There are moments in history when entire continents do not decline because of defeats, but because they lose their sense of reality. Europe, this old yet intellectually extraordinarily fertile continent, stands at such a point today. The reason? Among other things, because many politicians seem to have grown accustomed to seeing the world not as it is, but as it is supposed to appear in Sunday speeches or at least that is how it seems. The EU and many of its member states like to speak of values, of a rules-based order, of human rights, of strategic autonomy, and of global responsibility. None of that is wrong. On the contrary: It belongs to Europe’s better legacy that power must not be completely separated from law. But anyone who conducts foreign policy primarily as a moral lever runs the risk of being overrun by those who still understand foreign policy as what it has always been since Thucydides, Richelieu, Bismarck, and Kennan: the sober art of recognizing interests, forces, spaces, dependencies, and windows of opportunity.
One could get the impression that parts of Europe have pushed this art aside because, especially after 1991, they settled into a comfortable in-between world. The United States guaranteed security. Global markets delivered growth. Russia supplied energy. China became the workbench and later the sales market. Globalization seemed to be a one-way street toward prosperity, the rule of law, and liberalization. People even spoke publicly of the “end of history,” but in truth they had merely stopped taking history seriously.
Today, that history is returning. But not as an academic debate on television programs, but as a foreign-policy shock wave. War is being fought in Ukraine. In the Middle East, old and new lines of conflict are burning. China is expanding its influence in Africa, Latin America, Southeastern Europe, and the Indo-Pacific. The United States, regardless of who sits in the White House, will have to shift its forces more strongly toward Asia and will no longer grant Europe the same premium position. Turkey is pursuing a self-confident regional policy. India, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Brazil no longer act according to European lectures, but according to their own calculations. And Africa is no longer merely the recipient of European development policy, but a continent where demography, raw materials, migration, ports, data cables, and military bases concentrate the power questions of the 21st century. In this new old world, it is not enough to be right. One must be rational.
That may be the bitterest lesson for many European capitals. Moral outrage is no substitute for strategy. Sanctions are no substitute for industrial policy. Summit declarations are no substitute for military capability. Development aid is no substitute for genuine partnership. And the repeated use of the word “community of values” is no substitute for analyzing why large parts of the world regard this European self-description with polite coldness, and sometimes with open irony. Europe must learn again to formulate interests without being ashamed of doing so. That does not mean becoming cynical. It means becoming adult. Foreign policy is not a seminar room in which the person with the purest intention wins. It is a terrain of power, fear, and prestige.
Rational foreign policy means distinguishing between wish and reality. It does not ask first: Who is sympathetic? It asks: Who acts, and why? Who possesses which levers? Who controls ports, supply chains, minorities, religious structures, or smuggling routes? Which decision gives us more room for maneuver in five, ten, or twenty years? Which dependency appears comfortable today but becomes a shackle tomorrow? Some European countries have often done the opposite in the past. They sold dependencies as trade, naivety as openness, passivity as de-escalation, and strategic indecision as dialogue capability. Dialogue is important. But dialogue without instruments of power is often merely the polite form of self-disarmament. A more pragmatic European foreign policy would have to rediscover several principles.
First: Security is the precondition of every higher order. Without military credibility, diplomacy becomes a supplication. Europe must strengthen its defense capability not out of love for the military, but out of respect for reality. Anyone who cannot protect what he loves will eventually no longer be asked what he loves.
Second: Economic policy is geopolitics. Steel, semiconductors, energy, rare earths, ports, satellites, artificial intelligence, the pharmaceutical industry, and payment infrastructure are not neutral market questions. They are questions of power. Whoever loses his industrial base loses sovereignty.
Third: Migration is also foreign policy. It does not begin at the border, but in countries of origin and transit, in wars, climate stress, demography, corruption, lack of prospects, and smuggling economies. Anyone who views migration only morally or only through a policing lens does not understand it. Europe needs order, control, humanitarian standards, and hard negotiations with countries of origin and transit at the same time.
Fourth: One must speak with states as they are, not as one would like them to be. That does not mean excusing dictatorships. But whoever only wants to speak with flawless democrats will soon be very lonely on this earth. The art lies in preserving principles while still pursuing interests. Unfortunately, that is reality.
Fifth: Europe must actively help shape its neighborhood. North Africa, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Sahel are, geostrategically, the forecourt of European security.
One can certainly predict that the coming decades will not be kind to those who flee into illusions. The 21st century will not be a European century simply because Europe considers itself civilized. It will be shaped by those who can combine technology, energy, demography, military power, industrial capacity, and political determination. The Old continent must therefore decide: Does it want to be an actor or a commentator? Does it want a seat at the table or a place on the sidelines?
The answer, however, must not lie in nationalist narrowing. No European state alone – neither Germany nor France, neither Italy nor Poland – will be large enough to stand alone in the world of the 21st century. But a European Union that dresses up its strategic blindness in fine-sounding concepts will not endure either. Europe needs cooperation, but cooperation that does not conceal interests. It needs values, but values with backbone. It needs diplomacy, but diplomacy backed by power. It needs openness, but not defenselessness. Perhaps it must relearn something some of its old statesmen still knew: The world is tragic. Not everything can be pacified, not every conflict resolved, not every opponent convinced, not every hardship avoided. But precisely for that reason, judgment is required. The moralist confuses his intention with effect. A Statesmen should be sober. Patient. Hard where he must be. Reliable where he can be. And always guided by that old knowledge: Whoever does not understand the world will be overrun by it.