The EU’s Geopolitical Becoming: Geopolitics and Identity in an (In)secure EU(rope)

The EU’s geopolitical turn has garnered significant scholarly attention. This paper reviews this emerging field of research and proposes a constructivist agenda for studying the geopoliticization of EU identity. I argue that the scholarship on the EU’s geopolitical turn has experienced its own geopolitical moment. Rather than problematizing the re-emergence of geopolitics, recent studies have increasingly focused on how effectively the EU navigates a world of strategic competition. Predominant rationalist theories of EU integration often treat geopolitics as a given or reduce it to external (politicization) pressures. By incorporating geopolitics as an analytical lens and additional variable, these accounts shift geopolitics from being the explanandum—the phenomenon to be explained—to the explanans—the framework through which the EU is understood. While undoubtedly providing valuable insights into the EU’s current policies, the discipline’s geopolitical turn is also problematic. The externalization of geopolitics and the limited engagement with geopolitics as a research puzzle constrain the field’s explanatory scope. The “inside-outside” dichotomy in existing accounts obscures how geopolitics shapes interests and identities, leaving a significant blind spot in understanding the transformative nature of the EU’s geopolitical turn. In this paper, I invert the conventional analytical framework: instead of viewing the EU through the lens of geopolitics, I aim to understand why, when, and how the EU has adopted a geopolitical gaze on its own. The puzzle is this: Why does the EU—traditionally seen as an anti-geopolitical entity, with its founding myth rooted in opposition to the militarism and nationalism that once marred Europe’s geopolitical past—now openly embrace the very geopolitical rationale it once sought to resist? The EU’s geopolitical turn presents a puzzle about the geopoliticization of EU identity. It is about a specific kind of geopolitics that no longer shies away from speaking its name. While constructivism’s focus on identity offers a solid foundation for addressing this puzzle, existing scholarship within this tradition has yet to systematically trace the geopoliticization of EU identity over time. To fill this gap, I develop a research program that integrates Critical Geopolitics (CG) and Ontological Security Studies (OS). CG offers analytical lenses to trace the historical evolution of geopolitics, while OS accounts for its semantic appeal. In other words, OS explains when and why the EU looks at the map, while CG reveals what it sees when it does. I empirically illustrate this framework with preliminary findings from three EU identity crises: the Eurosclerosis of the 1970s, the end of the Cold War, and the ongoing “long decade” of crises since 2008. Highlighting the power of geopolitical representations, the proposed research agenda promises to enhance the reflexivity of existing rationalist accounts. This paper understands geopolitics as a sense-making practice that constitutes interests and (inter/supra/trans)national identities. Geopolitics, in this sense, is not an innocent analytical lens. It provides cognitive and normative maps that guide geopolitical actions and offers security in underpinning a stable sense of self. Therefore, this paper concludes that understanding the geopoliticization of EU identity should take analytical precedence.