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Politico (19 January 2026)

 Zachary Paikin

It’s been more than six years since the EU’s former High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell declared the bloc must learn to speak the “language of power.” And yet, Europe’s response to today’s tectonic geopolitical shifts suggests little in the way of learning. 

The bloc’s reaction to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was to pursue a normative approach, which eschewed any possibility of identifying a mutually acceptable off-ramp or compromise with Moscow. The inevitable result was an increase in Europe’s security dependence on the U.S., deepening its vulnerability to great-power predations in a fast-changing world. And since U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Europe has only compounded this initial strategic misstep.

The bloc has shredded what remains of its normative power before building up its instruments of hard power, leaving it even more strategically isolated. Today, few are convinced Ukraine’s right to pursue NATO membership is a sacred part of the “rules-based international order” — especially when Europe is ready to play fast and loose with international law in its response to strikes on Venezuela or Iran. It’s hard to argue that Greenland’s future should be for Greenlanders and Danes to decide when the same standard isn’t applied to the people of Gaza.

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