The 2026 rentrée: Europe in search of a seat at the table

September Rentrée 2026

 A year ago, in the August 29 edition of Diário de Notícias (Portugal), I wrote that the 2025-2026 rentrée appeared unpromising: paralysed multilateral institutions, diplomacy reduced to a spectacle, frequent violations of international norms, and protracted conflicts, all within the framework of a threatened, hesitant, and divided European Union. The subsequent 12 months have confirmed this diagnosis. This year's rentrée is even more challenging: instability and threats to global peace and security have increased considerably.

What makes this rentrée decisive is not merely the simultaneous gravity of these multiple crises and their unpredictability. It is the fact that they reveal, ever more clearly, that Europe will only be able to protect its interests, its citizens, and its values if it strengthens its political unity.

We face a continuum of progressively interconnected crises: the environmental crisis has worsened; the war against Ukraine has intensified, parallel to a crescendo of Russian threats against democratic Europe; in the Middle East, violence has no end in sight; in Sudan, the humanitarian collapse continues with an indifference and brutality that mirror the international disorder in which we live. Upon this web has now fallen a dangerous race to develop artificial intelligence, contested by Washington, Beijing, and a small number of corporate behemoths with inconceivable financial and political capabilities.

The clearest symptom of this disorder is the lack of respect for the political role of the UN, today held hostage by rivalries among the US, China, and Russia. António Guterres concludes his mandate this coming December 31. There is still no consensus on a candidate capable of breaching the wall of the great powers' veto. There is a risk of entering a carousel of uncertainty—a geopolitical death pit that will lead to the selection of a candidate who is convenient and obedient across the board. The United Nations, which we so desperately need, would in that case enter a new level of decadence.

It was within this vacuum that, at the end of August, the CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, travelled to Moscow—not to speak with Putin, but with the heads of the SVR (foreign intelligence) and the FSB (internal security), to whom he went so far as to propose a trilateral summit between Trump, Putin, and Zelensky. Washington called this routine. In practice, it was an exercise in excluding European intelligence services and UN rules. It was also, on the Russian side, an example of their customary guile: discussing matters among spies, rather than with the Head of State, is the classic way to deny Kremlin involvement, buy time, and pursue the intent of fracturing NATO and the EU. Moscow's objective has little to do with peace in Ukraine or with inviolability and security in democratic Europe. Moscow seeks to gain time to achieve its ends. And it is precisely this episode that accurately measures the true weight of the European Union: as long as the timetable is defined by Washington and Moscow, without Brussels having a seat in the room, Europe will continue to be the object, the spectator, and a passive element in the global game.

There are those who draw a pessimistic conclusion from this and look to the near future with great concern—those who believe Europe is condemned to irrelevance. It is fundamental to combat this idea and to remember, with courage and concrete proposals, that it is necessary to advance towards a federation of European States. Where Europe has genuinely united—in the areas of trade, competition, the single market, and currency—it negotiates as a power. Where it has settled for intergovernmental coordination, subject to the veto of each member—in Defence, foreign relations, financial markets, and critical industries—the EU carries little to no weight against Washington, Moscow, or Beijing, as the Ratcliffe episode has just confirmed. Nor can it count on the support or respect of any leader from those capitals.

In realistic terms, the 2026-2027 political year should translate into a strengthening of integration among those States that grasp the scale of the risks we face. As Mario Draghi has argued, whoever wishes to join, joins; whoever wishes to block, can no longer impede the others. This is not merely about the economy. At stake are sovereignty, defence, our geopolitical choices, the dignity of citizens, and the protection of our humanistic values.

Yet this institutional federalism does not, by itself, resolve the other fracture crossing the European space: the worsening of social inequalities. There is an increasing concentration of wealth at the top of social pyramids, running parallel to the precarisation of the middle classes and the poorest. This results in an erosion of the material foundation of democracies, allowing the expansion of demagogic and populist movements. This applies to the Portuguese situation as to so many other European societies, where the mainstream governing parties convince citizens less and less, and social impatience grows. Many of our governments manage reality with the rhetoric of the last century.

The external strength of the EU must rest upon an internal social contract that promotes optimism, equality, and trust in political leaders. Without this foundation, any attempt at federation will be an architecture without foundations.

