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When crisis strikes, we divide, and division breeds inaction. This is the assumption generally made about Europe’s place in the world. But a look at events in the Middle East – past and present – suggests that this is not always the case. Europe is more paralysed than divided over the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran. Yet rather than fostering a shared sense of purpose, this crisis is hollowing out Europe’s identity and undermining its ability to act independently in the world.
Rewind to 2003. The Iraq war was the quintessence of European division. France and Germany vehemently opposed the US-led invasion. Paris sought to block Washington’s unilateral action in the UN security council by rallying a passionate defence of multilateralism and the rule of international law. The UK, Italy and Spain, by contrast, backed the US attack, participating to varying degrees. Europe was divided at its core – and beyond. That year, the EU stood on the brink of enlarging to admit central and eastern Europe. Most of those former communist bloc countries supported the US, less out of conviction about Washington’s case for war than because they saw the US as their path to freedom and future security. The then-US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, infamously divided the continent, taunting “old” Europe with the support Washington was receiving from “new” Europe. The Iraq war created a three-layered fault line: within core Europe, between “old” and “new” Europe, and across the Atlantic.
Yet the shock galvanised Europe to urgently reflect on its identity and global role. Millions of Europeans took to the streets to protest against the US war. European intellectuals such as Jürgen Habermas (whose death was announced on Saturday) and Jacques Derrida articulated a Kantian vision of a common European identity rooted in multilateralism, international law and soft power. In retrospect, their manifesto had blind spots – patronisingly overlooking eastern Europe and ignoring the resurgence of the Russian threat, which would demand hard power as well. But nevertheless, the 2003 Iraq war marked a pivotal moment in the formation of a European identity.
And it also spurred agency. The diplomatic grouping later known as the “E3/EU+3” (France, Germany and the UK with the EU, plus China, Russia and the US)was born out of the wreckage of the crisis. Unable to prevent the Iraq war, Europeans rediscovered their collective purpose within this multilateral format enshrined in international law. The grouping patiently and peacefully managed the Iranian nuclear file until its successful conclusion with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015. To this day, that nuclear agreement with Tehran – sabotaged by the first Trump administration, which triggered the cycle of escalation we face now – remains Europe’s most significant diplomatic achievement.
The opposite is true of Europe’s response to the Iran war of today. Europeans are far less divided than they seem at first. Of course, not all are on the same page. The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has vocally condemned the war and refused the use of jointly operated bases on Spanish territory for that purpose. Other European governments, including Slovenia within the EU and Norway outside it, have joined him. Most European leaders, however, have adopted an ambiguous stance. They generally recognise that the US and Israeli attacks violate international law. All evidence suggests that Iran posed no imminent danger to Israel or the US to justify a preventive strike in self-defence. The Iranian regime has committed heinous crimes against its people, and there was no guarantee that the talks under way in Geneva when the war began would have yielded a nuclear agreement. But none of this makes the attack lawful, and European leaders have acknowledged as much.
The US and Israel’s violation of international law has been recognised by European leaders of all political stripes, including far-right Giorgia Meloni in Italy, liberals such as Emmanuel Macron and Donald Tusk in France and Poland, Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz in Germany, and the centre-left UK prime minister Keir Starmer. Yet none of them – nor the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen – have followed with condemnation.
Some have been blunt about disregarding international law. Meloni, while admitting to the Italian parliament that the war violates international law, declared that she neither condemned nor condoned the action. Merz claimed that international law was not a useful framework and that this was not the time to preach to friends and allies. Von der Leyen added the cherry on the cake when she stated that debating whether the war is one of choice – that is, illegal – or of necessity – legal – “partly misses the point” and that Europe must accept the world as it is. Her speech to EU ambassadors was such an explicit repudiation of the EU’s longstanding principles that the European Council president António Costa felt compelled to contradict her the following day, reaffirming the belief that multipolarity and multilateralism must go hand in hand.
The crux of the matter is this: Europe has long claimed that its collective identity is based on rights, law and multilateralism. This is how European integration has developed internally and how European governments have presented themselves to the world. Admittedly, they have never fully lived up to that self-image, inviting inevitable accusations of hypocrisy and double standards. But this does not detract from the fact that it is how Europe has understood itself and its global role.
Meloni, Merz and von der Leyen may believe they are being more realistic and pragmatic than their idealistic predecessors. The opposite is true. If Europe abdicates its commitment to democratic rules, norms and law, it simply ceases to exist as a collective entity. European integration is hollowed out from within.
This is precisely what is at risk of happening today. And if Europe abandons its principles and laws externally, rather than working to reassert them alongside other middle powers, it will not emerge as a muscular global player but will instead be pushed and pulled by predatory powers such as Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Donald Trump’s US.
Trump’s attempt to suck European governments into the war by calling for allies’ warships to be deployed in the strait of Hormuz is the latest example of this.
The shock of division over Iraq in 2003 nurtured a shared sense of European identity and spurred collective action, most notably on Iran. Today, the cowardice of many European leaders – and the unabashed abdication of norms by some – are eroding the collective sense of “who” Europe is and what it wants to achieve in the world.
Cowed by Washington and drawn into a war, the brunt of whose consequences they and the Middle East will bear, our leaders are undermining their own ability to act. At a time when European leaders give passionate speeches about European independence, their cowardice and subservience is paradoxically making Europe far less sovereign on the world stage.
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Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist
