Putting America First at the expense of China

European small states like Denmark seem to be caught in the middle of a deepening great power rivalry between the United States and China. The Danish government has already faced several strategic challenges on that account, prompted by American opposition to Chinese investment plans in Greenland, potential Danish participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the prospects of involving Chinese tech giant Huawei in Denmark’s critical digital infrastructure. It raises the question of whether the emerging pattern of great power rivalry will have an undermining effect on the Danish-Chinese Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement which is currently in the process of being renegotiated.

In his contribution to the ETNC report “Europe in the face of US-China rivalry”, Andreas Bøje Forsby – on behalf of DIIS – takes a closer look at Denmark’s bilateral relations with Washington and Beijing. Apart from comparing the two sets of bilateral relations across several domains, he provides some examples of the strategic dilemmas that Copenhagen has so far been confronted with. Forsby demonstrates how Denmark is far more dependent on Washington than Beijing (also in an economic sense), and how China-critical views have recently become more prevalent in Denmark. In addition to Forsby’s chapter, the ETNC report offers similar contributions from a wide range of other European perspectives