Europe is not facing just another crisis. It is witnessing the exhaustion of the international order that has structured the world since 1945. And that has an exceptional historical depth. The great international equilibria rarely disappear gradually: they collapse when the structures of power, economic hierarchies, and political legitimacies cease to correspond to reality.
It happened after the Wars of Religion and the Peace of Westphalia, which enshrined the principle of state sovereignty. It happened after the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, which established the European balance of powers. And it happened again after the two world wars, when the liberal order led by the United States organized for decades the economy, security and global governance. All those systems were born from traumatic ruptures and from systemic conflicts that redefinied the rules of power.
The difference is that today the transition toward a new order has already begun, but there is not yet a framework capable of stabilizing it. The balance that emerged after 1945 has eroded rapidly. Institutions continue to exist, but they have lost their ability to order the world. Alliances persist, though they no longer produce the same certainties. The rules survive, but they are questioned by actors who did not participate in their design or who consider their legitimacy exhausted.
The historical challenge, therefore, is to understand the depth of this transition and to contribute to building a new international balance before a great confrontation ends up imposing it by force.
“The balance that emerged after 1945 has eroded rapidly. Institutions continue to exist, but they have lost their ability to order the world”
This is the true nature of the current moment. We are witnessing more than a change of context: an simultaneous alteration of the foundations on which the international system was organized. Rules, power relations, economic dependencies, technological equilibria and forms of political competition are all changing at once. In that scenario, inertia ceases to be prudence and becomes strategic blindness.
For decades, Europe operated within a relatively predictable framework. The international order that emerged after World War II offered a set of institutions, alliances and balances which, despite their contradictions, allowed containing power competition among states and reducing the risk of direct confrontation. Globalization was interpreted as a process of progressive integration; economic interdependence as a guarantee of stability, and the expansion of liberal democracy as an almost irreversible historical trend.
That framework has not disappeared abruptly, but it has stopped effectively structuring the international reality. The problem goes beyond the emergence of new powers and affects the deterioration of the very foundations of the previous order. The relationship between economic power, military power and political legitimacy is once again in dispute. With these elements in dispute, the international system enters an inevitably unstable phase.
“The problem goes beyond the emergence of new powers and affects the deterioration of the very foundations of the previous order”
The main problem for Europe does not reside so much in the change as in its difficulty in fully grasping the magnitude of that change. Persisting in inherited categories to interpret a radically different environment reveals a strategic misfit more than a sign of stability. Effective foreign policy always starts with an accurate diagnosis. And that diagnosis requires accepting that the world today is more competitive, more fragmented and less normative than Europe would like.
Defending principles requires understanding the real ground on which those principles must stand. Because, if the analysis does not adapt to reality, policy becomes rhetoric.
Geopolitics of Dependence
The geopolitical reconfiguration constitutes the first axis of this change. The international system is evolving toward an increasingly evident multipolarity, in which several powers openly compete for influence, access to strategic resources and the capacity to define the rules of the system. But this power redistribution is not accompanied by a new shared governance framework. On the contrary: it coincides with the progressive weakening of multilateralism and with the return of more direct, more transactional and less institutionalized power logics.
The current period thus becomes a phase of international interregnum. The old order loses efficacy, but the new one does not yet exist. In these moments, gray zones, hybrid rivalries and dynamics of indirect confrontation proliferate.
“The international system is evolving toward an increasingly evident multipolarity, in which several powers openly compete”
In this context, a form of competition consolidates that resembles imperial dynamics. Sometimes it takes the classic sense of territorial occupation, as in Ukraine, but it also operates through the capacity to project power with economic, technological, financial and regulatory instruments. Dependencies are used as levers of pressure, supply chains function as instruments of influence and critical technologies become tools of strategic control. Coercion takes on more diffuse forms than in the past, but not less effective.
Europe is particularly exposed to this transformation. On the one hand, it faces a direct threat in its eastern neighbourhood, where Russian aggression has reintroduced conventional war on the continent and has challenged fundamental principles of European security. On the other hand, it observes a profound deformation of the role of the United States, whose foreign policy leans toward a logic of immediate national interest and transactional calculations, often with disregard for its traditional alliances.
