European strategic autonomy: why international law is no longer enough

Europe continues to respond to geopolitical shocks with a reassuring automatism: invoking international law as if it were, in and of itself, a foreign policy. This posture is understandable, because for decades the Union—and, more broadly, the European West—has been able to operate in a relatively predictable international order, in which rules and multilateral institutions were not merely a normative horizon, but also a stabilizing force multiplier ultimately underwritten by American strategic primacy..

Why international law is no longer self-sufficient

The discontinuity we observe today does not consist of an abrupt “death” of law, but rather in its loss of self-sufficiency. In a system that is again being structured as great-power competition, the norm remains an essential language—of legitimation, contestation, and governance—but it can hardly function as an effective constraint absent material capabilities and political cohesion. It is against this background that the U.S. posture in recent years should be read as articulated in strategic documents (the National Security Strategy) whose significance runs deeper than electoral contingencies: the affirmation of an operational doctrine that privileges national interest, reduces deference to supranational mediation, and assumes that deterrence and coercion deliver more reliable outcomes than a multilateralism perceived as slow, prone to capture, or paralyzed.

The Venezuela case as a strategic signal

The Venezuelan episode—Maduro’s arrest, conducted in a way designed to bypass both symbolically and materially traditional legal formalities—has been interpreted in Europe primarily as a violation of the legal order. Yet, if read as a strategic signal, it indicates something else: the American choice to operate proactively, even at the price of eroding the notion that external action must always be fully multilateralized legitimation. The point here is not to determine whether such a choice is desirable; it is to recognize that it responds to a diagnosis—shared, at varying levels, by significant segments of the U.S. establishment—according to which the international legal framework has become unable to neutralize threats that now present as hybrid, transnational, and persistent.

Regime change: when formal legality and strategic rationality diverge 

The debate on regime change illustrates well why European discussion often risks becoming “moral” rather than analytical. From a strictly legal standpoint, the use of force remains prohibited save for narrow exceptions (self-defence and Security Council authorization). In practice, however, the field is marked by inconsistencies: the absence of a clear customary norm on unilateral regime change; the recurrent—but controversial—invocation of humanitarian arguments; and the difficulty of reconciling sovereignty with situations in which political power is fused with criminal economies and transnational armed networks. A crucial consequence follows: when multilateral institutions fail to generate binding decisions—because of vetoes, balances of power, and strategic calculations—the gap between formal legality and strategic rationality tends to widen. The vacuum is then filled by those who possess the instruments to act.

A case that makes this loss of self-sufficiency unmistakable is the Russia–Ukraine war. Here international law provides the vocabulary of condemnation and legitimation (aggression, sovereignty, war crimes), but it does not automatically produce deterrence or restore the violated order. The resilience of the Ukrainian front—and, indirectly, European credibility—is determined above all by material capabilities: munitions, air defence, intelligence, industry, logistics, and political continuity. This is the point at which Europe discovers that the norm, without power and cohesion, remains true but is not enough.

It is precisely here that Europe’s vulnerability becomes apparent. Repeating the mantra “international law has been violated” may be ethically consistent, but it becomes politically sterile if it is not accompanied by strategic thinking about consequences: which objectives are pursued, with which instruments, through which alliances, and above all with what willingness to bear the costs of security. Legality, in the absence of capability, risks turning into a lexicon of impotence.

To fully grasp this dynamic, it is useful to recall a number of emblematic cases of intervention and external pressure. Afghanistan, after twenty years of Western military presence, illustrates the limits of a state-transformation project sustained by force but lacking domestic political roots. Iraq, from 2003 onward, shows how the removal of a regime can generate power vacuums rapidly occupied by sectarian and transnational actors. Syria represents the clearest example of how the absence of a coherent Western line created space for an arena of competition among powers, militias, and proxies, with destabilizing effects extending well beyond the local theatre. Added to these are cases such as Libya and Yemen, where external intervention—direct or indirect—interacted with internal fragilities, producing conflict systems that are exceedingly difficult to recompose.

