Europe’s Last Political Lifeline
Why democratic leaders must build the United States of Europe — now
By the time Mark Carney addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Europe’s strategic illusions had already collapsed. His speech merely confirmed what many European leaders privately acknowledge: the post-war order that guaranteed American security, predictable trade, stable capital flows and geopolitical equilibrium is over.
The emerging world is defined not by rules, but by power — military deterrence, technological supremacy, economic coercion and geopolitical blocs. In this environment, Europe — fragmented, slow and institutionally paralysed — risks strategic irrelevance. But the deeper danger is political: the collapse of Europe’s democratic centre.
Across the continent, mainstream democratic parties are losing their grip on power. Populist right-wing movements are advancing relentlessly, feeding on voter frustration, institutional inertia, economic anxiety and cultural insecurity. The centre is not losing because its values have failed. It is losing because it appears incapable of governing effectively in a world of hard power.
This is now an existential political moment.
Powerlessness as political poison
Europe today is rich, educated and technologically capable. Yet it commands no unified military force, no coherent foreign policy, no integrated industrial strategy and no credible mechanism for collective crisis response. The European Union is procedurally dense but strategically hollow. Twenty-seven veto points cannot produce deterrence, technological leadership or geopolitical agency.
This structural weakness has become politically toxic.
Voters increasingly perceive mainstream parties as defenders of a system that produces endless summits, complex regulations and symbolic declarations — but fails to deliver security, stability and control. In this vacuum, populists thrive by promising to “take back sovereignty”, “protect borders” and “restore national greatness”.
In a world of continental-scale competition, however, national sovereignty without scale is an illusion. Fragmentation guarantees dependence. Federal power alone restores real autonomy.
Yet democratic leaders have been unable — or unwilling — to articulate this truth with sufficient clarity and urgency.
A defining moment for Europe’s leaders
Keir Starmer, Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron, Giorgia Meloni and Donald Tusk stand at the front line of this political struggle. Each confronts electorates that no longer reward managerial competence. Voters demand protection, power and purpose.
Mr Starmer governs amid economic stagnation, strategic marginalisation and collapsing trust in British institutions. Brexit promised restored sovereignty but delivered geopolitical irrelevance. Without a compelling strategic reset, the political space for radical protest will only expand.
Here, federalisation offers a uniquely powerful political exit. Coming together with other European nations to shape a new United States of Europe is far more politically plausible for Britain than the fraught and divisive project of rejoining the European Union. It allows the UK to return not as a contrite applicant to an existing structure, but as a founding architect of a new continental settlement — restoring leadership, dignity and agency without reopening the cultural wounds of Brexit.
Mr Merz faces industrial anxiety, migration backlash and a rapidly normalising AfD. Germany’s export model, energy security and geopolitical assumptions have all been shattered. Incremental reform offers no political defence against nationalist mobilisation.
Mr Macron is boxed in by fiscal constraints, institutional paralysis and the relentless rise of Marine Le Pen. His long-standing call for European strategic autonomy remains rhetorically powerful but operationally unfulfilled.
Ms Meloni must reconcile national conservatism with geopolitical reality. Italy’s demographic decline, debt burden and industrial fragility leave no credible path to national power outside European scale.
Mr Tusk governs Poland on the frontline of Europe’s security architecture, facing direct Russian threat, intense migration pressures and profound social polarisation. Poland’s long-term sovereignty depends not on national isolation but on irreversible European defence integration.
For all five, incrementalism is now politically fatal.
Only structural transformation can reset the political equation.
The United States of Europe as democratic survival strategy
This is why the creation of a United States of Europe — a fully democratic European federation — is no longer an abstract ideal. It is a political survival strategy.
A genuine federation would establish:
- A unified European military command
- Integrated intelligence and cyber defence
- Continental industrial and artificial intelligence strategies
- Centralised energy security planning
- Coherent border and migration governance
- A federal fiscal capacity to finance long-term strategic investment
Crucially, these powers would be anchored in democratically accountable federal institutions, restoring political agency to citizens rather than centralising technocratic authority.
Such a transformation would immediately shift Europe’s political psychology. Federal power would replace national frustration with continental ambition. Democracy would regain purpose. Political conflict would move from sterile culture wars to substantive debates over defence, technology, energy and global positioning.
Populists thrive on powerlessness. Federalisation destroys their central argument.
Why this is now politically possible
Ironically, Europe’s current vulnerability creates its greatest political opportunity.
Public fear — of war, technological disruption, migration chaos and economic stagnation — can either fuel extremism or enable historic reform. Moments of existential risk are precisely when radical institutional change becomes politically feasible.
The post-war European project itself was born from devastation. Monetary union emerged from crisis. Covid produced unprecedented fiscal integration. Security collapse can now deliver federalisation.
If democratic leaders frame the United States of Europe not as bureaucratic consolidation, but as:
- The defence of European freedom
- The restoration of democratic sovereignty
- The preservation of Europe’s civilisational model
public support can be mobilised at historic scale.
This is not utopian idealism. It is political realism.
The strategic logic is unforgiving
The coming decade will reshape the global order. Artificial intelligence, military rearmament, climate-driven resource competition and geopolitical rivalry will determine power for generations.
In this environment, medium-sized states do not survive systemic transitions. Continental powers do.
Europe has no margin for delay. Each year of hesitation deepens strategic dependency, entrenches technological inferiority and accelerates political radicalisation. Once military, technological and industrial dependence becomes structural, reversal becomes impossible.
Incremental reform is no longer merely insufficient. It is a strategy of managed decline.
Europe’s 1787 moment
The United States faced a similar moment in 1787. Its loose confederation proved incapable of defence, fiscal stability and strategic coherence. Federalisation preserved its democratic experiment.
Europe now confronts its own 1787 moment.
Either it builds the United States of Europe, or it accepts strategic irrelevance, political fragmentation and democratic erosion.
For Europe’s democratic leaders, the choice is stark: lead a historic federal transformation — or preside over the collapse of the democratic centre.
History will not judge hesitation kindly.