The Cost of Ignoring Geopolitics

Europeans could, of course, blame this development entirely on Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump—and many of them do. But at the end of the day, Europeans must acknowledge that they are now paying the price for their own geopolitical ignorance.

History abounds with examples of leaders turning a blind eye to geopolitics, for which their nations eventually paid a heavy price. French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte neglected the challenges of geography when he invaded Russia in 1812, with his army’s devastating losses there contributing to his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo three years later. Nazi Germany committed a similar mistake, setting in motion its own downfall when it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, exposing itself to a two-flank war.

On the level of grand strategy, China’s Ming dynasty committed one of history’s most momentous geopolitical mistakes when it abandoned seafaring in the mid-15th century.

In the 14th and early 15th centuries, China put to sea the most powerful and majestic fleet that the world had ever seen, fully dominating the trade routes in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. Yet from the 1430s onward, just as European shipbuilding and navigation skills were on the rise, the Chinese emperors reduced their support to shipyards and banned most ocean-going trade. As a result, European navies would dominate Asian waters for the next five centuries.

Europe has failed to learn from these examples—and ignored three distinct geopolitical developments.

First, Europe has largely shut its eyes to Russia’s reemergence as an imperial power, which is the most important and far-reaching geopolitical development directly affecting Europe since the end of the Cold War. Like the Ming emperors who scrapped their navy, the Europeans literally abandoned geopolitics. For almost two decades, they developed a force structure more suited to fight insurgents in the mountains of Afghanistan and frighten off pirates in the Gulf of Aden than defending the European homeland. Europe could afford to take its holiday from geopolitics and ignore Putin’s growing assertiveness for one simple reason: the security guarantee extended by the United States.

Second, Europe has failed to acknowledge the geopolitical logic of China’s rise, which will ultimately force the United States to rebalance its military posture toward the Indo-Pacific. In 2011, when the Obama administration first announced a U.S. “pivot to Asia,” only two European countries were fulfilling NATO’s pledge to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense. A decade later, in 2021, only four additional European NATO members had managed to reach this threshold.

One important reason for this lack of response was the United States’ apparent suspension of the pivot to Asia when it moved troops to Eastern Europe and warships back into the Atlantic in response to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. At the time, many people who I talked with in the European strategic community seemed to believe that Washington had permanently pivoted back to Europe. However, they ignored that the U.S. rebalance to Asia is driven by the strongest and most irresistible forces in international relations: the balance of power and a fear of expanding hegemons.

China’s defense spending of $309 billion in 2023 was larger than that of the rest of East Asia plus South Asia combined, meaning that China could easily dominate the region if the United States withdrew its military presence there.

The situation in Europe is very different. The Russian economy is smaller than Italy’s in terms of nominal GDP, and it and lacks key technological and manufacturing capacities; any inability of Europeans to deter and contain Russia is entirely due to European leaders’ past and present unwillingness to do so. This difference in the Asian and European balances of power helps explain Washington’s ongoing flirtation with the Kremlin. A settlement of the Russia-Ukraine war would enable a more comprehensive U.S. military rebalance to Asia.

The third geopolitical development that Europe has ignored at its own peril is the Sino-Russian partnership, its inherent strategic logic, and the value that both countries place on it. China’s economic rise has enabled Russia to diversify its trade relations and reduce its dependency on Europe. This has been particularly important for Russia since 2014, when the West first imposed economic and financial sanctions in response to the annexation of Crimea.

Moreover, despite being the junior partner, Russia knows that China is preoccupied with its rivalry with the United States in the Pacific, which mitigates Moscow’s threat perception of Beijing. Indeed, Russia would not have undertaken a full-scale invasion of Ukraine with an unfriendly China on its Asian flank. For China, good ties with Russia are driven even more strongly by geopolitics and considerations about the balance of power. Having Moscow on its side could give Beijing an edge in its superpower rivalry with Washington.

