In the aftermath of Trump’s victory some interesting changes are happening on the European side. On Monday the 14th of November EU foreign ministers met in Brussels in a joint session on the implementation plan on security and defense policy. The meeting that happened just few days after the US elections, seems to have established a new awareness for what concerns the European security and defense agenda.
When Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping meet in Beijing this week, they will try to reverse the downward spiral in relations between their two countries. There is a growing sense that a promising partnership, one that was captured by the agreement to forge a “new type of major country relations,” has lost its momentum and threatens to run off the rails.
While US-China bilateral relations are currently strained across multiple issues –North Korea’s increased nuclear testing; emissions curbing of “super GHGs”, human rights; and China’s increasingly assertive territorial claims in the South China Sea and East China Sea – it is the cyber war debate that has been claiming recent news headlines, and much more so within the US than in China.