Days of the US dictating the EU are numbered

The United States is going berserk trying to drive a wedge between China and the European Union in a bid to divide the world into political blocs, but such a strategy is doomed to failure.

US State Department Deputy Spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters on May 16 that "it (China) can't have it both ways. You can't want to have good, further, stronger, deepened relationships with European and other countries while simultaneously continuing to fuel the biggest threat to European security in a long time".

Such deliberate distortion of facts, however, can no longer fool people. Patel might be speaking for the US administration, but it is absurd that he also tries to speak for the EU and the rest of the world despite the US' habit of hijacking the world.

China, along with India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa and most other developing countries, has been calling for a ceasefire and urging Russia and Ukraine to hold negotiations to resolve the Ukraine conflict. In contrast, the US forced Ukraine to halt the peace talks with Russia in spring of 2022.

China put forward its position document on the political settlement of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February last year and Chinese special envoy for Eurasian affairs Li Hui has been busy mediating between different parties in an effort to restore peace.

Ukrainian and some EU leaders have responded much more positively to China's efforts to resolve the Ukraine crisis than US politicians. More and more Europeans are waking up to the reality that the US wants to prolong the conflict to serve its own geopolitical interests and boost its military industrial complex.

On Saturday, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said that "it is unacceptable to present the continuation of the war and the impossible victory over Russia as the only possible solution" — a message aimed at helping Washington and Brussels to take note of the assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. Fico is also a EU leader who supports a cease-fire and diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was blunt in his remarks during his visit in California last week, complaining about the US Inflation Reduction Act and the more than 100 percent punitive tariffs on Chinese EVs, decisions on which the EU was not at all consulted.

Moreover, Patel is not alone in sowing discord. Launching a vicious attack against China, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, in a speech at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Germany on Tuesday, tried to rally German and EU support in the "economic war" on China, ignoring the fact that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and German business leaders have publicly opposed the US' punitive tariffs on Chinese-made EVs.

The Europeans are horrified by the prospects of a second Donald Trump presidency, and transatlantic relations are certainly not as close as Washington likes to think.

While US President Joe Biden denounced an International Criminal Court prosecutor for seeking to issue arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials on charges of "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity", and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he will work with Congress to issue sanctions against ICC officials, quite a few EU countries including France, Belgium and Slovenia have voiced their support for the ICC ruling.

Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy chief of former US President Barack Obama's White House National Security Council, lamented that "it would be a historic and dangerous mistake for a Democratic Administration to participate in an attack on international law and institutions".

The recent announcement of Spain, Ireland and Norway that they will formally recognize the state of Palestine is another strong European rebuke of the US' biased policy in the Middle East, especially regarding Israel and Palestine.

At the annual United Nations General Assembly, the EU countries opposed the brutal US embargo on Cuba.

The US still wields outsized influence in the EU, but the repeated outcry by French President Emmanuel Macron that the EU should not be a US vassal shows that the days of the US dictating the EU are numbered.

chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn