In an era of major strategic security challenges, relations between the traditional West and East are being transformed by a variety of factors.
The most significant of these is the effort undertaken by the 27 countries of the European Union (EU) to forge a broad consensus on trade and foreign policies independent of Washington. The rejection by EU governments and citizens of US unilateralist policies in West Asia, in particular, has undermined the trans-Atlantic connection and given rise to virulent anti-US feeling in many European countries.
Unhampered by Cold War psychological constraints – which continue to dominate US thinking – the EU has been building on already good relations with India and China, Asian nations whose rise is shifting the centre of power eastwards and transforming the global political and economic landscape.
The EU is cultivating both countries instead of following the US example of trying to play India off against China, still seen in Washington as an antagonist.
While the US is courting India, it cannot come to comfortable terms with China because of its political independence, nuclear arsenal, ambition to regain Taiwan and rapid economic growth which challenges US dominance. Since Europe is not seeking dominance it does not see India and China as rivals.
EU-India relations go back to the early 1960s at a time the US had adopted a hostile stance over New Delhi's refusal, as the leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, to take Washington's side in the Cold War. Indeed, India was among the first countries to establish diplomatic ties with the European Economic Community, now the EU. Cooperation was expanded beyond trade by the 1993 Joint Political Statement and the 1994 cooperation agreement.
In November 2004, India and the EU launched their strategic partnership, a relationship Europe enjoys with only five other countries, the US, Canada, Russia, Japan and China. The EU is India's largest customer, purchasing a quarter of Indian exports, while India is the 16th largest importer of EU goods.
China established diplomatic relations with the EEC/EU in 1975; they signed their first trade agreement in 1978. In 1989 relations were suspended and sanctions imposed due to harsh treatment of protesters in Tianamen Square in Beijing.
By 1990 relations were back on track and by 2004 the EU was China’s biggest customer and China the EU’s second largest trading partner. China and the EU became strategic partners in 2003.
One of the main issues dividing the two countries is an EU ban on the sale of arms to China.
Although the EU would like to remove this prohibition, the US insists it should stay in place.
EU analysts argue that the embargo is likely to be lifted in the near future due to the weakening of US-EU relations and to the European desire to benefit from the economic opportunities which close cooperation with China provides.
Due to close ties with these countries, the EU can serve as a brake on Indian hot heads who would like to use military means to resolve the Kashmir dispute and on Chinese hardliners who are determined to reunite Taiwan with the mainland by means of pressure and threat.  Partnership permits the EU to press the parties to resolve these disputes through dialogue. 
Europe, India and China have declared their determination to work together to promote environmental conservation, sustainable development, human rights, free trade, the rule of law, scientific advance, non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, and political and economic cooperation.
While pledges to deal with these global problems do not amount to  more than a wish-list, Europe, India, and China share a genuine commitment to act on several. 
This is positive. There is also enough common interest (or self-interest) in the entire package to put it on common long-term agendas of the partners.  
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy are striving to strengthen the European Union through the adoption of a constitution which would promote common foreign and defence policies.
If this happens, the European bloc will be in a stronger position to enhance ties with regions, particularly the Asian bloc. The formation of cooperating regional blocs would, ineluctably, reduce US power and influence on the world scene and could, perhaps, enable Europe and Asia to tackle long-standing disputes which the US has failed, or refused, to resolve, notably in West Asia, the backyard of both Europe and the Indian subcontinent.