STATEMENT: Europe is not a middle power: it must act as a new kind of superpower

Niccolo Milanese

The prime minister of Canada, and former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney delivered a justifiably celebrated speech at Davos last week, in which he asserted that ‘we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition’ and that in this rupture ‘middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu’. As refreshing as it is to hear at least some truth and modesty amidst the annual festival of self-aggrandizing wealth and power that is Davos, this is not a recipe that Europeans should be satisfied with.

Canada has defined itself as a ‘power of the middle rank’ since the Second World War, in the terms of its then Prime minister Louis St Laurent. Advocating for Canada to be on the UN Security Council, he argued that although Canada had a particular relationship with the United Kingdom and with the United States of America, it had sufficient military and economic independence to take decisions in the interests of its own people and its own conception of the international order. Middle power diplomacy is variously understood as a commitment to the multilateral order, humanitarianism and/or the power of states which are powerful enough to count in geopolitics, but not as powerful as the dominant superpowers, understood these days to be the USA and China.

Europe has two countries with permanent seats on the Security Council, France and the United Kingdom. Both of these countries have nuclear weapons. The European Union as a whole is the second largest economy in the world, and largest single market. The European continent is the third most populous in the world, and above 6 percent of the world’s population live inside the EU. If Europe does not punch at its weight in geopolitics it is not because of any geographical or economic reason, it is because it has a) outsourced defence capacities to the United States of America for too long and so finds itself dependent, b) has refused to implement efficient collective political decision principles when it comes to external action and c) it is reluctant to project itself as the global power that it is.

The European Union is waking up to the expense of addressing the first of these problems, and the democratic sustainability of the answer it finds will be dependent on the ways in which it combines a commitment to social welfare with increased military budgets. It will take some years, but there is too long left in the Trump presidency and no certainty of what comes after for the Europeans not to take this path.

That the European Union has been able to take sustained coordinated action together with the United Kingdom when it comes to supporting Ukraine, even if that action has been insufficient or inadequate, despite internal wreckers like Hungary, shows that minimally effective political decision and unity is possible, even with highly imperfect constitutional order.

Far too much is made of the first two problems as if they were the fundamental ones, as if the problem were managerial rather than political. The fundamental problem is the existential one: it is a problem of self-conception, understanding and taking responsibility. Europe’s refusal to conceive of itself as the global power it is – economically, in diplomacy, in soft power, and as it could be in hard power – is a failure of to take responsibility, sometimes excused by a historic sense of humility and guilt, often excused by the tiresomeness of finding agreement amongst so many countries with different histories and interests, most often by leaving the risk of leadership to others. Excuses and excuses, which avoid the profound political work of Europe taking the risk of debating and deciding what kind of global actor it wants to be, and even showing the world that this can be done democratically. After the Second World War it was understandable, even wise, that the Europeans abdicated this responsibility on a global scale and concentrated on themselves. The necessity of coming to terms with colonial pasts and presents make it even more painful to assume the role, but guilt cannot be made an alibi. The lucky Europeans cannot bask in the warmth and comfort of the unprecedented peace they inherited any longer. We will have to work to reinvent it as our grandparents did and as many of our neighbours inside and next to larger Europe have done and continue to do. This time it will not just be amongst ourselves, but on a global stage with all the partners we can find.

Europe is not Norway, it is not Austria, it is not Ukraine, but it is not Italy, France, the UK or Germany either. It is none of these individual countries on its own, and that is why it is not a middle power, neither in size nor in geometry. It is large enough to contain multitudes, identities and cultures of liberty which are deeply embedded. Thus if it is capable of staying on a path of democracy internally, it will not easily become an authoritarian hegemon on a global scale. Conceiving of Europe as a middle power reduces its potential, right at the moment when a vehicle of positive planetary transformation is necessary, at a moment of enormous geopolitical risk of conflagration. Middle powers can only shape the war from behind the front lines; a new kind of superpower needs to impose ways to stop these kinds of wars entirely. By definition, Europe will not do it on its own, but Europe must take a responsibility consummate to its size, history and strength to lead this collective effort.