In sum, Russia’s return to imperialism, the U.S. shift to Asia, and the China-Russia partnership should have provided European leaders with valid reasons to rethink their continent’s security arrangements, but they did not. We are so used to thinking of Europeans as living in their holiday from history that we are less surprised by their ignorance of geopolitics than we should be.

After all, the major European powers used to be masters of strategy. The school of realism in international relations theory, with its strong focus on the balance of power, largely builds on studies of the European great powers. At the height of the British Empire in 1848, then-Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston famously declared in the House of Commons that “[w]e have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” Palmerston’s advice would have served European leaders well in recent decades.

Europe’s strategic blindness has various causes, including a leadership class lacking in vision and wisdom. But I would like to stress two other explanations. One important reason is that European nations moved from being masters of strategy to being strategic subordinates of the United States. This has arguably been the case ever since the 1956 Suez crisis, when the United States forced Britain and France to backpedal from their attempt at invading Egypt and controlling the Suez Canal.

While European governments have voiced their dissent on various U.S. policies in the years since, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, they remained second-tier states in an alliance with a superpower. As such, they have been more concerned about being good allies and keeping Washington engaged in Europe than they have been about developing their own strategic capabilities.

Another reason for Europe’s strategic ineptitude is the almost exclusive focus on rules and multilateralism in contemporary European thinking. The paradigm shifts between rules-based liberalism and balance-of-power realism as the dominant force informing state behavior has been a recurrent theme in international relations. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Europeans strongly believed that the conditions had finally arrived for German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s idea of eternal peace based on democracy, free trade, and the institutions that would rein in power politics. This post-Cold War optimism was not unique to Europe, but it was more dominant in Europe than in any other corner of the world.

When liberalism became not just the prevalent paradigm but a moral imperative, advocates of geopolitical realism, with their emphasis on the balance of power, were often disregarded as the horsemen of the apocalypse. They became objects of derision, as when German officials laughed at Trump warning them in 2018—as others had warned before—that energy dependence on Russia was a dangerous strategic mistake.

So, where should Europe go from here? In order to avoid the fate of the Ming dynasty, whose mistakes would haunt China for centuries, Europe urgently needs a grand strategy with a coherent view on security, democracy, and economics. Given the continent’s fragmented politics and lack of clear leadership, this is a tall order.

In terms of security, the Ukrainians’ brave war of resistance has weakened Russian military capability to such an extent that defense analysts estimate that Europe probably has a five– to 10-year window to bolster its military capabilities before Russia has fully restored its losses.

Even though Trump’s policies likely forever changed Europe’s view of the United States, trans-Atlantic ties may not be completely ruined. Rather than trying to develop an independent defense concept linked to the European Union, Europe is better served by maintaining relations with the United States within the NATO framework. However, Europe should aim for a “reversed NATO,” where Europe, not the United States, is the dominating force within the alliance.

Even as it maintains trans-Atlantic relations, Europe should enhance its strategic autonomy to such an extent that it is capable of surviving U.S. abandonment. Europe also needs to be strong enough to avoid alliance entrapment, whereby the United States demands that European nations to do its dirty work in out-of-area missions that run counter to the continent’s interests.

Europe’s challenges go beyond security. Europe’s democratic governance model is now under severe threat—from within as well as from Russian and U.S. interference. Finally, as Mario Draghi’s recent report on EU competitiveness so eloquently pinpointed, the European economy is also in shambles. Indeed, a newly published U.N. Industrial Development Organization report estimated that by 2030, Europe’s manufacturing powerhouse—Germany—will account for only 3 percent of global industrial production (down from 8 percent in 2000), while China will control no less than 45 percent (up from 6 percent in 2000).

In order to retain democracy’s attractiveness for citizens and build a solid defense structure capable of deterring Russia, Europe must swiftly revitalize its economy. If the United States is no longer willing to partner with Europe economically as in other areas, then European leaders must look to bring the United Kingdom back into the EU, develop the continent’s links with Africa, and reconsider its relationship with China.

Only serious, concrete, and fast changes along these lines, rather than yet more summits and speeches, will show that Europe has woken up from its long geopolitical slumber.