Trump, Xi, and Europe’s Macedonian Moment

A couple of weeks ago, in the marble halls of Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping concluded a summit many had presented as decisive for the future of the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship. What emerged revealed something subtle and consequential: the gradual acceptance by both powers that their rivalry must now be managed within deep economic interdependence rather than through an outright separation.

Leading international media largely converged on the view that the summit produced no decisive breakthrough on the central geopolitical fault lines but still marked a deliberate effort to prevent further deterioration in relations. The Financial Times described the outcome as a “fragile sense of stability and mutual non-aggression” – a formulation capturing the paradox at the heart of the meeting: not resolution of rivalry, but its institutionalization within carefully managed limits, as both Washington and Beijing appear increasingly intent on containing competition rather than transforming it.

Rebuilding Channels of Economic Stabilization

The announcements themselves were significant. Chinese purchases of hundreds of Boeing aircraft, multi-billion-dollar commitments to American agricultural imports, and the creation of new bilateral mechanisms such as a US-China Board of Trade signal that Washington and Beijing are quietly rebuilding channels of economic stabilization after years of tariffs, sanctions, and technological confrontation. 

Yet the press coverage pointed to a striking dissonance in how the summit was narrated on two sides of the Pacific. Chinese officials emphasized renewed discussions on tariffs and the prospect of extending the fragile trade truce, while Trump insisted that tariffs had not been part of the conversation at all. The gap reflected a deeper shift in diplomatic practice itself – where interpretation is increasingly shaped for domestic political audiences as much as for the negotiating table, and where coherence gives way to calibrated ambiguity in the management of great-power relations.

The Lesson of Athens and Sparta

Much commentary surrounding the Trump-Xi meeting focused on the “Thucydides Trap”: a theory that conflict becomes increasingly likely when a rising power challenges an established one. For Europe, this moment carries historical resonance, and the French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot may have offered the most insightful interpretation of the summit. He said: that “while Athens and Sparta were exhausting themselves in the Peloponnesian War, a third player was emerging: Macedonia was rebuilding its military, economic, and financial strength. In the end, it was Macedonia that prevailed.”

Macedonia did not initially possess the cultural sophistication of Athens nor the military prestige of Sparta. What it possessed was strategic patience. It reorganized its army, consolidated political authority, strengthened economic foundations, and prepared systematically while the dominant powers depleted themselves in a struggle neither could truly resolve.

Barrot’s suggestion was a warning disguised as ambition. Europe, one could interpret, still possesses a narrow historical opportunity to emerge as an autonomous strategic pole in an increasingly bipolar world – but only if it recognizes how profoundly the international system has already changed.

A Convergence in Strategic Mindset

The Trump-Xi summit illustrated precisely this transformation. At first glance, the results appear limited. No historic treaty emerged and the fundamental disputes remain unresolved: Taiwan, semiconductors, military positioning in the Indo-Pacific, export controls, sanctions, and technological rivalry. Yet the tone and political psychology of the summit mattered far more than any final communiqué.

Trump described the discussions as “extremely positive and productive” and characterized the US-China relationship as “one of the most consequential relationships in world history.” Xi responded by declaring that China’s “great rejuvenation” and the MAGA movement “can go hand in hand.” 

Beyond the rhetoric, the exchange pointed less to any ideological rapprochement than to a convergence in strategic mindset. Both American and Chinese leadership circles are increasingly grounding political legitimacy in narratives of sovereignty, national revival, and civilizational affirmation, while reframing economic interdependence – once celebrated as a stabilizing glue of globalization – as a potential point of exposure to be hedged, reduced, or selectively weaponized in line with national interest.

A Regulatory Power without Strategic Agency

For Europe, this evolution is profoundly destabilizing because it exposes a structural weakness long obscured by the assumptions of the liberal order.

For European policymakers, the more fundamental concern is no longer the specific substance of US-China negotiations, but the prospect that a working bilateral understanding – even if fragile – could gradually take shape outside any meaningful European input. A stabilized “G2 logic” would quietly reposition the EU as an economic heavyweight without strategic agency – present in the system, yet increasingly peripheral to the core decisions that define its direction.

For decades, the EU believed economic integration, regulatory influence and multilateral governance could gradually replace classical power politics. In many respects, that strategy succeeded. Brussels became a regulatory superpower capable of shaping global norms in competition policy, privacy, digital governance, and environmental standards. But the international system is no longer organized primarily around rules, but rather around leverage.

Trump accelerates this transformation and China adapts to such world faster than Europe. Beijing no longer seeks integration into a Western-led liberal order. It seeks coexistence on terms reflecting its own civilizational scale, strategic weight, and political model. Xi’s language in Beijing reflected that confidence. China no longer presents itself as a state attempting to join the existing order; it increasingly behaves like a power preparing to co-design the next one.

The Case for European Strategic Autonomy

Europe therefore, confronts a deeply uncomfortable reality: the era in which it could rely simultaneously on American security, Chinese markets, and stable multilateralism may be ending. This is why Barrot’s Macedonian analogy resonates so strongly. In this emerging configuration, Europe risks being treated as a dependent variable present in calculations made elsewhere. Economically intertwined with both Washington and Beijing, it finds itself with diminishing capacity to shape the terms of either relationship, reduced to reacting to strategic bargains whose architecture is being designed beyond its reach.

Macedonia succeeded not because Athens and Sparta disappeared, but because they became absorbed by their own rivalry. Historical transitions create opportunities for actors capable of combining patience with strategic preparation. Europe still possesses extraordinary assets: scientific excellence, industrial depth, financial capacity, advanced infrastructure, and a market of continental scale. Yet these strengths remain politically fragmented and strategically underutilized.

Strategic autonomy, therefore, cannot remain a slogan repeated at Brussels conferences. It requires industrial policy at scale, defense integration, technological sovereignty in AI and semiconductors, energy resilience, and political cohesion capable of defining European interests independently when necessary. Facing the danger of geopolitical irrelevance, Europe’s challenge today is to decide whether it intends to shape the changing century around it – or merely adapt to arrangements designed by others.