The consequence is the loss of Europe’s strategic automatisms. While one should avoid a loud rupture that would multiply risks, the transatlantic relationship has changed forever. The strategic convergence of the second half of the 20th century, structurally aligned by the Cold War, has come to an end. Convergences will continue to exist, but they will be more contingent, more negotiated, and less permanent than in prior decades.
In this new scenario, strategic dependence ceases to be sustainable by simple realism, rather than ideological reasons. Europe needs capable autonomous action precisely for the moments when other actors decide not to act in the same direction.
“Russian aggression has reintroduced conventional war on the continent and has questioned fundamental principles of European security”
The temptation to interpret this new environment in terms of closed blocs —the West against the rest— is also profoundly limiting. That reading simplifies a reality far more complex and unnecessarily narrows European room for maneuver. An increasing portion of the world does not identify with that division and refuses to be trapped in rigid alignment logics. For middle powers, insisting on that framework does not enlarge alliances: it restricts them.
Moreover, this evolution is intertwined with an equally deep economic mutation. Globalization no longer follows the depoliticized efficiency logic that characterized the last decades. Today it is crossed by security considerations, technological rivalry and strategic competition. Trade, energy, infrastructure and data have ceased to be purely economic realms and have become central dimensions of power.
That profoundly alters the assumptions on which Europe built much of its economic model. For years it was assumed that open trade and global integration would generate shared prosperity and political stability. Today it is evident that interdependence also creates vulnerability. Critical dependencies can be exploited, supply chains can be disrupted and competitive advantages can be redefined through political decisions.
Economic neutrality has disappeared.
In this new environment, the dominant European economic paradigm shows growing signs of exhaustion. The idea that the market alone can guarantee efficient allocations in any circumstance loses meaning in a context where other powers actively use industrial policy, technological control, massive subsidies and strategic intervention to shape outcomes.
The debate can no longer be reduced to whether to intervene or not. The decisive question is whether Europe has a coherent strategy to do so effectively.
European Sovereignty in a Multipolar World
This diagnosis requires redefining the balance between openness and protection, between competition and resilience, between market and public capacity. Rather than replicating foreign models, Europe needs to develop its own strategy tailored to its characteristics. Economic autonomy does not imply isolation. It implies the capacity to decide in an environment of conflicting interdependence.
“The idea that the market, by itself, can guarantee efficient allocations in any circumstance loses its meaning”
To this dual mutation adds a third, which affects the very core of European democratic systems. Liberal democracies face rising tensions stemming from economic, technological and cultural changes that deeply alter traditional forms of political mediation. The emergence of large digital platforms with the power to shape the public space introduces a new dimension in democratic competition.
At the same time, authoritarian movements and illiberal forces operate more and more transnationally. They share resources, narratives and strategies, taking advantage of the benefits of a globalized digital ecosystem. Democracy is no longer eroded only from the outside. Also from within.
These dynamics converge finally in a fourth transformation: the loss of the relative centrality of the West. The international system reorganizes around new poles of power that do not necessarily share Europe’s priorities, interests or historical references. This does not automatically imply irrelevance, but it compels a profound adaptation.
Europe has lost its position as the organizing hub of the international system to become one of several major actors within it.
“Normative power remains an important asset, but it increasingly depends on the ability to project economic, technological, and geopolitical power”
There emerges one of the main strategic difficulties facing the West: the persistence of a view that remains overly self-referential about the world. Normative power remains an important asset, but it increasingly depends on the ability to project economic, technological and geopolitical power. The norm, if not backed by influence, loses effectiveness.
The answer to this situation cannot be retreat. It must be a strategic redefinition.
The response must be articulated, first and foremost, around the idea of effective European sovereignty. This sovereignty is not equivalent to a renewed, isolated transfer of national competences: it consists of building a collective decision-making capacity. In a world dominated by great powers, scale matters. And the only scale capable of preserving real influence for Europeans is the European one.
