Richard Youngs, Professor of International and European Politics, University of Warwick
There is general agreement that the US’s geopolitical shock therapy is a sign of a new world order. While European powers nominally recognise this, their policies are not, in practice, tailored towards such a change.
The EU and other European governments are, understandably, focused on very immediate matters – talks on Ukraine, defence budgets, rebutting big US tech firms. But they also need to be guided by a clearer vision of the broader international order that flows from this inflection point.
Even though the world has already changed profoundly over the last decade, most observers judge the current juncture to be a decisive watershed. Yet the tumult unleashed in 2025 feels not so much like a well-defined new world order as the chaotic imprecision of “no world order”. Nothing concrete has emerged as a replacement for the long-crumbling liberal order.
Multi-polarity is not fully evident because there is little balance between powers. But the current influence of large powers rubs uneasily with the notion of a “G-zero world” in which no countries have any real control.
The long-predicted plurilateralism, in which smaller groups of states reach political agreements, has not become reality. Yet neither is a well-ordered concert of great powers especially evident.
A concert-based order would hardly accord the primacy now reassigned to Russia, a country that enjoys only a few of the long-term structural attributes of great-power status.
But it’s also worth noting that “no world order” is not quite the same thing as “new world disorder”. Although many leaders make a show of flouting international rules and norms on high-profile issues like international courts, the reality is that they still matter in conditioning international behaviour.
It can reasonably be suggested that the new order will be eclectic or composite – essentially, a combination of all of the above. Yet, the current jumble and clash of dynamics does not constitute a patterned “order”. The relationships between the different forces at work are nowhere near being worked out.
What is European ‘independence’?
In this void, European governments and the EU are leaning heavily on two long-familiar tenets, even as these raise operational question marks.
One is the notion of autonomy. European leaders have now doubled down on their calls for more strategic autonomy and a narrative of Europe of being “independent” from the US and “writing its own history”.
But autonomy is a somewhat hazy geopolitical motif. European powers of course need the autonomy to chart their own strategic priorities, but current crises palpably reinforce the need to manage complex interdependencies. Autonomy in the sense of deploying economic, political or military capabilities unconstrained by other powers is a diminished prospect.
The other European reflex is to stress a determination to “reinforce multilateralism”, something few other world powers are apparently willing to do now.
But multilateralism in its current form is surely beyond resuscitation. The imperative is rather to rethink multilateral norms and salvage the most essential core of liberal cooperation amid today’s lurch towards uncontrolled turbulence and power-expediency.
I have previously proposed what I term “geoliberalism” as a path forward. This is a model that balances geopolitical reality alongside liberal and democratic values. In the second Trump era, the liberal elements of this concept are even more squeezed than they were before he was re-elected.
Read more: Europe is still in short-term crisis mode over Ukraine and lacks a vision for its post-war identity
Despite the multilateralism rhetoric, European powers actually seem to be leaning towards a more absolute version of realpolitik, with diplomacy based on practical rather than moral considerations. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, talks of “hyper-transactionalism”, which is less a vision of order than its negation.
European international liberalism needs to be reframed, not jettisoned. It will be more rearguard and selective, but needs also to be more concerted to hold at bay today’s turbo-charged illiberal assault.
It can lock onto powerful global societal trends to which realpolitik is dangerously and self-defeatingly blind. European Union powers need to be more measured but also more pointed in salvaging islands of liberal order – for example on climate change cooperation.
There is little sign of such reflection. Familiar cliches are dominating the European response to the US illiberal pivot.
The strategic debate has narrowed, especially around the question of defence spending. Repeating ad nauseum that “Europe must step up” and “get its act together” says little about what kind of strategy is needed to navigate the current order implosion, the end towards which defence capabilities are ultimately directed.
European governments should indeed boost their defence spend, but that spend needs to be rooted in and directed towards an appropriate strategy for global re-ordering.
The current flux means this is a moment when the parameters of the next international order will be defined. European powers need to prioritise practical action to influence that order more than endless, self-referential speeches about their own power status.
Even if a degree of self-survival short-termism is understandable, the EU and European governments must lift their eyes to craft more far-sighted responses to the world’s collapsing certainties.
Richard Youngs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
