Have you ever watched two people talk past each other while the house quietly burns down in the background? That’s pretty much what the last few days in China felt like on the geopolitical stage.
A European leader flies halfway across the world, spends three days in carefully choreographed settings, shares meals, admires ancient irrigation systems, and comes home with… basically nothing on the one issue that actually matters to his continent’s survival. It would almost be funny if the stakes weren’t so terrifyingly high.
The Charm Offensive That Wasn’t
Let’s be honest for a second. When a Western leader visits Beijing these days hoping to peel China away from Russia over Ukraine, it feels a bit like asking your spouse’s best friend to convince them to come home after they’ve already moved out and changed the locks. The intention is noble. The likelihood of success? Somewhere south of slim.
Yet that’s exactly what happened this week. The French president arrived with all the usual diplomatic fanfare: state banquet, joint statements, the obligatory photo-op with pandas (because apparently giant cuddly bears fix everything). His message was clear and, frankly, desperate: please, please help us pressure Moscow into at least pausing the destruction of Ukraine’s power grid this winter.
The response? A polite nod, some lovely words about “supporting all efforts conducive to peace,” and a gentle reminder that any solution has to be acceptable to all parties. Translation: we’re not telling our strategic partner to back down just because Europe is cold and scared.
What “Multilateralism” Actually Means Now
Here’s the part that should worry everyone who still believes in the post-1945 world order. When the Chinese leader started talking about raising “the banner of multilateralism” and standing “on the right side of history,” he wasn’t quoting the UN Charter. He was using language that has become code in Moscow and Beijing for something very different.
No matter how the external environment changes, major powers should demonstrate independence and strategic vision, showing mutual understanding and support on core interests.
Read between the lines: great powers get to define their own spheres. The era of one country (or one alliance) writing the rules for everyone else is over. Ukraine, Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Arctic, you name it: local hegemons will handle their neighborhoods, thank you very much.
In my view, this is the real story coming out of the visit. Not that China refused to condemn Russia (we knew that already). But that Beijing now feels confident enough to say the quiet part out loud, in front of cameras, to a G7 leader’s face.
Europe’s Growing Panic Is Palpable
Back home, the reaction has been a mix of denial and despair. Some officials reportedly accused Moscow of “faking” interest in negotiations, as if the problem is bad faith rather than the fact that Russia believes it’s winning. Others have quietly started gaming out what a frozen conflict, or worse, a Russian victory, would actually mean for NATO’s eastern flank.
And let’s not sugarcoat it: Europe’s leverage over China is shrinking fast. The continent ran a trade deficit larger than the GDP of most countries last year with Beijing. Critical minerals? China. Manufacturing supply chains? China. Even the green transition everyone loves talking about? Still overwhelmingly reliant on Chinese batteries and solar panels.
So when European leaders threaten “consequences” unless China changes course on Russia, the mental image in Beijing is probably someone standing in a glass house lobbing bricks.
- Europe needs China’s market more than China needs Europe’s
- Europe needs China’s raw materials more than China needs European luxury goods
- Europe needs Russian energy (or at least did until recently) while China buys it at a friendly discount
It’s not a great negotiating position.
Putin’s Calculus Hasn’t Changed
Meanwhile, the man at the center of all this doesn’t appear remotely interested in compromise. Recent statements out of Moscow have been crystal clear: Ukrainian forces either withdraw from the four annexed regions (plus Crimea), or Russian troops will keep advancing until they control them completely.
No neutrality pledge from Kyiv is enough. No security guarantees for Russia seem credible. The only acceptable outcome, from the Kremlin’s perspective, is total capitulation on the territorial question and the permanent neutering of Ukraine as a military factor.
Whether you think that stance is delusional or brutally realistic, it leaves almost no overlapping space for negotiation. Especially when the incoming U.S. administration has floated ideas that, for the first time, include recognizing some Russian territorial gains in exchange for a ceasefire.
The Disintegration Is Already Happening
People keep using phrases like “risk of disintegration of the international order.” But here’s the uncomfortable truth: that disintegration isn’t a future event. It’s the reality we’re living in right now.
When major powers openly declare that universal rules only apply when convenient, when invasions no longer carry automatic economic isolation, when nuclear threats become routine diplomatic punctuation, the order built after World War II isn’t “at risk.” It’s already on life support.
What we’re seeing is the transition to something else. Call it multipolarity, spheres of influence, or a new concert of great powers, whatever label you prefer. The defining feature is that might increasingly makes right, and middle powers have to choose which giant they’d rather hide behind.
Europe, caught in the middle without the military or economic weight to impose its preferences, is discovering just how lonely that position feels.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Short term, more of the same. Russia continues grinding forward. Ukraine keeps hitting Russian oil infrastructure with drones. Russia keeps turning off Ukraine’s lights as winter deepens. China keeps selling dual-use goods to Russia while pocketing European money for electric vehicles.
Long term? That’s where things get unpredictable. If the United States truly pivots toward forcing territorial compromise to end the war quickly, Europe faces an existential choice: follow Washington and effectively abandon the principles it spent decades championing, or go its own way and risk becoming irrelevant.
Either path leads to the same destination: a world where raw power matters more than international law, and where middle-sized countries have to make accommodations they once considered unthinkable.
The pandas were cute, though.
Sometimes that’s all diplomacy has left to offer when the ground under the old order has already shifted.
