The Logic of Power

 

The international system operates without a higher authority capable of enforcing rules among sovereign states. In this anarchic structure, power — not moral principle — ultimately determines outcomes. International law depends on the force behind it to have meaning. Cooperation, likewise, emerges not from shared ideals but from underlying power dynamics that make it mutually beneficial.

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Two Ways of Thinking: Empires and Provinces

 

There exists a fundamental distinction between how empires think and how provinces think. This difference runs far deeper than military strength or economic resources: it concerns the very structure of thought itself, which is determined by the distribution of agency and freedom of choice.

 

Empires (Rome, post-WWII America, contemporary China) think strategically by nature. They calculate power balances, anticipate threats, organize resources to maximize global position. Empires define their own interests, set priorities, and choose among real alternatives. They possess the capacity to shape outcomes rather than merely respond to them.

 

Provinces live under a different logic. Protected by imperial power, they develop an administrative mentality — managing domestic affairs (tax policy, welfare, regulations) while crucial decisions about security, alliances, and strategic direction are made elsewhere. This division of cognitive labour is not accidental; it is functional to imperial order.

 

Over time, it produces characteristic pathologies: provinces lose the ability to think long-term, confuse bureaucratic management with strategic planning, and become unable to articulate their fundamental interests. The freedom to choose has already been exercised for them.

 

 

Europe's Provincial Condition

 

Europe today represents the paradigmatic case of a province that has lost nearly all contact with reality. This transformation did not happen overnight. It is the product of seventy years of living under American protection (the “Pax Americana”). The American nuclear umbrella successfully resolved what had been Europe's central existential problem for centuries: the recurring danger of devastating wars between European powers. It also addressed a second menacing threat, Soviet expansion westward. This security guarantee enabled unprecedented economic prosperity and social development.

 

But it came at a profound cost: the gradual atrophy of Europe's capacity for autonomous decision-making and strategic thinking.

 

Protected from external threats and freed from mutual security fears, Europeans developed a “cognitive environment” where peace appears natural and permanent, international law seems self-enforcing, and cooperation appears spontaneous rather than the product of maintained power balances. Within this “ideological bubble”, Europe has been reduced to passive spectator, exercising no real influence on events, with a role limited to implementation and ratification after the fact.

 

 

The World Order is Changing

 

The international system is undergoing a fundamental transformation. We are transitioning from the unipolar configuration that characterized the post-Cold War era, when the United States stood as the sole superpower, toward a multipolar arrangement in which several major powers compete for influence and resources. China's remarkable rise as a systemic competitor, the relative decline of American power, and Washington's consequent strategic reorientation toward the Indo-Pacific are fundamentally reshaping the global balance of power.

 

This is driving a profound shift in America's relationship with Europe. Washington increasingly pressures European allies to assume greater defence responsibility, spend more on military capabilities, and choose sides in great power competition. Underlying these pressures is a gradual but unmistakable reduction in America's security commitments to Europe.

 

Yet it is crucial to understand what this process is and what it is not. Washington is not seeking to emancipate Europe. The objective is to transform Europe into a more useful ally in America's competition with China, shifting from entirely passive province to more active partner, but one that remains fundamentally subordinate.

 

From Washington's perspective, the goal is to extract more resources and effort from European allies while preventing genuine strategic autonomy.

 

This requires a delicate balance: Europe must do more, but remain divided. Washington demands increased defence spending and greater burden-sharing, while actively discouraging the political integration that would create a unified continental power. A fragmented Europe of competing nation-states can be pressured to spend more while remaining incapable of independent strategic action. Nationalism serves this perfectly — keeping Europe militarily useful but politically subordinate.

 

Europe is entering a precarious phase: the real threat is not just relative decline, but the complete dissolution of Europe's capacity for self-determination — its reduction to contested space among other great powers — a theatre for other powers’ wars, a territory on which they manoeuvre and collide, while Europe itself lacks the authority to shape the outcome. As fragmentation persists, dependence deepens, industry and skills erode, essential competencies disappear, and perhaps most insidiously, strategic irrelevance begins to feel normal, the natural order of things rather than a condition we could change.

 

 

A New Generation Rises

 

Yet out of this provincial comfort, and the shocks that are now tearing it apart, something historically new has emerged: a generation of Europeans shaped by truly transnational lives — the Generation Europe. For this generation — us — Europe is not an abstract ideal or a bureaucratic project, it is lived identity.

 

This is a quiet revolution, forged not by grand speeches or heroic founding myths, but by routines. It happened through the infrastructure of integration (open borders, shared standards, exchange programs) and through the internet, which dissolved cultural distance and made continental belonging feel natural.

 

In this sense, Europe’s long provincial phase unintentionally created the incubator for its most radical outcome: a generation that experiences Europe not as an aspiration, but as a lived condition.

 

As the world re-enters an era of great power competition, this genuinely European generation is no longer merely a cultural phenomenon — it has become a strategic fact. For the first time in history, there exists a social base capable of imagining Europe as a unified political subject, not a collection of competing nation-states.

 

We already sense, instinctively, that Europe's existential challenges cannot be addressed at the scale of individual countries. The identity is already there. What is missing is the political architecture capable of giving it power.