“The idea that Europe is an exclusively ‘civilian power’ does not do justice to the emerging reality.” So wrote Federica Mogherini — at the time the European Union’s foreign affairs representative — in a Die Welt column back in July 2016. With transatlantic relations eroded over the following four years under Trump, the EU’s aspirations to become a military power only grew. Such calls have again gained traction as Emmanuel Macron’s France takes over the formal presidency of the EU for the first half of 2022.

This broad aim is in fact asserted by the European Commission’s own foreign policy guidelines, asserting that “Full spectrum defence capabilities are necessary to respond to external crises.” Indeed, when Ursula von der Leyen became Commission president in December 2019, she proclaimed that the EU “want[s] to be a strong geopolitical union,” and to do that it “must also learn the language of power.” Indeed, today there is hardly a statement from the EU institutions that does not express its longing to become a global power. It has almost become the gravitational field of Brussels politics — and individual policy areas are increasingly aligned with it.

This ambition also goes hand in hand with attempts to breed a kind of European patriotism in which supposed “European values” will foster a sense of superiority over the rest of the world. For example, Martin Schulz, in 2017 the German Social Democrats’ candidate for chancellor, declared the EU the “greatest civilizational project in the history of mankind.” His party colleague and erstwhile foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel similarly spoke of the “most successful project for freedom, peace and prosperity the world has ever known.”