Is Europe ready for power politics?

Abstract

Among the misunderstandings that are constantly fueling the debate on Europe, is its collective inability to shape the global game. And this at the moment when it faces American nationalism, Russian revisionism and China’s rise. To explain this lack of European reactivity there is a simple and common interpretation: European states are cruelly divided on all subjects and struggle to act collectively. But, this explanation confuses causes and consequences. The bottom line is that the European project born in 1957 was built against the idea of power. The whole question, is then to assess the capacity of Europe to reverse that trend and play power politics in taking into consideration the feeling of strategic loneliness in a less and less Kantian world (I) and the sense of danger in a more and more Hobbesian world (II).This is what we call a gaullian moment for Europe