward China as countries in Western Europe did against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.