Iran and European disorientation

This week the Brussels establishment was buzzing.

“Carry-On: The Gulf decides—what about Europe”

El Mundo

With the European Parliament gathered in Strasbourg, rumors, whispers in the ear, and discreet leakages proliferated.

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Reproaches between institutions, tensions among governments.

Officials speaking under anonymity, ambassadors sharing malicious anecdotes.

Criticisms of Ursula von der Leyen everywhere, maneuvers within the European Parliament, and hardline positions from some capitals.

All of this feeding the usual Brussels mess narrative, focused, that is, on the president of the Commission as the target.

But that narrative stays on the surface.

Because what has happened these days is only the foam of the moment; and a smoke screen.

It served to veil what is relevant: the disorientation of the different EU actors in the face of a world that has changed faster than the European project’s capacity to adapt.

Various hostilities filled the atmosphere.

Among them stand out: the twists and turns around the closure of Mercosur; the foot-dragging of Orbán hindering the activation of the 90 billion euros loan to Kyiv agreed by the European Council; the misgivings about proposals such as the inverse-adhesion proposed by the Commission to dodge the Ukraine membership tangle; the implicit return of the recurring German question with Berlin’s strategic turn; the divergences regarding ties with the United States, or the connection with China.

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They are not isolated incidents; they are heterogeneous manifestations of a identical disquiet.

At the start of the century, European construction proclaimed itself bearer of the future.

A triumphant century for the Union’s method and its ability to persuade through rules, standards, and the market, without the exercise of force.

The Brussels effect seemed to confirm that thesis.

That vision had a basis.

From the lean times today, one must not forget that in 2008, before Lehman Brothers’ collapse triggered the crisis, the euro area’s aggregate GDP was equivalent to the United States in nominal terms.

But it rested on a premise rarely explicit: European normative power was founded on the guarantee of the United States.

While Washington assumed the ultimate weight of security, Brussels could focus on exhibiting its regulatory model and its economic appeal.

That condition has faded.

And there begins the substantive explanation of the present European malaise, poured into harsh criticisms of Von der Leyen.

The assertion—devoid of context—“Europe can no longer be the guardian of the old world order” by Ursula von der Leyen at the Annual Ambassadors’ Conference has resulted in a storm of attacks, when what was emblematic was the incontrovertible reflection that followed: defending the international order today requires capacities that Europe has not yet fully decided to build.

That is a true Gordian knot.

“Carry-On: The Gulf decides—what about Europe”

El Mundo

Defending principles is intrinsic to our journey, as she reaffirmed at the start of her intervention before the Europarliament two days later; more a reformulation than a disavowal as has been claimed.

The canonical general interpretation is that of a “rectification,” an alleged “approach” or “concession” to wash away its distance from the “no to war” and from President Pedro Sánchez’s stance.

These ambiguities also hinder the recent German diplomatic activity.

The successive rapid-fire trips by Friedrich Merz to Beijing and Washington illustrate the precarious balance between economic interests and geopolitical realities.

But they reverberate in the simmering controversy about investing colossal sums in the national military field.

Understandable from Berlin’s logic, inevitably stirring an old backdrop of suspicions and fears around the historic “German question.”

Not in its political dimension of the past, but in its new strategic significance: how to fit the scale of those capabilities within a genuinely European framework, still in its infancy.

Analogous equivocations characterize the relationship with China, described by the Commission as partner, competitor, and systemic rival, simultaneously.

That tangled definition signals Europe’s difficulty in facing its contradictions.

Something similar happens in the economy.

Europe correctly identifies its shortcomings—finances, electronic communications, and energy—in the Letta report’s precise articulation—but falters when it comes to implementing measures that involve the transfer of sovereignty.

The European problem is not, thus, one of diagnosis.

It is one of decision.

And these hesitations are overshadowed by the ubiquitous debates of “he said,” “it’s intolerable.”

The frictions that have surfaced among political leaders and high EU officials should be read from that perspective.

The Commission does not formally possess competencies in defense or foreign affairs.

But when member states do not take initiatives, the Caesarist head of state occupies the space using the marginal powers arbitrate by the Treaty.

Ursula von der Leyen has served as a valve to release pressure that originates elsewhere.

Let us hope that a clearer atmosphere will favor the success of the European Council on the 19th/20th, called to adopt extraordinary measures to get us out of the morass that afflicts us.

The European Parliament suffers from similar fragmentation.

Its composition faithfully translates the divisions existing in—and among—the member states.

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The current political frictions are not transient anomalies.

They are the expression of a more heterogeneous continent, more exposed and more conscious of its vulnerabilities; a continent aging that needs to become strategically mature.

Because that is the heart of the problem.

Europe is going through a phase of essential confusion.

Not all states perceive the threats the same.

Russia or the Sahel do not mean the same in Poland and Spain, and the pending enlargement or the ordering of precedence between Ukraine and the Balkans have a markedly dissonant reading in the capitals, depending on geography and history.

These disparities clarify many of the bottlenecks for structuring common responses.

The Iran crisis does not cause these fractures, but it has outlined them.

It has been a catalyst for latent dissents in open disagreements.

Brussels can continue managing these tensions as familiar political episodes: seeking who to unload the stress on, exorcising uncertainties, and then returning to a semblance of normality until the next crisis.

It has worked in the past.

But the current context is different.

The world is reconfiguring around power, security, and scale of the economy.

And in these circumstances, strategic ambiguity ceases to be neutral.

The question Europe faces is not whether it wants to continue defending a rules-based international order; it will always do so.

It is whether it will take the essential decisions to remain a player that counts in that order.

The real risk is not that Europe stops being a promoter of the international order.

The real risk is that disorientation prevents it from preserving the coherence and strategic ambition of its own future project, with a risk even of the edifice collapsing.