With the release of the new U.S. National Security Strategy, the cold winds blowing from Washington have instantly transformed the dream of "strategic autonomy," long whispered in European capitals, into a nightmare of "strategic solitude." Finnish President Alexander Stubb’s recent Foreign Affairs piece, titled "The West’s Last Chance," resembles less a dispassionate geopolitical analysis than a cry into the void. European elites are feverishly calling for a "new global deal" to halt the collapse of the liberal international order.
Yet, there is a bitter reality that decision-makers in Europe refuse to acknowledge: There is no longer anyone to answer this call. Today, Europe is experiencing a dual abandonment.
On one side stands a U.S. administration that has declared its new trajectory with unmistakable clarity. The 2025 National Security Strategy strips away the post-Cold War romanticism of "shared values," planting relations firmly on a harsh, transactional footing. Washington no longer views its historic ally as a geopolitical powerhouse but codes Europe as a sick structure facing "civilizational erasure" under demographic transformation and "regulatory suffocation." By positing a tacit "Trump Corollary," conditioning the future of NATO on demographic prerequisites, Washington has effectively ended the comfortable era Europe enjoyed under the American security umbrella.
On the other side stands a skeptical Global South, which rejects Europe’s normative superiority due to the "selective solidarity" and hypocrisy displayed in every major international crisis of recent years. The crisis Europe faces today is not merely one of military capacity; it is a profound crisis of moral bankruptcy. Therefore, calls to rescue the liberal order are destined to fail.
Europe’s reaction to this harsh reality resembles psychological denial rather than a rational strategic response. In this new era, European leaders still delude themselves into thinking they are the "eternal guardians" of democracy and human rights.
The most striking example of this illusion is German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s reaction to the new U.S. strategy. His declaration, "It is not up to the Americans to save democracy in Europe, we will do it ourselves," is diametrically opposed to the hard power vacuum on the ground. A similar reflex of introversion is visible among Europe’s leading thinkers, like Mark Leonard, who suggests using the Trump threat as a "weapon" to marginalize the far-right at home. European elites still read the crisis through the lens of "how to survive the ballot box," a gaze turned entirely inward. Yet, the real earthquake is occurring along the fault lines of the Global South, where Europe has lost its legitimacy.
European decision-makers believe they can regain influence by promising U.N. reforms or offering a "more inclusive table." But the bitter truth is this: The "normative power" Europe historically boasted of is now, for the rest of the world, nothing more than hollow rhetoric. The world has long since tuned into other frequencies, free of this normative baggage.
The fundamental reason why Europe’s call for a "new order" is hitting a wall is institutional memory. This memory is shaped by what I define as "selective solidarity," Europe’s hierarchical and deeply hypocritical stance in the face of crises. When European leaders speak of values today, the Global South sees only geopolitical interests.
The irreparable breaking point of this trust crisis has undoubtedly been the situation in Gaza. The Global South noted how European capitals, which defended international law like a "sacred text" for Ukraine, fell into deep silence or complicity in the face of a live-streamed genocide in Gaza. The "humanitarian values" mobilized for Ukrainian civilians were replaced by a cold rhetoric of "Israel’s right to self-defense" regarding Palestinian children.
Germany’s decision to intervene as a third party in support of Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was condemned in the harshest terms by its own former colony, Namibia. The Namibian presidency’s rebuke to Berlin, reminding it of the 20th century’s first genocide committed on its soil, serves as a diplomatic document of how Europe’s moral authority has gone bankrupt. This double standard unmasked the "rules-based order" and demolished Europe’s claim to moral superiority.
The same reflex was evident in the migration crisis. Europe, which opened its doors to Ukrainian refugees, distinguished in discourse as "blue-eyed and blonde," saw no harm in turning the Mediterranean into a graveyard for Syrian, Afghan and African refugees. This discrimination was codified legally: The EU activated the "Temporary Protection Directive" for Ukrainians just days after the invasion, a mechanism it had kept on the shelf for a decade throughout the Syrian civil war. Granting Ukrainians immediate rights while Syrians languished in camps cemented the understanding of "law based on identity."
The Syrian tragedy constitutes the most shameful dimension of this moral collapse. Instead of taking the initiative to stop a humanitarian disaster, Europe’s approach of externalizing the refugee issue as a security threat to neighboring countries laid bare just how fragile its rhetoric on human rights truly is. Consequently, when European leaders say, "let’s reshape the rules," the answer they receive from the Global South is cynical suspicion. For them, the liberal order is not a universal system, but a "club of privileges" where rules apply only to "the others."
Who will fill this geopolitical void as the U.S. withdraws and the EU loses credibility? The answer lies in the gritty reality of the field. "Strategic autonomy," which Europe has rhetorically produced for years but failed to implement, is today being practically applied by actors like Türkiye.
The Global South no longer wants to listen to normative lectures. Instead, they are turning to actors who respect their sovereignty and build relationships based on a "win-win" principle rather than a "moral hierarchy." The keyword of this new era is not selective values, but transactional realism based on universal values.
Türkiye is the prominent example of this new actor typology. Ankara stands out as an actor that, while remaining within NATO, can talk to Russia, take initiative in the Middle East, and deepen ties in Africa without colonial baggage. The Black Sea Grain Initiative is a testament to this. At a time when European diplomacy was gridlocked by sanctions, Ankara’s transactional diplomacy ensured that millions of tons of grain reached the Global South. This moment proved that strategic autonomy, not normative preaching, saves lives.
While European leaders divide the world into camps of "us and them," actors like Türkiye conduct a flexible diplomacy that ensures permeability between geopolitical axes. The motto "The World is Bigger Than Five," which Ankara has voiced regarding the U.N. Security Council for years, has ceased to be merely a discourse of Turkish foreign policy; it has transformed into a rallying cry for a vast geography articulating the anger against an anachronistic system.
The international society of the near future will not be a world where European norms are universalized. On the contrary, it will be a multi-centric order defined by actors who do not give selective moral lessons and have built their own strategic autonomy.
Europe is paying the price for the selective solidarity policy it has maintained for decades by being left alone at the very moment it needs support. It is coded as a burden threatened with civilizational erasure by Washington, and as a hypocrisy-tainted old power by the Global South.
If Europe does not face this new reality and engage in sincere self-criticism, the "strategic solitude" it fears will not be a temporary state, but the continent’s permanent fate. The end of the liberal international order has arrived not through an external attack, but through the moral inconsistency of those who claimed to defend it.