That implies progress in integration and a single market where power is actually generated: defense, energy, industry, financing, artificial intelligence, critical technologies and strategic infrastructures. It also implies developing common financial instruments capable of sustaining long-term investments and reducing structural dependencies.
Sovereignty is not a political declaration. It is the cumulative result of strategic decisions sustained over time.
Moreover, Europe must redefine its insertion into the global economy and geopolitics. The diversification of relations becomes a structural necessity to reduce vulnerabilities and broaden room for maneuver. In a world of asymmetric interdependencies, relying less on a single actor constitutes a basic form of autonomy.
Here Europe needs to abandon both naïveté and the binary logic of automatic alignments. The world that emerges will not be organized exclusively around two closed blocs. It will be a space of variable balances, flexible partnerships, and relationships that are simultaneously competitive and cooperative.
“This architecture of strategic diversification would allow Europe to expand its room for maneuver in an increasingly competitive and fragmented international environment”
In that context, it makes sense to articulate a European repositioning strategy based on autonomous and cooperative relations with actors capable of protecting common interests and contributing to shaping a new multilateralism: Brazil, Mexico, India and China. More than an alternative bloc or a formal alliance, this architecture of strategic diversification would allow Europe to expand its room for maneuver in an increasingly competitive and fragmented international environment.
Brazil represents for Europe a central partner in the global energy, industrial and climate reorganization and in the rebuilding of multilateralism. Ratifying the EU-Mercosur agreement would help reinforce the relationship with the principal South American power and solidify ties with a region key to the green transition, critical minerals and food security, at a moment of growing geopolitical competition for influence and investments.
Mexico occupies a unique position because of its industrial integration with North America and its growing geoeconomic weight. The modernization of the EU-Mexico Global Agreement offers Europe an opportunity to strengthen a strategic economic and technological relationship and access new transatlantic value chains in a context of industrial diversification and reduced dependencies.
India embodies the multipolar autonomy logic characteristic of the major emerging powers: cooperation without automatic alignment. The expectation of closing the EU-India association agreement in record time reflects the growing importance of New Delhi as a first-order economic, technological and geopolitical partner, as well as Europe’s need to reinforce its presence in the Indo-Pacific.
The relationship with China will be the true measure of European strategic autonomy. Europe must define its policy toward Beijing according to its own interests, and not the priorities of other powers. This requires combining cooperation and firmness, defending reciprocity, ensuring fair competition and maintaining stable channels of dialogue along with pragmatic management of differences.
Europe cannot afford either naïveté toward China or a systemic confrontation logic. Its interest lies in promoting its industrial base and defending its economic interests, while cooperating in the major global challenges that can only be addressed effectively through collaboration between Europe and China.
This approach is especially important in light of the growing risk that Europe gets caught between two simultaneous pressures. On one hand, the Russian threat in the east; on the other, the possibility of an increasingly transactional and less committed American policy toward European stability. In that scenario, expanding relationships and diversifying interdependencies, rather than a tactical option, is a strategic imperative.
Because in a multipolar world, having options equals having a geostrategic insurance policy.
But no external strategy will be credible if Europe does not first correct its own internal limitations. The European Union continues to face enormous difficulties in making decisions quickly, coordinating positions and translating its economic weight into effective political power. Institutional fragmentation reduces its efficacy precisely when the international environment demands greater agility and strategic clarity.
Europe needs to decide faster, take on more political risks and abandon the illusion that permanent ambiguity is a sustainable strategy. In international politics, indecision is not neutral. It has consequences.
Europe still possesses exceptional assets: economic scale, technological capacity, regulatory power, institutional stability and a unique historical experience of the costs of conflict. But assets are not conserved by inertia; they depend on the ability to understand the historical moment in which one acts.
Because the great transition is already underway. The balance that emerged after 1945 has ceased to order the world, but the new order has not yet been born. In those moments of vacuum, powers reposition themselves, dependencies become weapons and wars no longer seem impossible.
Europe therefore faces a singular historical responsibility: to contribute to building a new international balance without requiring a new catastrophe to make it possible.
