There is general agreement that the US’s geopolitical shock therapy is a sign of a new world order. While European powers nominally recognise this, their policies are not, in practice, tailored towards such a change.
The EU and other European governments are, understandably, focused on very immediate matters – talks on Ukraine, defence budgets, rebutting big US tech firms. But they also need to be guided by a clearer vision of the broader international order that flows from this inflection point.
Even though the world has already changed profoundly over the last decade, most observers judge the current juncture to be a decisive watershed. Yet the tumult unleashed in 2025 feels not so much like a well-defined new world order as the chaotic imprecision of “no world order”. Nothing concrete has emerged as a replacement for the long-crumbling liberal order.