A year ago, I found it difficult to be optimistic. I continue to think so. But we cannot lose hope or fall into naivety. Now, in September 2026, the die is cast. Therefore, the challenge is to strengthen our union, without subordination and without having to ask permission from those who wish to make calculations without consulting us.

Vladimir Putin and today's Russia

 https://victorangelo1.substack.com/p/putins-grip-on-power-where-it-stands

A review of Vladimir Putin's absolute control of power.

Can we compare the CIA with the Russian Secret Services?

 https://victorangelo1.substack.com/p/the-illusion-of-deterrence-what-cias

The Illusion of Deterrence: What CIA’s Moscow Trip Has Achieved?

Please read the text in my Subsack

The CIA Director goes to Moscow: what for?

 https://victorangelo1.substack.com/p/the-cia-in-moscow-why-spies-not-diplomats

The geostrategic soup: USA, Russia, Europe and the near future

The European Demographic Fallacy: Social Cohesion and the Technological Imperative

 

A persistent narrative in contemporary political discourse suggests that Europe must rely on continuous, large-scale immigration to offset its ageing population and fill structural labour shortages. However, treating mass migration as a permanent demographic fix is both geopolitically dangerous and socially unsustainable. The European Union cannot base its future stability on the indefinite importation of labour. Instead, Europe must protect its cultural unity and social cohesion while rapidly pivoting towards technological innovation to secure its economic future.

Beyond Xenophobia: The Progressive Case for Social Cohesion

Demanding strict limits on migration and insisting on cultural integration is frequently mischaracterised as a xenophobic or reactionary posture. In reality, it is the necessary recognition that social cohesion is a fundamental prerequisite for European stability, democracy, and the survival of the welfare state.

When migration flows exceed a state’s capacity to seamlessly integrate new arrivals, the resulting fracture in the social contract creates a fertile breeding ground for political extremism. It is precisely the failure to manage migration and protect community cohesion that allows ultranationalist and racist groups to exploit public anxiety, weaponising the consequences of mass migration to promote their anti-democratic agendas.

The defense of cohesive societies is not the exclusive domain of the political right; it is deeply rooted in progressive political thought. For a redistributive welfare state to function, a society requires a high degree of mutual trust and bounded solidarity. 

As the progressive development economist Paul Collier argues in Exodus, while moderate migration brings benefits, excessive and unmanaged migration erodes the "mutual regard" and trust that underpin cooperative societies. Similarly, the prominent political philosopher David Miller contends that a shared civic identity and social integration are not exclusionary concepts, but rather the essential foundations required to sustain social justice and democratic institutions. Without a cohesive social fabric, the political willingness to fund public healthcare, education, and social safety nets ultimately collapses.

The Cultural Imperative in Immigration Policy

Because social cohesion is vital, Europe’s approach to immigration must shift from fulfilling sheer economic quotas to prioritising cultural continuity. A sustainable demographic strategy must acknowledge that a cohesive society relies on shared values, secular governance, and civic norms.

To maintain its foundational identity and democratic stability, Europe must adopt a highly selective immigration framework where priority is given to:

• Cultural Affinity: Individuals arriving from cultural backgrounds that share a fundamental alignment with European democratic traditions, human rights, and social liberties.

• Commitment to Integration: Individuals who, regardless of their origin, demonstrate a clear, actionable willingness to seamlessly integrate into the cultural and civic landscape of their host nations.

By insisting on cultural compatibility and rigorous integration, Europe can ensure that its democratic institutions and social trust remain intact, avoiding the creation of parallel societies that fuel domestic political fragmentation.

The Technological Solution to Labour Shortages

If Europe is to reject mass immigration as a demographic panacea in order to preserve its cultural unity, it must simultaneously revolutionise its economic model. The continent must look to automation and digital transformation to compensate for a shrinking workforce, decoupling economic growth from sheer population size.

To achieve this economic resilience, Europe must prioritise the following strategic pillars:

• Automation and Artificial Intelligence: The solution to structural labour shortages is not the importation of low-wage workers, but the exponential increase of domestic productivity. By accelerating the deployment of robotics and AI across key sectors—such as agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, and services—Europe can maintain high industrial output with a significantly smaller human workforce.

