The Ukraine war has made the EU, at least for now, more united than before and it is increasingly aligned with the US amid a reinvigoration of NATO. The grouping had erstwhile been seeking to forge a “third way” in playing a role in the Indo-Pacific free of the US-China binary construct. But as it moves closer to the US, will it be carried along by the “democracy versus autocracy” narrative and estrange itself from China to its own detriment?