The European Union’s geopolitical turn that never was

The European Union used to be thought of as an anti-geopolitical unit. It prided itself on its normative power. It thrived in a rule-based, liberal international order, which the EU both exemplified and actively promoted. Rather than conceptualising the world as consisting of large, geopolitical units (Schmittian Großräume), the European project was about multilateralism, in which all countries within and outside Europe were to be treated with equal respect. No longer. Over the last decade, and even more so since the full-blown Russian invasion of Ukraine, geopolitics made a veritable comeback to the studies of European politics. As it sees itself challenged by competitors (China, India) and adversaries (Russia, US?), the EU too wants to become a superpower. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the EU cannot become a formidable geopolitical player without abandoning its normative, foundational principles. This internal conflict could be viewed through the prism of competing approaches to International Relations. Since 2022 at the latest, leading EU politicians have started to use the language of realism. “Europe is in a fight … a fight for a continent that is whole and at peace”, Ursula von der Leyen stated when addressing the EU parliament in 2025. In their actions, however, European political leaders continued to behave as liberal internationalists would. In the process they exposed the fallacy of their assumptions. In response to military escalations, the EU issued statements, condemnations and sanctions. It acted as is appropriate to a normative power constrained in its capabilities by the assumptions guiding liberal internationalists. If the world is socially constructed you need great ideas and inspirational speeches, rather than guns, drones and ammunition. Superior laws rather than weapons will decide between winner and losers. Justice will prevail, if every war criminal, including Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is prosecuted. By contrast, politicians whose views were shaped by the realist mindset adopted the language of liberal internationalists to justify their political (in)action. In a bizarre reversal of roles, while the European Commission spoke the language of war warriors, the populist leaders of Hungary and Slovakia, Viktor Orban and Robert Fico, adopted a Habermasian posture by pursuing ‘peace through conversation’. This Central European subversion of the EU’s foundational narrative as a peace project has received backing by a major superpower that was never afraid to speak and act geopolitically: the United States. The EU is thus facing an impossible dilemma: to attain a more muscular commitment to its liberal values, it would need to embrace traditional understanding of power, which it had long considered obsolete. And yet, if it continues to shy away from massively increasing military assistance to Ukraine and re-building its own military capabilities both at national and European levels, it will have little say in shaping its own future, or indeed its very survival. The EU thus must and yet cannot become truly geopolitical.