• Digital Sovereignty: To secure its future, Europe must reduce its reliance on both foreign labour and foreign technology. Actively developing domestic capabilities in advanced microprocessors, artificial intelligence systems, and cloud infrastructure ensures that Europe remains economically competitive and politically independent.

• Digital Public Infrastructure: The transition to highly efficient, data-driven governance systems allows the state to manage resources, healthcare, and public services with unprecedented precision. Advanced e-governance ensures that the state can maintain a high standard of living for an ageing population without requiring a constantly expanding tax base driven by population growth.

Conclusion

The proposition that Europe must choose between economic decline and mass immigration is a false dichotomy. By aligning a highly selective immigration policy—one that strictly protects European cultural unity—with a massive investment in automation and digital sovereignty, Europe can dictate its own future.

Europe’s Migration Challenge: A Crisis of Geopolitical Dimensions

 The European Union’s ongoing migration challenges are frequently framed as logistical, geographic, or administrative hurdles. However, the core of the crisis is profoundly geopolitical. When external borders are placed under acute stress, it tests not merely physical infrastructure, but the political cohesion and strategic foresight of member states. Increasingly, the ability to cohesively manage human mobility is a matter of European resilience in the face of hybrid warfare.

The Geopolitical Weaponisation of Migration: The Ceuta Crisis

Foreign actors acutely understand that European migration policy has historically been fractured. Consequently, migration has been instrumentalised as a tool of political coercion. A stark illustration of this tactic is the recent crisis in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, which saw tens of thousands of migrants cross the border from Morocco in an unprecedented surge.

Much like the tactics previously employed by Turkey at the Greek border or by Belarus against Poland and Lithuania, this influx was not a spontaneous humanitarian event, but a calculated test of Europe’s external borders. Third countries, recognising the political panic that mass arrivals generate within domestic European politics, strategically target vulnerable borders to extract diplomatic or financial concessions.

Confronting Morocco: The Need for Uncompromising Diplomacy

The Ceuta crisis underscores exactly why the European Union must adopt a far more robust and uncompromising diplomatic approach toward Morocco. Rabat has a documented history of using migratory flows as political leverage, effectively relaxing border controls when it seeks to pressure European capitals on geopolitical matters. This is frequently tied to their attempts to force international recognition of their sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara. It is was related to the EU-Algeria-Morocco diplomatic puzzle.

This repeated instrumentalisation of vulnerable people for diplomatic gain demonstrates that the Moroccan government cannot be implicitly trusted as a reliable partner in border management. The EU’s reliance on superficial, transactional agreements with North African transit countries leaves the bloc dangerously vulnerable to extortion. Moving forward, Europe must abandon diplomatic appeasement in favour of strict conditionality, making it unequivocally clear that the weaponisation of migration will carry severe diplomatic and economic consequences.

The Maghreb Divide and European Stability

Compounding these external pressures is the deep-seated regional instability driven by the enduring conflict between Morocco and Algeria. This rivalry, particularly their proxy confrontation over the Polisario Front in Western Sahara, casts a long, destabilising shadow over European security.

The fractured relationship between Rabat and Algiers prevents the establishment of a cohesive “southern stability belt,” which is vital to Europe’s strategic interests. As the EU seeks to diversify its energy sources away from Russia and invest heavily in the North African green energy transition, this geopolitical friction introduces severe risks to energy infrastructure and supply chains. Furthermore, the persistent hostilities create a volatile regional environment that invites foreign interference, limits economic development, and ultimately drives the very migratory pressures that Europe is attempting to manage.

A Turning Point for European Cohesion

Despite these severe geopolitical pressures, the European response to the recent events in Ceuta signals a critical paradigm shift towards greater political unity. In stark contrast to past crises that prompted unilateral border closures and a breakdown of fundamental agreements, the EU’s recent emergency response demonstrated a rediscovered solidarity.

During emergency meetings, member states unequivocally backed Spain, flatly rejected reactionary calls to suspend the Schengen area, and unified around strategies for stronger external borders and coordinated returns. This newly unified front is fundamentally underpinned by the recent implementation of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. The Pact establishes a binding framework for shared responsibility, ensuring that frontline states are not left to face migratory weaponisation alone. By moving away from an “every nation for itself” mentality, the EU is finally building the political infrastructure necessary to resist external blackmail.

