Europe's response to the US-Israeli strikes on Iran exposes a continent locked in dependency and struggling to find its voice.

The rules-based order was always partly a legitimation device for American hegemony, but it was a device that required European buy-in — and that buy-in gave Europe real leverage. Trump has abandoned the legitimation mechanism entirely. He does not need Europe’s moral endorsement because he has dispensed with the need for legitimacy altogether. Power is its own justification. That is precisely what makes the European establishment’s eager compliance so self-defeating.

Sánchez is dragging Europe’s centre-left toward articulating a foreign policy grounded in international law, genuine multilateralism, and the understanding that the international order is rebuilt through principles consistently applied, not selectively invoked. What makes the S&D shift notable is that arguments long dismissed as too radical — when made by voices like Yanis Varoufakis — are now coming from governing parties.

  • chasteinsect@programming.devEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    Because it isn‘t a single state?

    Yes. How can you be a superpower when a single country like Hungary can veto important decisions?

    It doesn’t even have it’s own army. Only 27 separate militaries with different languages, commanders, equipment and it relies on US-led NATO for security.

    For all the recent announcements, Europe has little strategic autonomy. Military capacity is outsourced to Washington, technology platforms are American, energy reliance has shifted from Russian gas to American liquefied natural gas, and the dollar’s reserve role leaves European economies exposed to decisions made in the White House. Europe never built the political architecture to address any of this. The fundamental question remains unanswered: is this economic integration to manage a single market, or political integration with genuine collective agency? Decades of deferring that answer have left Europe divided, dependent, and sidelined.