Europe’s choice

Europe collectively faces a binary choice. It can take the blue pill, chose to disregard reality and continue down the path of humiliation, becoming a playing ground for international powers while managing its own geopolitical decline. Or it can take the red pill, embrace reality and step up to regain agency over its own destiny.

Europe faces an adversary that seeks domination in its desired sphere of interest, disregards international rules and institutions, uses naked force to serve its agenda, and pursues oligarchic and nationalist business interests. Oh, and then there is also Putin’s Russia. Indeed, under Donald Trump, the only significant difference between Russia and the US seems to be that Russia’s lust for raw power geographically collides with European sovereignty. America’s aim to dominate the Western Hemisphere does not, except for Greenland. Cue Trump’s inner Putin, only more bullish and openly threatening, and directed at countries with which the US still shares the most significant mutual security pact in recorded history.

For a Europe that throughout 2025 chose humiliation capped by sycophancy to keep President Trump on Europe’s side over Ukraine, the stark reality is that the US has nevertheless become not only unreliable but also hostile. The game of diplomatic catching up and reeling in as Washington goes ever more rogue has reached its limits. Accommodating brazen demands over Greenland may now be the price Europe will be expected to pay for continued US support over Ukraine. At the same time, the US coup in Venezuela and its cavalier dismantling of the rules-based world order will only strengthen the Kremlin’s conviction that dominating Ukraine is key to its future national security.

Europe collectively faces a binary choice. It can take the blue pill, chose to disregard reality and continue down the path of humiliation, becoming a playing ground for international powers while managing its own geopolitical decline. Or it can take the red pill, embrace reality and step up to regain agency over its own destiny. As in the sci-fi movie classic the Matrix, choosing truth over illusion opens its own rabbit hole, as a geopolitical Europe has to face up to three strategic challenges at the same time: it can no longer rely on the US, it does not want to rely on China, and it is essentially at war with Russia. Fortunately, meeting these challenges together is feasible because each requires a similar policy mix: geographic security combined with economic and technological autonomy, essentially establishing a European sphere of interest.

Europe’s first geopolitical priority should be to leverage EU-partnerships and -membership to build a security ring. In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Political Community was set up as a broader cluster of Eurasian nations with shared security interests. As Europe’s defence and security capacities grow, the Community should become a geo-economic platform cementing regional security alliances. Ukraine can be the conduit. The European Commission is considering a fast-track piecemeal EU-membership to anchor Ukraine in Europe. This would essentially reinvent EU-membership as a stacked menu upon a bedrock of a common security membership: precisely the tool needed.

Second, the European Union must urgently deliver on the plans to deepen its internal market for geopolitical aims. This requires three steps to be taken in parallel: an Airbus-style European top-down planning of strategic capacity and market making in chosen critical technologies, new funding instruments through more European financial market integration, and a competition framework that enables European champions to emerge through bottom-up consolidation. What has started in EU defence industrial planning and funding in 2025, should be expanded and accelerated to become the model for other industries where European strategic dependency means geopolitical subservience.

Third, a Europe that is serious about strategic autonomy must become serious about China too. Europe can have a genuine European industrial and technological capacity, or it can have free trade with China, but it can’t have both. Applying a Bidenesque ‘small yard, high fence’ approach to fence off certain critical industries and technologies from Chinese dumping or dominance would make sense. Such selective protectionism vis-à-vis China should be the flipside of deliberate industrial development in Europe itself. It can be further enabled by levelling the trade playing field on climate and other standards, as CBAM will purport to do.

Picking a fight with the Chinese over trade will not come without friction or cost. It will also require corporate Europe to reconsider some if its own China-strategies. But it is the price we will have to pay to avoid becoming as dependent on China for strategic industrial goods as we were dependent on Russia for fossil energy. While strategic protectionism can also help Europe in its antagonistic trade relations with the US it should also enable strategic transatlantic cooperation, as Europe can provide leverage for a US agenda vis-à-vis China. Even under Trump, opportunities for an US-EU alignment remain but they must evolve towards an entente instead of a submission basis.

Europe has arguably never been more ready to do geopolitics because Germany has turned geopolitical, ending France’s and the UK’s traditional duopoly. Germany’s political and economic febrility may be complicating factors, but leveraging geopolitics as a strategic growth strategy under EU-auspices will be key. Europe’s choice boils down to this: is a critical mass of European countries willing to share their sovereignty in order to regain it? A core of EU countries under EU-aegis with third countries such as the UK and Ukraine can solve the puzzle of more European integration by deepening the EU while making it more flexible and complementing it at the same time. Leaders who step up to turn Europe’s predicament into Europe’s moment will be leaders who answer populism and fear with statesmanship and courage. If not now, when?