Conclusion

The weaponisation of migration by states like Morocco, Belarus, and Turkey is ultimately a symptom of perceived European weakness. A sustainable and humanistic European migration policy cannot be built on vulnerability to foreign coercion. By aligning unified diplomatic strength with cohesive legislative frameworks, Europe is beginning to transition from being a reactive victim of geopolitical leverage to a secure, united bloc capable of protecting its borders and projecting stability into its southern neighbourhood.

Europe: The political indifference of the citizens and the mediocrity of the leaders

Europe and Democracy: The Dual Crisis of Indifference and Dependency

Victor Ângelo

It could be said that Europe is going through a period of crisis. Across much of the EU, citizens appear to have lost confidence in the political class and institutions. The reason is clear: a lack of satisfactory responses to social issues deemed essential. These include affordable housing, the growing malfunction of public services—especially in the areas of health, education, justice, and security—and political opportunism. More generally, all of this is compounded by the negative impact of the rising cost of life, which is linked to decisions made on the other side of the Atlantic. In the view of many citizens, the leaders of our Europe appear to lack sensitivity and courage.

When hope is lost, democracy does not collapse—it deteriorates silently. Byung-Chul Han, a Korean thinker long based in Germany, states that our societies have reached a phase of "fatigue": citizens are saturated, overwhelmed, and alienated by the digital flow, whether true or false. They feel isolated and incapable of mobilizing the energy required to carry out the changes that politics demands. The incompetence of institutions and the incoherence of politicians push citizens toward egocentrism, toward the solitary management of survival, and toward withdrawal from the public sphere. When the State fails, each individual retreats into their own microcosm. Politics ceases to be a space where hope is built. For many, it is merely a distant noise.

Digital disinformation is one of the instruments of democratic erosion. Algorithms optimized to maximize emotional reactions and content manufactured by artificial intelligence corrode public trust in a structural way. A survey from Special Eurobarometer 568 (2025) leaves no room for doubt: 79% of Europeans fear that voters will cast ballots based on false information, and 70% fear foreign interference. The credibility of national parliaments and governments hovers around 35%. In the case of political parties, the figure is even lower. In Portugal, the European Union maintains some credit, but the Assembly of the Republic and the parties follow the same downward trajectory seen in other European states.

In several societies, immigration, managed for years without a coherent strategy, has become the catalyst for social anxiety. Over time and with mass entries, unease has turned into resentment. It is in this terrain that the Rassemblement National (France), the AfD (Germany), Fratelli d'Italia, Vox (Spain), and Chega (Portugal) thrive. They grow because they exploit the vacuum left by traditional parties—yet they offer no realistic alternatives. Merely demagoguery. Furthermore, they generally ignore the axis that determines the viability and autonomy of the modern State: technological sovereignty. They discuss symbols, borders, and identities while the infrastructure sustaining democracy is in the hands of third parties.

Europe operates today based on digital systems that it does not control. Technological sovereignty means that a State controls the essential elements for its proper functioning: data, networks, software, hardware, AI platforms, and sources of information regarding major events with global impact. Europe is far from mastering these pillars.

The risk is not theoretical. If access to Microsoft and Google services were to fail—due to technical causes or even external retaliatory decisions—or if the supply of microchips from Taiwan's TSMC were interrupted—even if only for a short period—hospitals, businesses, schools, and public administration would grind to a halt. If Chinese electric vehicles were remotely shut down—for a political motive or diplomatic tension—logistics and our daily lives would collapse. A democracy dependent on foreign infrastructure and hardware is not sovereign: it is simply vulnerable. This fragility does not result from geopolitical fatality, but from decades of omission and false priorities in European policy.

Gaia-X, launched in 2019, is the European attempt to recover some control. It is not a "European Google." It is fundamentally a framework of rules, certifications, and standards. In parallel, the Regulation on the Development of Cloud Computing and AI seeks to build physical capacity—data centers, common infrastructures, and requirements for public administration. Gaia-X defines the protocols; the Regulation tries to build the material support.

