Europe should be willing to take more risks
Power requires accepting risk rather than continually seeking to eliminate it.
Read →Europe is not weak, but it suffers from a psychology of weakness.
Europe has enormous economic, technological, political and diplomatic resources. Yet it repeatedly struggles to convert them into strategic influence.
The problem is partly institutional. But it is also psychological and political: an instinct to minimise risks, preserve unanimity at all costs and react to events rather than shape them.
For years, the European debate focused on strategic autonomy. I increasingly think the more useful concept is strategic initiative.
Why does Europe so often talk and behave as though it were weaker than it is? The problem is not simply resources, but self-confidence and a reluctance to exercise power.
Read →Power requires accepting risk rather than continually seeking to eliminate it.
Read →An institutional agenda for making European foreign policy more effective.
Read →A proposal for a smaller political forum capable of protecting Europeans in a world of escalating threats.
Read →More than two decades ago, the question was already how Europe could turn its collective weight into credible foreign-policy influence.
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