The European Union between norms and power: strategic recalibration across China, Russia, and India

The European Union's external action has entered a period of significant strategic recalibration struggling between its longstanding normative identity and emerging security imperatives. With China's rapid economic expansion and growing clout and competition, the EU has reassessed its engagement with China, as Beijing's deployment of soft power through cultural diplomacy and economic initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has acquired broader strategic and geopolitical significance. Concurrently, Russia's military aggression in Ukraine has fundamentally altered Europe's security calculus. As the EU reaffirms its support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, it has simultaneously been compelled to reconcile its longstanding normative commitments with the practical imperatives of hard power. At the same time, the EU's expanding strategic partnership with India, particularly in areas such as maritime security, connectivity, defence cooperation, and the Indo-Pacific, reflects its growing emphasis on building resilient partnerships with like-minded actors in response to an increasingly contested geopolitical environment. This paper argues that the EU's responses to China, Russia, and India show that its contemporary strategic recalibration is characterised not by a departure from its normative identity, but by integrating normative and hard power within a coherent strategic framework.