However, these steps are insufficient. They are slow, timid, and decided by people from the legal field rather than from engineering, mathematics, or economics. They do not reduce, in the short term, the dependency on hardware, submarine cables, semiconductors, and base software originating from abroad. And the political problem is even more serious: these are orphan projects, forgotten, much like the Draghi report (2024). Neither traditional parties nor populists treat technological sovereignty as a priority. They prefer the comfort of easy narratives to the effort of building the strategic capacity that the present and future demand.

Thus, Europe remains a hostage—not by imposition, but due to flawed policies. Technological submission is not a mere backdrop to democratic fatigue: it is one of its most relevant causes. And this situation drags down the discredit of democracy and politics.

Reserves of resilience still exist—visible, for example, in the relative trust that the European Union maintains in countries like Portugal. But the future of our democracies demands clear and urgent decisions on two fronts: in the human dimension—housing, immigration, public services, functional governance, social protection for the most vulnerable, and the promotion of a democratic culture; and in the technological dimension—accelerating Gaia-X, building a sovereign cloud, investing in cutting-edge infrastructure, and mobilizing financial and technical resources at a supranational level.

The fatigue or indifference of citizens and the technological submission of States are the two sides of the same coin of crisis. Political incompetence generates social atomization; social atomization feeds political incompetence and populism. This is the vicious circle that we will have to break.

The selection of the new UN Secretary-General in a complex international context

 

UN: A New Secretary‑General in a Fragmented World

Victor Ângelo

The United Nations Security Council will next week enter a new phase in selecting the next Secretary‑General. The vote will be informal, and each candidate will receive one of three assessments: encouragement, discouragement, or no opinion. This step unfolds against an international landscape marked by political fragmentation, strategic rivalry, and a growing scepticism about the capacity of multilateral institutions to respond to shared global challenges. The successor to António Guterres will inherit not only an agenda crowded with crises, but also the responsibility of demonstrating that global problems can only be confronted through some degree of collective cooperation.

For decades, and until the early years of this century, there existed a minimal consensus around the need for a shared international development agenda. That spirit animated the Millennium Development Goals (2000) and re‑emerged, with greater ambition, in the Sustainable Development Goals (2015). Today, however, that consensus has weakened. The rhetoric of cooperation persists, but the political action that once sustained it has been profoundly eroded.

Three structural factors help explain this deterioration.

The first is the intensification of competition among major powers. Development, infrastructure, technology, and global governance have ceased to be mere domains of cooperation; they have become instruments of power. The most influential states now compete over norms, markets, strategic dependencies, and institutional spaces. The Security Council — which should be the principal forum for building compromise — has proved increasingly unable to produce the necessary and lasting agreements.

China seeks to occupy this space through its global initiatives on Development, Security, Civilisation and, since September 2025, Global Governance, recently complemented by the creation of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (WAICO). These initiatives follow the Belt and Road framework launched by Xi Jinping in the previous decade. China’s official vocabulary is multilateralist, yet in practice these proposals compete with Western initiatives — such as the G7 Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (2022) — and with the UN itself. What is at stake is not merely the financing of roads, ports, digital networks, or energy systems, but the definition of standards, the establishment of financing criteria, the shaping of political choices, and the moulding of the international environment in which developing countries make decisions.

The second factor is the governance of technology. Robotics and artificial intelligence can free labour from repetitive or dangerous tasks, accelerating progress in health, education, science, and public administration. But without common rules and shared oversight mechanisms, these technologies risk concentrating economic and political power, deepening inequalities, and reducing the autonomy of entire societies. The Sino‑Western dispute over AI norms makes the creation of multilateral forums capable of setting minimum standards even more urgent.

The third factor is the digital transformation of societies. Social media have profoundly altered how citizens perceive the world, relate to one another, and participate in public life. The philosopher Byung‑Chul Han — an exceptionally original thinker and recipient of the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities (2025) — argues that digital capitalism fosters an individualism centred on self‑exposure and egocentrism. This “society of the self” erodes empathy and generates indifference towards collective causes: distant poverty, other people’s wars, the climate crisis, or institutional fragility. A kind of civic anaesthesia has taken hold. Added to this is the impact of transnational disinformation, which crosses borders at digital speed and shapes public perceptions, political decisions, and even the legitimacy of multilateral institutions.