The Sahel: A failed test of European presence

A further reference point, often underestimated in European debate, is the Sahel. Here the European Union invested for many years in training missions, institutional assistance, and governance support, yet without equipping itself with a credible coercive strategy or a unified political will. The result was the progressive collapse of partner regimes, a sequence of coups d’état, and the forced withdrawal of European missions, while other actors—from Russia, via paramilitary structures, to regional powers—occupied the vacuum by offering immediate security in exchange for influence. The Sahel demonstrates with particular clarity how, in contexts of state fragility, competition is not waged between normative models, but between capacities for territorial control, coercive management of violence, and protection of economic flows. It is also one of the theatres in which the instability generates spills over into the Mediterranean and Europe.

A clarification on the Middle Eastern case is necessary to avoid simplifications. Many of the dynamics currently under discussion pertain specifically to the relationship with Iran and the U.S. perception that threats require deterrence, pressure, and—ultimately—the credibility of force. In this framework, conflict is not reducible to a moral or identity-based dimension; it should be read as a contest among power architectures, proxy networks, and regional power-projection capabilities.

When addressing possible convergences among armed actors, illicit economies, and state apparatuses, it is essential to use analytically rigorous language. This is not about religions or collective identities, but about operational interactions among networks that exploit territory, documentation, financial channels, and logistics. Imprecision on this point produces a double negative effect: it fuels indiscriminate distrust while, at the same time, weakening the capacity to identify and counter real threats.

The same logic applies—less explosively but with growing relevance—to the Arctic and Greenland: a region in which sea lanes, resources, bases, critical infrastructure, and technological advantage weigh more than statements of principle. Here too, great-power competition shifts the axis from legal invocation alone to concrete capacity for presence, control, and projection, confronting Europe with a stark choice: merely observe decisions taken elsewhere, or build political, industrial, and security instruments capable of preventing marginalization.

U.S. posture and the technological durability of regimes

From this vantage point, the American posture appears consistent with a premise: if threats are transnational and the regimes that host or facilitate them are not susceptible to internal change, then transformation—if it occurs—will proceed through external pressure. Reinforcing this conviction is an element often underestimated in European debate: the growing technological durability of authoritarian regimes, sustained by surveillance apparatuses, selective repression, and information control, which narrow the space for endogenous change.

Within this framework, simplistic readings—Trump as “subordinate” to Moscow, or as the architect of a global partition with Russia and China—are analytically weak. The picture is more unstable: not an orderly division, but a collision of strategic rationalities. Russia invests in hybrid instruments and influence networks; China projects economic and technological power; the United States, in its more assertive variant, signals that it does not recognize others’ spheres of influence as intangible. Regional hegemony is not a right, but a claim tolerated only insofar as it remains compatible with U.S. interests.

European strategic autonomy: the alternative to marginality

It is here that Europe discovers its lack of a third way. To continue imagining itself as an arbiter—the custodian of rules others ought to respect—is psychologically understandable but strategically self-defeating. In a world in which coercion returns as an ordinary instrument and in which armed and criminal networks cut across regions, Europe cannot limit itself to commenting on the game: either it builds the tools to shape outcomes, or it accepts becoming terrain for others’ influence.

There are two realistic options. The first is substantive strategic autonomy: credible industrial and military capacities, energy and technological resilience, decision-making speed, protection of critical infrastructure, and a less fragmented foreign policy. The second is to assume consciously a role as a qualified follower within the Western perimeter, negotiating margins and priorities while accepting that the ultimate security framework remains American. What no longer appears sustainable is the intermediate position: claiming normative centrality without bearing the costs of power.

If the appeal to international law is to become effective again, it must be accompanied by strategy: deterrent capability, political coherence, and a disenchanted reading of the networks that connect conflicts, illicit trafficking, and transnational armed actors. Without such integration, Europe will continue to defend a noble but ineffective lexicon, while international politics reorganizes according to grammars of power in which it participates less and less.

Abdellah M. Cozzolino