What Place for Europe on the World’s Grand Chessboard?

On the “grand chessboard” that Europe — or rather its Union — represents, what has it achieved over the past twenty years? What does it aspire to?

First, we must acknowledge that the state of the world has changed radically since the beginning of this millennium and that there will most likely be no turning back, particularly regarding the transatlantic relationship. Certainly, many European leaders still hope that Donald Trump’s presidency will prove to be merely a difficult episode. They are in denial about the end of a relationship that has been so long and so beneficial to all. Yet it must be recognised that the “pivot to Asia”, isolationism and the sidelining of international law did not begin in 2025. Let us keep our eyes wide open.

Second observation: the Union is unable to capitalise on its assets, such as the size of its population or the strength of its economy. This is because it has neither managed nor wished to complete its construction in the economic sphere, and even less so to integrate in foreign and defence policy. There is indeed no reason why 360 million Americans should protect 500 million Europeans against 130 million Russians. Nor is there any reason why Europe’s most innovative companies should be compelled to seek financing on transatlantic financial markets while Europeans themselves finance the bulk of the United States’ abyssal deficit.

Third observation: because it is weak, the Union is attacked. It has become a geopolitical prey, excluded from the course of world affairs: Ukraine, Gaza, Venezuela, Iran. Vladimir Putin has been waging a hybrid war against it since 2007, and Donald Trump behaves like a mafia godfather demanding payment in exchange for protection. They share a common hostility towards the Union as a political entity and actively support all European political parties seeking its disintegration. Xi Jinping is more skilful, yet no less formidable.

We can therefore answer the first question: what is the Union on the grand chessboard? For the moment, it is merely a pawn moved at will by the great powers. It remains, in the well-known phrase, an economic giant, a political dwarf and a military worm.

What has the Union achieved to remedy its weaknesses and counter the attacks it faces?

Let us begin with the economy and trade. Faced with extraterritorial sanctions that have affected major European companies since 2014 — and again very recently — the Union has done nothing. Faced with American espionage targeting major corporations and even heads of state and government, it did not react. Faced with Anglo-American betrayal in the Australian submarine affair (AUKUS), again nothing. No one should therefore have been surprised that it did very little when Donald Trump threatened drastic tariff increases. And what will it do if it must enter into open confrontation with American tech giants to enforce the very laws it has itself adopted?

In defence and security matters, the picture is more nuanced. Since 2014, following Russia’s invasion of Crimea, European institutions were the first to react in order to encourage Member States to cooperate more closely. Numerous initiatives were launched by Jean-Claude Juncker and continued by Ursula von der Leyen to promote joint procurement and consolidate demand through common armaments purchases.

However, while the European Union has belatedly acknowledged a modest competence in defence industry matters, it possesses no competence over armed forces. It took the shock of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine — and even more the vacillations of Donald Trump regarding the war — for Member States to fully grasp the dangers confronting them.

On the positive side, European leaders appear to have understood that the war in Ukraine is also their war and that the best way to counter Russian hegemonic ambitions is to support Ukraine. They also seem to have recognised the critical need to emancipate themselves from the United States (and other states), not only in defence but across all critical sectors that create dependencies, in order to achieve “European sovereignty”: armaments, currency and financial markets, space and access to it, communications, digital technologies, payment systems, energy and raw materials.

On the negative side, Europeans have agreed to increase their defence spending. Yet this increase, pursued solely to appease Donald Trump, does not necessarily translate into greater military effectiveness. Spending increases dispersed across individual European states will produce only limited military effects. Without a nuclear guarantee — whether American or French — without strategic enablers such as satellites, intelligence fusion, command-and-control centres or adequate ammunition stocks, what are European armies truly worth against a Russian military capable of sacrificing a million men to achieve its objectives?

What Does the European Union Truly Aspire To?

À la suite des guerres de Yougoslavie où ils avaient été incapables de stopper un génocide à « deux heures d’avion de Paris » sans l’aide des Américains, les gouvernements britanniques et français avaient apporté une réponse convaincante à cette question le 4 décembre 1998, à Saint-Malo. Cette réponse est : « l’Union européenne doit être en mesure de jouer tout son rôle sur la scène internationale ». Admirons au passage la concision du propos. Quel doit être ce rôle ? On ne peut le définir à l’avance mais il consiste au minimum à défendre ses intérêts propres.

Comment y arriver ? Là encore la déclaration de SaFollowing the Yugoslav wars, when Europeans proved incapable of halting genocide “two hours’ flight from Paris” without American assistance, the British and French governments provided a convincing response on 4 December 1998 in Saint-Malo. That response was: “the European Union must be able to play its full role on the international stage”. One can admire the concision of the statement. What should that role be? It cannot be defined in advance, but it must at the very least consist of defending its own interests.

How can this be achieved? Once again, the Saint-Malo Declaration offers guidance: “to this end (to play its full role on the international stage), the European Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them and the willingness to do so, in order to respond to international crises”. The equation of European defence — and more broadly of its foreign policy — may thus be summarised as a multiplication: European defence and foreign policy = political will × decision-making capacity × capacity for action. If any one of these factors equals zero, the entire result becomes zero.

Moreover, in one of the recent documents of the European Commissioner for Defence, Andrius Kubilius, we can observe a restatement of this triptych: “our defence preparedness rests on three fundamental pillars. If any one of these three pillars were to collapse, our entire defence preparedness would collapse. And the development of each pillar raises its own questions: the pillar of material defence preparedness (capacity for autonomous action); the pillar of institutional defence preparedness (decision-making capacity); and the pillar of political preparedness for defence (political will)”.

In conclusion, and to parody Abbé Sieyès’ famous formula (“What is the Third Estate?”): what is the European Union for us? Everything. What does it represent on the international stage? Nothing. What does it aspire to? To become “something”. To achieve this, Member States must first resolve the question of their political integration. And to do so, they must truly wish it — within the framework of the European treaties if possible, outside them more probably. Ultimately, it is always the same story: united we stand, divided we fall.