Faced with this landscape of public apathy and interstate rivalry, the next Secretary‑General will need to define priorities that are both realistic and politically sustainable. Even before doing so, he or she must redesign the UN’s relationship with the expanding ecosystem of regional organisations and cooperation platforms led by Global South states. Bodies such as the African Union, ASEAN, CELAC, the Arab League, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, BRICS+, WAICO, and the Belt and Road Initiative now shape strategic decisions on security, infrastructure, technology, and finance. They are not merely complementary forums: they are instruments of political and economic influence that sometimes compete with the UN’s universal coordinating role. The challenge for the next SG will be to cooperate with these entities without allowing them to replace the UN’s normative and universal function, ensuring that institutional fragmentation does not become normative fragmentation.

The first priority should be a proposal for reform of the Security Council. Without a composition more representative of contemporary geopolitical realities, without greater presence of emerging powers, and without some limit on the paralysing effect of the veto, the Council will continue to lose legitimacy and effectiveness. Bringing it closer to the General Assembly and making it more accountable to the international community will be equally essential.

The second priority should be the protection of multilateral mechanisms that still produce globally beneficial consensus: public health, food security, climate action, humanitarian assistance, migration, sustainable development, and conflict prevention. These are areas where cooperation remains possible and where the UN retains clear added value.

The third priority will require particular attention to the definition of minimum standards for technological governance, especially in the field of artificial intelligence. The aim is not to impose a single model, but to avoid normative fragmentation that leaves the most vulnerable countries at the mercy of private interests or strategic pressure from major powers.

Rebuilding trust means identifying concrete areas where cooperation remains viable, creating incentives for it to prevail over rivalry, and demanding greater political responsibility from those who weaken institutions serving common interests. It also requires clearer rules for digital platforms, whose impact on public opinion and democratic quality can no longer be treated as a secondary matter.

The choice of the next Secretary‑General matters, but it will not be sufficient. Equally decisive will be the quality of the team that accompanies him or her, its independence from the pressures of its countries of origin, and its ability to build bridges without becoming captive to any bloc. The central challenge is not to restore a lost faith in international solidarity, but to construct more modest, pragmatic, and persistent forms of collaboration in a world where interests diverge, power is more dispersed, and trust is becoming an increasingly scarce resource.

Europe and the big powers: be strategic

 

Europe and the Illusion of Permanent Allies

Victor Ângelo

International Security Advisor. Former UN Under-Secretary-General

Published on: 17 Jul 2026

This week, yet another uncomfortable question arose regarding the Hormuz crisis. What legitimacy does a big power have to treat the chokepoints of global trade – and the States that depend upon them – as mere means to its own ends? On Monday, the President of the United States proclaimed himself the "Guardian of the Strait of Hormuz" and imposed a 20% tax on commercial transit through this maritime corridor. On Tuesday, he backtracked and annulled the measure. He did so under pressure from his Gulf allies.

The episode revealed a lack of strategic discernment – an essential quality in any leadership. Acumen is not hesitation, cowardice, or tactical calculation. It is the ability to assess the consequences of a decision before announcing it; to distinguish between what is legally possible, politically acceptable, and strategically sustainable; and to act in a manner that preserves credibility, rather than squandering it on incongruous gestures. A leader with discernment knows that power is not solely measured by the capacity to impose a measure, but also by the aptitude to foresee the resistance it will trigger.

The ephemeral tax of the self-proclaimed "guardian" was an example of imprudence: imposed as a fait accompli, without a recognised legal basis, without consulting the directly affected partners, and without a serious assessment of the Gulf States' reaction. The measure collapsed not out of generosity, but because the affected countries possessed the power to reverse it. The International Maritime Organisation confirmed there was no legal basis for this levy. The problem was not merely the decision; it was the public demonstration that a great power can announce a global measure and discover the following day that it lacks the conditions to sustain it. Consequently, it undermines trust in its word.

