After the end of the war in Ukraine, what would be the nature of a European order that included Russia instead of marginalizing it? What is the future for Europe in an increasingly multipolar world? How should such a European order be institutionalized so that peace, freedom, democracy, and effectiveness are ensured and Europe’s own identity is protected? These are questions that cannot wait to be asked until the guns finally fall silent in Ukraine. In the present context, these questions can only be outlined sketchily in the space of a few pages. Nevertheless, it is worth trying to find an alternative for Europe.
Europe and Empire
Any quest for an effective European order that is legitimate in the eyes of the people must begin with consideration of the structure of Europe. European civilization—the occident—has been characterized historically by its cultural, religious, regional, linguistic, and ethnic diversity, complemented by its geography, which further reinforces that diversity through its numerous rivers and mountain ranges.
At the same time, to quote former Federal President Theodor Heuss, Europe is built on three metaphorical hills, namely Calvary (Christianity), the Capitoline Hill (Roman law), and the Acropolis (Greek philosophy). One concept that brings unity to this diversity is the European idea of empire. Plans for a federal Europe thus made early appearances: in the plan for world peace drawn up by French lawyer Pierre Dubois in 1300, in Dante’s foremost political treatise Monarchia (c. 1316) and in the 21-article federation plan proposed by George of Poděbrady, King of Bohemia, in 1462. The Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg monarchy, for all their shortcomings, coped with internal diversity for centuries under the rule of the Emperor.
By contrast, the attempt made in the third century B.C. to create a “European”—meaning Hellenist at that time—federation, with a federal army and its own citizenship, over and above citizenship of its member poleis, to revive the Achaean League so as to counter the external threat from the Roman Empire in the west and the Macedonian Empire to the north met with failure as a result of bureaucracy and inefficiency.
Europe, then, guided by a modern democratic version of the idea of empire, must follow a middle way between a federal state and a confederation of states, especially since, as the German political thinker Ulrike Guérot notes, there are no popular majorities in favor of a centralist federal state. On the basis of the theories expounded by British philosopher John Laughland, the idea of a centralist EU federal state must also be rejected because the essence of a state is simply not determined—as Marxists and some liberals wrongly believe—by its economic basis. Such a determinist view of the nature of man, society, and history leads, in extremis, to totalitarianism.
That, of course, is precisely the problem with the EU as it now exists, “designed” as an artificial bureaucratic construct, not organically evolved in the conservative sense, and inherently at odds with tradition, justice, and freedom. Moreover, it “forgot” to take the people—the peoples of Europe—on board, while a European demos and a European public opinion simply do not exist. The member states of the European Union, for their part, will not stop being sovereign until both their legal and their political authority are brought to an end by their own legal system and citizenry. We are still far from that stage (see above)—regardless of whether it is even a desirable outcome.
Alternative for Europe
It should first be established, ex negativo, what this future European order should not be. Some points have already been addressed above. Back in 1915, the German liberal Friedrich Naumann, from whom, by the way, the foundation Friedrich Naumann Stiftung took its name, stated in his magnum opus, Mitteleuropa, that, in the spirit of European diversity, a Central European federation should not have only one official common language. Nevertheless, Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, in his highly influential work Pan-Europa of 1923, posited a need to spread the “knowledge that all of Europe’s national cultures are closely and inextricably connected parts of a great and uniform European culture.”
This can be done, in a new European confederation which should be created, by funding a compulsory course for every university and college student in the foundations of Western civilization, similar to the “Western civ.” courses that were part of the U.S. university curriculum or the rudiments of Russian civilization that are taught in Russia today. A new European confederation should be an intellectual union, not a redistribution union. This means ending all subsidies which go beyond support for pan-European infrastructure (roads, railways, airports, digital infrastructure, pipelines, LNG terminals, etc.). This applies especially to the agricultural subsidies that currently account for a third of the EU budget.
