European strategic disorientation has cloaked itself in the language of force as it flirts with the risk of its own disintegration. "We need to be prepared to project our power," said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the EU ambassadors' conference held this Monday in Brussels. Faced with a precarious world, an increasingly vulnerable Union is struggling to adapt to the speed of the deconstruction of the international order. The EU has long felt overwhelmed by its irrelevance and the contempt of its traditional ally, but the Iran war has amplified the erratic "every man for himself" mentality of European leaders, each serving their own interests. Friedrich Merz and Emmanuel Macron have rolled up their sleeves in a bilateral power struggle to lead European defense. Paris has opened discussions with some EU capitals on how to extend the French nuclear umbrella to a large part of the continent. And Cyprus has received troop and weaponry support from some EU partners following the attack it suffered in the early days of the war.
Europe is reacting, but in a fragmented way, with different objectives and contradictory messages. While Von der Leyen called on Monday for an inflexible foreign policy with security as the "organizing principle" of European diplomacy, the mobilization of resources and political commitments these days is essentially intergovernmental.
The European machinery seems to have collided with the geopolitical urgency of the moment. And with this logic, the Commission President warned that the time has come to assess whether "the system of consensus and compromise is more of an aid or an impediment to the credibility" of the EU as a geopolitical actor.
This is not a gratuitous statement, nor a course correction born of necessity. The DNA of the European Union has long since begun to mutate. Von der Leyen admits that the EU method is an institutional straitjacket and that consensus fuels the veto power of those who want to derail the majority.
The discourse of European fragmentation is taking hold. The EU doesn't know how to deal with the impunity of a world without rules. But, paradoxically, the idea of unity is beginning to be seen, in some offices, as a burden.
Furthermore, the German commissioner's agenda is also worrying some European partners. The Commission President is trying to fill every power vacuum left by the absence of real European leadership: from the calls with Gulf leaders over the weekend on behalf of the EU to the decision to send a European Commissioner as an observer to Donald Trump's Peace Council, or her statements about a "transition" to a "transition"—the regime change strategy now being championed by the United States, which, for now, lacks the consensus of the 27 member states. As the war in Iran intensifies, so do its economic impact and the political fractures within the EU.
With oil prices at their highest level in four years, the escalation in the Persian Gulf is once again boosting the Kremlin's main source of revenue and facilitating Vladimir Putin's military gamble in a Ukraine increasingly in need of economic and military support. With attacks on oil infrastructure and the Strait of Hormuz strangled, China and India, the main buyers of Russian crude, will further reinforce this supply route.
Once again, the EU finds itself weakened by both Russia and the United States. Vulnerable to the arbitrary actions of Donald Trump and the persistence of the Kremlin's aggression. Overwhelmed by the powder keg of the Middle East and sidelined in negotiations over the future of Ukraine, the challenge for the EU is to adapt to the prevailing realism without losing sight of what the Union is.
Europe "cannot be the custodian of the old world order," because its rules no longer protect us from a complex world, Von der Leyen stated. But Brussels has been the first to disregard international law in a war whose outcome not even the United States knows, much less how they will justify amission accomplishedwhich Trump will want to sell as a victory. But the EU has everything to lose in a global order organized by force.
