Belief Updating and Strategic Narratives: Explaining a Tectonic Shift in EU Foreign Policy after 2022

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine changed Europeans’ perceptions of Russia and Ukraine and unified the EU around dramatic policy changes, including sanctions on Russia and membership candidacy for Ukraine. This article explores the rapid updating of beliefs and reconstruction of strategic narratives at the EU level, focusing on the period between February and June 2022, when the European Council accepted Ukraine’s candidacy application. We use 34 unique elite interviews with EU, EU member state, and Ukrainian policy makers and experts to show how updated beliefs and the promotion of new strategic narratives led to an offer of candidacy for Ukraine. Relying on advances in cognitive neuroscience, we show that emotional reactions played a role in allowing interviewees to assimilate negative information and update beliefs about Russia and Ukraine. This enabled EU and Ukrainian leaders to put forward new strategic narratives that identified Ukraine with the European “family” and justified harsh sanctions on Russia, aid to Ukraine, and enlargement.