The so-called anti-discrimination legislation and censorship laws such as the Digital Services Act should be abolished. The future European confederation should put an end to imperialist exportation of values, such as requiring accession candidates to legislate for gender ideology and LGBTIQ rights. Such requirements at present only result in predominantly conservative peoples and societies, especially in Eastern European countries such as Georgia, feeling repelled by the same Europe to which they actually have a sense of belonging. Moreover, there should be no common citizenship of the new European confederation over and above that of one’s own member state (cf. the Achaean League). Sovereignty would remain with the European peoples, through their respective member states.
Ex positivo, the new European confederation should focus on common European cross-border interests. These include energy and environmental policies, for example. The joint purchase of energy sources—Russian gas and oil, for instance—would increase Europe’s market power as a consumer in relation to producers and is therefore in the interests of Europe as a whole. The joint purchase and joint stockpiling of strategic resources, such as rare earths, would reinforce the market power of Europe. In the field of environmental protection, regulation should be confined to a few basic benchmarks so as to guarantee Europe’s global competitiveness and establish compatibility with free trade agreements. In accordance with the principle of multipolarity, the new Confederation should conclude free-trade agreements with India, the United States, Russia, and South America, with a view to counteracting Chinese trade pressure on Europe.
According to the Belgian historian David Engels, the Europe of the future, because of its cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity, will have an organizational structure that is confined to shared core interests, namely defense (common armed forces, including communitization of the French nuclear weapons), home affairs policy (police cooperation in cross-border criminal prosecution and protection of external borders from illegal migration from the Global South), finance (material support for joint programs) and, as mentioned above, infrastructure (joint projects for the establishment of logistic links).
The figurehead of this structure will be the President of the European Union, who, rather like the Holy Roman Emperor, will act as a mediator, together with the commission under his or her authority, in the resolution of disputes. The European Commission will be dissolved, and the extensive judicial powers of the EU, exercised by the European Court of Justice, will be subject to considerable restrictions. The Court will only rule on specific matters, and without EU-wide legal effects. The existing European Parliament will become the lower chamber and the European Council the upper chamber of the new European legislature.
It should be noted at this point that the pan-Europeanist Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi was already proposing a representation system allotting one member of the European Parliament per million inhabitants of each member state, rather than the degressive system which now applies and which discriminates against Germany. This would also lead to a substantial reduction in the number of MEPs. David Engels conceives the structure of Western Europe as that of a defensive alliance against the expansion of Chinese and Russian influence, providing for both national and collective defense, but, in a true continentalist spirit, it should also limit the influence of the United States. Nevertheless, peaceful coexistence of the new European confederation with Russia, which is also regarded as upholding the Russian imperial ideal of Byzantine origin, is conceivable and indeed entirely probable.
A new Western Europe would focus on its internal problems, namely, the collapse of states and the migration waves from the Middle East and Africa. It would be an inward-looking Europe that exported neither goods nor arms nor woke values. David Engels points to the classical West, i.e. Western Europe, and implicitly recognizes the existence of a second wing of Europe, namely the Orthodox East. Russia, including Belarus and part of the former Ukraine, as the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn proposed, would not be an enemy but a “partner with shared traditional values” of a renewed Western Europe.
This approach differs from the idea of the “global North” mooted by Vladislav Surkov, former aide to the President of Russia, in that it differentiates more sharply between Europe (Western and Orthodox) and the United States. At the same time, Engels strongly emphasizes that the new Western Europe should cooperate with the United States in the NATO framework; he therefore assumes the continuing existence of that key transatlantic organization. I largely agree with Engels on the listed points, but common armed forces, made up of contingents from national forces, should be deployed for the sole purpose of national or collective defense; internal operations within the European confederation should be prohibited.
The common armed forces could also be deployed to secure the external borders of the confederation on land, at sea, and in the air from terrorism and illegal migration, which are clear and present dangers in view of the rapid population growth in Africa. The common armed forces, moreover, could be used to secure global trade routes against terrorism and piracy—together with Russia and China and not against them—because these transnational dangers threaten all of us. All other EU missions, including any out-of-area Bundeswehr deployments, should be terminated.