President Trump’s decision should not be read as an isolated episode or a personal eccentricity. It belongs to a broader pattern: that of great powers transforming interdependence into instruments of pressure. It is in Africa that this pattern is most clearly visible. All promise protection, investment, security, or development. All invoke the sovereignty of their partners. Yet, in far too many cases, the outcome is an asymmetrical relationship: African countries surrender resources, strategic positions, or decision-making leeway; great powers reap the advantages; and political promises remain contingent upon convenience.

In February 2025, the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) offered Washington access to the country's critical minerals in exchange for security guarantees. Partnership agreements between the two followed, signed in December of that year: the United States gained preferential access to Congolese mineral concessions and assumed the obligation to protect the sovereignty of the eastern DRC. On the American side, the pact did not translate into action. Washington limited itself to approving sanctions against Rwanda, which it accuses of sponsoring the rebels.

In Zimbabwe, the Chinese conglomerate Huayou Cobalt inaugurated the continent's first lithium sulphate plant in 2026. Zimbabwe banned the export of raw lithium to force local processing; it was China, not Zimbabwe, that built the processor – thereby capturing the enormous value of this project.

In Mali, Sudan, and the Central African Republic, the Russian Africa Corps protects military regimes in exchange for gold. These pacts are presented as exercises in sovereignty and protection of these States, but the result is akin to that observed in Kinshasa and Harare. Local partners pay with natural resources, dependence, and a loss of autonomy; great powers extract value; and the promised protection rarely equates to enduring security for the populations.

Europe must draw a clear warning from these examples. No great power is a full, automatic, and unconditional ally of Europe. Each acts according to its own interests:

• Washington seeks to preserve its geopolitical primacy.

• Beijing wishes to control value chains, markets, and critical technologies.

• Moscow aims to limit European autonomy and exploit its fundamental vulnerabilities.

Europe may cooperate with all powers when interests align. However, it must do so with the necessary political vision.

Thus, it is fundamental to abandon strategic naïvety. Strategic discernment demands that Europe maintain open channels, but reduce critical dependencies; cooperate when advantageous, but prepare alternatives; negotiate with seriousness, but without submission.

Washington may remain an indispensable partner in matters of security, but it must no longer be treated as the automatic guarantor of the European order. China may be a commercial and mutual investment partner, but it must equally be viewed as a systemic political competitor in industry, technology, and the control of raw materials. Russia may one day return to being an interlocutor, but as long as it employs coercion, threats, and military aggression as political methods, it must be viewed with suspicion.

European autonomy cannot be a mere rhetorical formula. The only alliances upon which Europe can rely in a stable manner are, first and foremost, those it manages to build within itself – on a foundation of genuine, not merely declarative, unity – and, subsequently, with blocs and economies of comparable weight.

It is not a matter of exchanging dependence on Washington for dependence on Beijing or Moscow. Nor is it about fostering unnecessary enmities with the great powers. It is about recognising that, in an order dispersed among rival poles, without a single authority capable of enforcing international rules, Europe must face the great powers as what they structurally already are: competing entities whose interests may align with European ones at certain moments and diverge profoundly at others.

For Europe, this means one cannot confuse diplomatic proximity with peace; markets with dependence; and protection with tutelage. If Europe fails to learn these distinctions, it risks finding itself in the same league as those illusorily sovereign States, where the essential decisions regarding their security, digital systems, energy, industry, and prosperity run the risk of being made outside their own capitals.

The NATO Summit and the defence of the European geopolitical space

 Europe 2030: Anticipating the Unthinkable and Guaranteeing Peace

Victor Ângelo 

International Security Advisor. 

Former UN Under-Secretary-General

Published on: 10 Jul 2026

The NATO Summit in Ankara has made it impossible to continue ignoring the possibility of a Russian aggression against the European space by the end of the decade. It has become a strategic hypothesis that demands preparation, deterrence, and political will. Europe faces a concrete threat and must build a genuine, coordinated, and maximally autonomous Defence capability. Ankara also confirmed a second self-evident truth: the support of the United States, whilst indispensable, can no longer be treated as an automatic guarantee.

European States must correct an error of judgement: interpreting Moscow as if the Kremlin calculated its actions according to a rational economic logic of costs and benefits. This is not the case. Its strategic vision is shaped by other forces: regime survival, historical resentment towards the West, an obsession with a lost sphere of influence, and the need to project strength to prevent any perception of weakness.

