Europe tends to react to international crises like someone waking in the middle of the night in a burning house: first disbelief; then confusion; and, with the smoke already filling the rooms, the certainty that the fire is real. The military escalation between the United States, Israel and Iran reminds us again of that scene. We are not simply facing another crisis in the Middle East. We are witnessing an additional signal that the international order that emerged after World War II is crumbling before our eyes.
For decades, the international system rested on a relatively simple premise: that the use of force should be constrained by shared norms, by multilateral institutions, and by a certain balance between power and legality. That balance was never perfect, but it established a framework of predictability. Today, that framework is broken. The doctrine of preventive war, that elastic formula that turns hypothesis into threat and threat into justification, has transformed into a pretext for unilateral use of force. As preventive war becomes normalized as an ordinary tool, what is weakened is not only international law: it is the very architecture of global stability and security.
“It is worrying that the erosion of the international order is being justified in the name of defending democracy. Democracies do not defend themselves by suspending the norms that make them possible”
None of this implies ignoring the nature of the Iranian regime. It is a theocratic power that brutalizes its own society—especially women—and has for decades used regional violence as a instrument of political survival. Yet precisely for that reason, it is even more troubling that the erosion of the international order is to be justified in the name of defending democracy. Democracies do not defend themselves by suspending the norms that make them possible. When international law becomes a selective instrument, invoked in some conflicts and relativized in others, it ceases to be law and becomes merely instrumental rhetoric.
The European response to this crisis again reveals a weakness that recurs far too often: the difficulty of thinking of Europe as an autonomous subject. Too often, European foreign policy operates as a shadow cast by American foreign policy. The reaction does not arise from its own strategic reflection, but from an almost automatic reflex of alignment. That reflex, a blind Atlanticism wrapped in prudence, reveals today its limits in a world where alliances no longer function according to the coordinates of the last century.
The events offer a particularly clear illustration of that problem: Donald Trump threatens to cut trade with Spain as retaliation for the Spanish government’s refusal to back an escalation of military action lacking UN backing and for resisting the use of its bases for operations tied to this war. The scene is revealing. It is not merely a diplomatic dispute. It is the explicit use of economic coercion, among traditional allies, as a tool of political pressure.
“By threatening to cut trade with Spain you are, in effect, threatening the entire European market”
But the most significant aspect of that episode is that the threat does not even acknowledge Europe’s institutional reality. Spain, like any other member state, does not negotiate its trade policy bilaterally with Washington. Trade policy is an exclusive competence of the European Union. Therefore, by threatening to cut trade with Spain you are, in fact, threatening the entire European market.
The German chancellor’s lack of response, Friedrich Merz, was telling: it oscillated between complicity in silence and subservient cooperation. It was the moment to state clearly that no member state can be subjected to economic intimidation by a partner on the international stage. It could have been an opportunity to remind that the European internal market is a political project precisely designed to shield its members from external pressures. Instead, there was silence.
That kind of silence is often presented as strategic realism. But it increasingly resembles something else: the persistence of a political culture that continues to view the transatlantic relationship in terms of subordination. For decades, Europe outsourced its security and much of its strategic horizon to the United States. That delegation may have seemed convenient in a stable world, but it becomes dangerous when American policy turns unpredictable and shows itself willing to instrumentalize its economic and military power.
The world that is emerging bears less and less resemblance to the liberal order that Europe learned to inhabit. The great powers combine commercial pressure, military power and technological capacity to defend their interests. Trade becomes a geopolitical weapon, sanctions a tool of discipline, and interdependence a field of strategic competition. In that scenario, a Europe that cannot exercise collective sovereignty risks becoming a space of influence rather than a political actor.
“Sovereignty is the capacity to sustain a foreign policy coherent with international law, even when that coherence is difficult for traditional allies”
That sovereignty is not an abstraction. It has very concrete dimensions. It is the ability to defend the internal market against economic coercion. It is the ability to sustain a foreign policy coherent with international law, even when that coherence proves difficult for traditional allies. It is the ability to build an industrial, energy, and technological base that reduces strategic dependencies. And it is also the ability to speak with one voice when one of its members is threatened.
The European Union already possesses, paradoxically, one of the most formidable instruments of power in the contemporary world: its economic dimension. The European internal market is one of the planet’s largest commercial spaces. It is a regulatory powerhouse capable of setting global standards and an economic actor whose scale makes it an indispensable partner for almost any advanced economy. But that potential only becomes real power when there is political will to use it.
And that political will requires shedding automatic inertia. Europe cannot aspire to be a normative power if it is not prepared to defend the norms when they discomfort its allies. European credibility depends precisely on that coherence. A coherence that Spain has maintained consistently. If we defend international law in Ukraine, we must defend it also in Gaza or in Iran. Not because the conflicts are identical, but because the rule is the only thing that prevents the international system from turning into a board where force alone counts.
In recent hours, some have begun to move closer to the position led by Pedro Sánchez. Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney have finally acknowledged the illegality of the attacks, and other voices have begun to speak more clearly about the need to de-escalate and to restore the framework of international law. It is a revealing move. As happened with Gaza, the pressure of events ends up pushing many governments toward positions that Spain defended from the outset.
But being right with the passage of time is not enough. In international politics, the reason arriving too late often arrives when the damage is already irreparable. Europe needs more than the ability to acknowledge its mistakes in hindsight. It needs the political will required to act in time.
“A Europe that assumes its collective sovereignty can become one of the few powers capable of defending a rules-based international order”
The real debate at the heart of this crisis is not, ultimately, about Iran. It is about Europe. About whether the continent is willing to assume its place in a world increasingly shaped by imperial dynamics. In that world, a Europe that acts as a mosaic of national fears becomes an irrelevant actor. A Europe that embraces its collective sovereignty, on the other hand, could become one of the few powers capable of defending a rules-based international order.
The difference between the two possibilities is, ultimately, a question of political will. Spain has paved the way. For too long, Europe has progressed as if walking in a daze, trusting that the ground beneath its feet would always stay stable. But the ground has cracked.
In the face of such a profound change, the greatest risk is not making mistakes. The greatest risk is continuing to walk as if nothing has changed.
