As the US and Israel prepare for war, the EU sinks into irrelevance

The drums of war are sounding again across the Middle East. The United States and Israel prepare for what appears to be an imminent, decisive military confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The tectonic plates of global geopolitics are violently shifting. Global powers brace for impact. And the EU? Well, nobody cares about the EU. Because it has simply become insignificant.

This is not a regional skirmish. What the daunting military build-up in the Middle East heralds is a major geopolitical, as well as a cultural clash. On one side stand the US in close coordination with Israel, seen as the solitary outpost of Western democracy in a region historically plagued by despotism and radicalism. On the other side stands a theocratic regime that sponsors terrorism, murders dissidents and actively undermines the West and its allies.

In this historic moment, a fundamental question arises: Where is Europe? The answer is as tragic as it is infuriating. The European Union is nowhere to be seen. It is absent from the front lines, absent from the diplomatic backrooms and also absent from the strategic calculations of both Washington and Jerusalem. Brussels has turned itself into a geopolitical ghost, a continent reduced to the status of a sorry spectator watching history unfold from cheap seats at the back.

While the Israeli Defence Forces and the Pentagon work on complex strike plans to neutralise Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, cripple its military and dismantle its proxy networks, the bureaucrats in Berlaymont keep busy drafting press releases. The EU’s foreign policy has become an international laughing stock. At the end of the day, why would anyone invite European leaders to a war room when Europe has spent the last decade pursuing weakness and insignificance?

The EU has succumbed to the delusion of soft power and woke diplomacy. We in Europe have replaced statesmanship with the vocabulary of NGOs. For years, Brussels has aggressively followed a policy of appeasement toward Tehran, desperately trying to save a nuclear deal nobody wants, looking the other way as the Mullahs funded Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. We thought we could tame a radical Islamist regime with trade deals and progressive rhetoric. We failed spectacularly.

If one needs characteristic proof of Europe’s strategic paralysis, look at the ongoing crisis in the Red Sea. Iranian-backed Houthi militants try to choke one of the world’s most vital maritime arteries, driving up inflation and effectively blockading European economies. How did the “global player” of Brussels respond? While the US and the UK decisively launched offensive strikes to destroy Houthi capabilities at their source, the EU’s reaction has been anaemic.

We deployed a fragmented, purely defensive naval mission infused with the fear of any form of escalation. We ordered our majestic warships to act as sitting ducks, turkey-shooting cheap drones while strictly forbidding our forces from striking the terrorist launchpads in Yemen. We treated an act of war against global trade and the European economy as a traffic dispute. Needless to say, this is not deterrence. It is a masterclass in geopolitical submissiveness.

The humiliating truth is that neither the United States nor Israel feel the need to consult the European Union regarding possible strikes on Iran, because the EU brings absolutely nothing to the table. It is hard power that dictates the rules of global survival and authority. Instead, European nations have underfunded their militaries, relying on the American security umbrella while simultaneously lecturing Washington from a position of self-perceived moral high ground.

When you refuse to defend your own commercial ships, when you dismantle your own defence industries in the name of a utopian green transition, and when you allow your capitals to be overrun by pro-Hamas mobs without consequences, you surrender your right to be taken seriously on the world stage. The total absence of the EU from the war theatre is not an accident. It is the direct result of a conscious choice, to abandon sovereignty and assertiveness in favour of decorum.

This striking absence from the Iran crisis should serve as a massive wake-up call for the citizens of Europe. We are living in an era of returning empires and brutal realpolitik. If Europe wants to be an active participant in shaping its own destiny, it must drastically change course.

We must abandon the postmodern fantasy that the world is a giant courtroom where disputes are settled by international law alone. We must rebuild our armed forces, stand unapologetically with our allies and abandon the suicidal policies of appeasement intra et extra muros. You cannot fight radical Islamism abroad when you concede your institutional and social traditions – in essence your Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian identity – to it at home.

Until the European Union remembers its historic roots, accepts the reality of power dynamics and finds the courage to fight for Western values, it will remain exactly what it is today in the face of the upcoming conflict in the Middle East: Irrelevant, ignored and dangerously obsolete. The signal from Brussels is currently a flatline. The matter is past the point of urgency. If we do not revive Europe’s fighting spirit, history will bypass us completely.