That is why the continuation and intensification of the Russian war against Ukraine increase the European risk. This crisis, triggered by the Kremlin, must end without further delay. As Kyiv demonstrates the capacity to strike critical infrastructure within Russia, the vulnerability of Vladimir Putin's power becomes more visible. These attacks erode an autocracy centred on a single face, whose authority depends on internal repression and the appearance of external invincibility. The greater danger is that the Kremlin, should it feel backed into a corner, might seek to regain the initiative through an escalation against NATO countries, pressuring the West to yield and attempting to force Ukraine into capitulation.

This threat would not be a massive territorial invasion in the image of the wars of the 20th century. The technological context has changed the nature of aggression and reduced the time available for decision-making. The risk may arise from surgical, localized operations of great political impact. Russia possesses missile systems, including hypersonics, capable of striking infrastructure in Western Europe in a matter of minutes. Under a logic of controlled escalation, a precision strike against a port, a power station, a communications hub, or a military base would not necessarily mean the onset of a total war. It could suffice to paralyse the Alliance's political decision-making. Every missile would also be a coercive message.

In parallel, the aggression could take the form of rapid operations in vulnerable points: Svalbard, in northern Norway, essential for monitoring the Arctic; Gotland, in Sweden, decisive for controlling the Baltic Sea; or the Suwałki Gap, between Poland and Lithuania, squeezed between Kaliningrad and Belarus. A lightning occupation, albeit limited in space and time, would have a clear objective: to sever access, create faits accomplis, and force NATO to choose between responding, negotiating, or hesitating.

The target would be allied cohesion. If Russia were to advance and NATO were to hesitate, Article 5 would not disappear from paper, but it would lose political substance. The Alliance would continue to exist; however, it would be left with diminished credibility. And an alliance that no longer intimidates the aggressor approaches the old Chinese image, taken up by Mao, of a paper tiger.

The transition to a sort of “NATO 3.0”, in which Europe will have to assume a much greater share of its own Defence, creates a period of critical vulnerability. The summit made it clear that Europe cannot organize its security on the assumption of a constant, predictable, and politically unconditional American presence.

Furthermore: any American insistence on territorial claims or control over Greenland – a topic once again stirred up by Donald Trump in Ankara – would introduce severe tension into the heart of the Alliance. Moscow would tend to interpret a transatlantic fracture of this nature as an opportunity to test NATO's solidity, exploit divisions, and accelerate its operations in the grey zone.

In my preceding article – “NATO and the trap of red lines”, of 3 July 2026 – I emphasized that one of the most dangerous responses would be to announce “red lines”. Linear thinking fails in the face of hybrid warfare and the manoeuvres that take place in the twilight of the grey zone. By proclaiming absolute ultimatums, the Alliance would risk being pushed into an escalation it does not desire or, worse still, exposing its hesitations. What is required is strategic ambiguity: genuine military capabilities, demonstrable readiness, and response options sufficiently unpredictable to render the adversary's calculations more difficult. Europe must invest in a coordinated manner in its Armed Forces and, simultaneously, preserve the language and practice of peace.

Recognizing that Russian aggression is a real possibility on the 2030 horizon is not alarmism. It is strategic prudence. European rearmament should not be presented as a march towards confrontation, but as a condition for avoiding it. When one's neighbour is a power that transforms history into imperial claims and force into a diplomatic argument, peace comes at a high price. But the price of unpreparedness would be incomparably higher. It is this that must be explained to citizens, without euphemisms or useless dramatizations.

Deterrence and defence do not substitute diplomacy; they lend it weight. A fragile Europe may suggest the opening of a dialogue, but it will hardly be heard. A strong, coherent, and autonomous Europe can propose to Moscow a credible, sustained negotiation, oriented towards stability. Dialogue with Russia will always be sterile if conducted from a position of dependence, division, or fear.

Preparing for the unthinkable does not mean desiring war. It means preventing others from considering it advantageous. To guarantee peace – and this remains the paramount objective –, Europe must be ready to respond to scenarios that until recently seemed inconceivable. Peace depends on the credibility of our resolve.