Europe’s new year of living dangerously

Ukraine’s future will continue to loom large, but 2026 should be the year of real European geopolitics in relation to the US and China.

2025 is gone and the war in Ukraine has not ended by Trumpian decree, on Russia-friendly terms. That the continuation of bloodshed is probably the best bit of European news from last year tells one something about Europe’s current predicament. 2025 was Europe’s annus horribilis, exposing external dependencies and internal divisions alike in a roller coaster that ended with a dogfight entirely of Europe’s own making over the funding of Ukraine.

Thanks to its battlefield heroics, Ukraine is a tentative silver lining in what remains a perfect storm of Russian aggression, American duplicity and European vulnerability. Trump is still history’s gift to a revanchist Putin. Europe is still not at the negotiating table but on the menu. Russia is still escalating its hybrid warfare with impunity. But at least the mixture of new weaponry, money, economic sanctions and security measures is gradually regaining Europe some agency in its own backyard.

The averted drama over seizing Russian assets to underwrite Ukraine’s war effort may yet prove to be a psychological watershed. In committing joint EU-funding instead, Europe shows itself respectful of international rules, determined to do what it takes, and resourced to back it all up. It also demonstrates political nous in moving forward without consensus, without alienating the dissenters, and without sidelining the European Union for ad hoc coalitions of the willing. This should be a useful political template as Europe urgently needs common geopolitical progress in the new year.

If some progress in the right direction has been made on Ukraine, the direction of travel with the US needs reinvention. Throughout 2025, European leaders gambled that humiliation capped by sycophancy would keep the US on Europe’s side in Ukraine. The wheels have not yet come off, but the game of diplomatic catching up and reeling in every time Donald Trump or his emissary talk with Vladimir Putin is bound to backfire at some point. There should be no more illusions. Its new national security strategy and its recent intervention in Venezuela show a US that favours spheres of interests, disregards rules, uses naked force to serve its agenda, and desires oligarchic business deals everywhere. All of these make Trump’s America a natural ally of Putin’s Russia over Ukraine, regardless of anti-European MAGA ideology and resentment.

To alter its trajectory of self-defeating subservience, Europe must build on its efforts for Ukraine to counter Russia with its own sphere of influence. Europe’s first geopolitical priority should be to leverage EU-partnerships and -membership to build a ring of geographic security. 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, it is time to strike the type of geo-economic deals that cement geopolitical regional alliances through major trade and investment. Ukraine is a useful precedent to emulate in this regard, also in its pathways to a swift EU-membership, why not by piecemeal integration if 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 European defence industrial planning and funding in 2025, can be the model for other industries.

Third, a Europe that is serious about its strategic autonomy has to become serious about China too. Europe can have a genuine European industrial 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, and 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.

The first EU Commission von der Leyen was dubbed a geopolitical commission as it marshalled Europe’s economic strength against Russia. Ukraine’s future will continue to loom large, but 2026 should be the year of real European geopolitics in relation to the US and China. Europe has arguably never been more ready to do geopolitics because Germany has finally turned geopolitical, ending France’s and the UK’s traditional duopoly. Germany’s political and economic febrility may be complicating factors, but turning geopolitics into a strategic growth strategy under EU-auspices will be key. 2026 will be another year of living dangerously for Europe, but the continent has the potential to turn predicament into opportunity, and to make this the European moment that Europe’s collective future demands.