In 1969, with the Cultural Revolution raging at home and tensions rising abroad, Chinese leader Mao Zedong instructed four elder military leaders to study the relationships between China and the world’s two superpowers. Using Mao’s theoretical framework of “contradictions,” which states that the struggle between opposing forces is what drives history forward, they posited that the contradiction between the United States and the Soviet Union was greater than that between China and the Soviet Union, which in turn was greater than that between China and the United States. In other words, the most powerful force shaping world politics was the tension between Moscow and Washington, and China needed to adjust accordingly. They advised Mao to “play the American card”—that is, try to improve relations with the United States—which contributed to U.S. President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing and the rapprochement between the United States and China in the early 1970s.

Nearly 60 years later, the relationships among the major centers of power are again in flux. Today, the three places that will determine the global future are China, Europe, and the United States. In the language of the military leaders who were advising Mao, the U.S.-Chinese contradiction is clearly the most powerful. China, a rising power, and the United States, the existing hegemon, face deep economic disputes, zero-sum technological competition, and the risk of dangerous geopolitical conflict over Taiwan.

Most observers assume that the next most prominent contradiction is between China and Europe. After all, Europe and the United States have a shared history and culture, and have built powerful security alliances. They also have deep economic ties. In 2024, total trade between the United States and the European Union was about $1.5 trillion, nearly equaling China’s total trade with both of the other powers combined. Over the past decade, Europe also has consistently supported and coordinated with the United States’ hard-line policies toward China; in 2019, the European Union even declared China a “systemic rival.”

But the growing tension between Europe and the United States calls into question this assumption. Although it seems like the European-U.S. bond is enduring, the contradiction with the United States could ultimately be far more dangerous for Europe than ongoing challenges with China. The Trump administration’s aggressive nationalism threatens the European project itself. But because today’s triangular relationship between China, Europe, and the United States is much more intricate than that of the major powers during the Cold War, Europe has not been able to “play the China card” to accelerate a reset in global relations and fulfill its role as a pillar of a multipolar world.

The signs of a challenge to the U.S.-European bond have been growing since the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term. The United States applied unilateral tariffs on Europe, demanded the sovereignty of Greenland from Denmark, and allowed officials to publicly support right-wing political figures in domestic European elections. In 2025, U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference announced a profound fracture in transatlantic relations. Vance claimed that the two sides differed not only on specific policy issues but also on fundamental values. The United States is moving toward nationalism, unilateralism, realism, and traditional Christian values, while the majority of Europe’s political and economic establishment, along with its intellectual class, continues to........

© Foreign Affairs