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.
