🧵The US-EU trade deal has generated a lot of talk on X about how this is a humiliation for the #EU, how it should be a wake up call for Europe, how Europe must assert itself, etc. My take is that if anything it should finally put paid to all the talk about the EU as “Europe.”1/5
The European Union is a treaty-based organization, not a nation-state that can function as a unitary actor in the international system. It has been remarkably successful as a framework for integrating Europe’s markets and providing regulatory structures (sometimes excessive).2/5
But despite all the talk about EU foreign and security policy, Europe remains a continent of nations with distinct histories and cultures, and with regionally-focused threat perceptions and national interests. This should be the starting point of any discussion of EU policy. 3/5
I have watched with growing bewilderment how since the end of the Cold War various EC/EU leaders talked themselves into believing that hard security no longer mattered in their brave new world of globalization, and that EU institutions would ultimately trump geopolitics. 4/5
The EU-US trade deal should finally end all delusions about the EU as a unitary actor. History has never ended—we are back to geopolitics and hard power, where security remains the irreducible function of the state. The European Union is not a state and can’t act as one. 5/End
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