The vote to authorize deployments should be taken by the upper house of the European Parliament, in other words the governments of the member states, acting by consensus (abstentions would be possible; the states abstaining would not participate in the mission but would be under obligation to contribute to its funding) and by the lower house (the directly elected chamber), acting by a simple majority. In the event of a deployment, the commander-in-chief would be the commissioner holding the defense portfolio in the downsized Commission referred to above, which would be focused on the core interests of Europe as a whole. I regard the aforementioned communitization of the French nuclear weapons as possibly unworkable politically, although joint deployment planning—solely for national and collective defense purposes—should be undertaken. To this end, a nuclear strategy would have to be presented by the competent Commissioner and adopted by the lower and upper chambers, following the procedure described above.
In the long term—after the creation of the new European confederation—pan-European armed forces would be the way to fashion an independent European security structure which can replace NATO. Ever since Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” announcement, the United States has been looking to withdraw from the European continent; it is increasingly ceding responsibility to Germany, Britain, and France for providing Ukraine with arms and financial support and will be reducing its military presence on NATO’s eastern flank. Under President Donald Trump, the United States is focusing on North and South America (see his moves on Venezuela and Greenland) as well as on East Asia (China). In the long run, there will be no alternative to a separate continental, defensive European security structure.
This continental structure will strive for stability, peace, and security in Europe, combating the influence of external powers but also neo-imperialist ambitions and military adventures, whatever their source. It will foster stabilizing spheres of influence and mutual security guarantees—as proposed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov—and oppose the expansion of blocs, security alliances, and empires.
Back in 1923, Coudenhove-Kalergi recognized that the world had emancipated itself from Europe. “The world hegemony of Europe is overthrown for all time,” he wrote. “Once feared, Europe is now pitied.” Because of Europe’s reduced demographic, cultural, economic, and military status in the world, a new European confederation would concentrate on its own borders. Just as they define states, borders also define people and societies. They create identity and consolidate it. Etymologically, the original meaning of polis was “fortification.” Borders are a constitutive element of any body politic. Self-restraint, not expansion, is also the guiding principle in external affairs. This means that the new European confederation must resolve to stop the enlargement process. The borders of that confederation should correspond to the boundaries of Catholic and Protestant Europe, as the late American political scientist Samuel Huntington proposed. All efforts to expand into the Orthodox countries of Eastern Europe must be halted. Moldova, Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Armenia should at worst be buffer states and at best bridges between the new European confederation and Russia. If they wish, they may participate in certain confederation programs, but any kind of military cooperation—arms supplies, personnel training, missile deployment, etc.—must be ruled out. An agreement should be negotiated with Russia establishing an exclusion zone for short-range and intermediate-range missiles and providing for mutual reductions in the presence of conventional forces in border areas.
The Route to a New European Confederation
That sounds all very well, the interested reader may think, but what does the pathway look like that leads from the EU as it now exists to a new European confederation? There are two possible scenarios, one of which is surely preferable: First, either a fundamental change in the ruling elites in the core countries of the EU (Germany, France, Poland and Spain; in Italy, this has already taken place to a certain degree) and in the United Kingdom, through the triumph of patriotic forces in the parliamentary or presidential elections that are scheduled to take place in 2026 and 2027 in France, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom, and in 2029 in Germany, if the present parliamentary term runs its full course.
The other scenario would be a case of continuing as before in the EU and its core states, which Ulrike Guérot considers likely, and the consequent uncontrollable disintegration of the EU as a result of the economic and cultural cleft and the division over migration policy between east and west and between north and south. In that case, the human, social, economic, and political costs would be high.
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It is not inconceivable that regional alliances would then be formed, bringing together groups of states which might be mutually hostile in some cases, leading to the eruption or rekindling of intra-European conflicts. On account of the common pan-European interests, even in the latter scenario the confederation outlined above would probably be formed, although every citizen of Germany and its European partners is called upon to do everything possible to mitigate the costs of such a scenario.
Or, as Coudenhove-Kalergi wrote more than a hundred years ago,
If this development is not halted in time by the Federation of Europe, everything that is still efficient and viable in Europe will leave this impoverished, menaced, rotting and small-minded part of the world and settle in other, more auspicious areas, particularly in America.
