The unipolar moment — the period after the Cold War in which American power was so dominant that no other country or combination of countries could meaningfully challenge it — is definitively over. The multipolar world that has emerged is more contested, less predictable, and more demanding of European strategic clarity than anything the EU was designed to navigate. Where does Europe fit in this new order? And does it have the political will and institutional capacity to define that position actively rather than having it defined for it?
The world Europe is navigating
The global order of 2026 is shaped by several overlapping realities. The United States remains the world’s most powerful military and economic actor, but its domestic politics have generated sustained uncertainty about the reliability of its international commitments — a shift with direct consequences for European security, as tracked in our analysis of US political effects on Europe. China is the second economic power and a significant military one, increasingly willing to use economic leverage and diplomatic pressure to advance its interests — a challenge examined in our EU-China trade analysis. Russia, economically weakened by sanctions and the costs of the Ukraine war, remains a significant military actor and a persistent source of instability in Europe’s neighbourhood. India, Brazil, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others are increasingly asserting independent foreign policy positions that cannot be simply aligned with Western or Chinese frameworks.
The European dilemma: power without coherence
Europe has the raw ingredients of significant global influence. The EU’s single market is the world’s largest. European universities and research institutions produce world-class science and technology. European countries collectively spend more on development aid than any other region. The EU’s regulatory power — its ability to set standards that companies worldwide adopt to access the European market — is genuine and significant. And yet the EU frequently punches below its weight in global affairs because it cannot translate these assets into coherent strategic action.
The reasons are structural and explored elsewhere in our coverage: the unanimity requirement in foreign policy, as examined in our editorial on European foreign policy coherence, means that a single member state can prevent EU action on almost any sensitive issue. The result is a bloc that commands enormous economic weight but struggles to convert it into diplomatic outcomes when interests diverge among its members.
The strategic autonomy agenda: progress and limits
The EU’s response to multipolarity has been framed through the concept of “strategic autonomy” — the capacity to act independently when necessary, rather than being permanently dependent on external actors for security, energy, critical materials or technology. The last four years have seen genuine progress: European defence spending has risen substantially, as detailed in our rearmament analysis; energy independence from Russian fossil fuels has been achieved faster than expected; and the EU has developed new tools for economic coercion — the Anti-Coercion Instrument — and economic security screening.
What strategic autonomy does not yet mean is the ability to project power or make security guarantees independently of the United States. European defence integration, as covered in our defence force analysis, remains incomplete. Nuclear deterrence remains a national rather than European instrument. And the political consensus required to use European power assertively — to make threats, impose costs, or commit military resources — does not yet exist at EU level. In a multipolar world, that gap between assets and agency is Europe’s defining strategic challenge.
