European strategic antinomy

Over the last decade, “strategic autonomy” has emerged as a key geonarrative in debates on EUrope's relation to the world. Initially focused more narrowly on matters of security and defence, it is now being applied to a much wider set of issues. Confronted with the rise of non-Western powers, uncertainties about the future of transatlantic relations, and a wide-spread sense that one-sided dependencies must be reduced, the concept of strategic autonomy is the lens through which EUrope tries to address a broad array of geopolitical and geoeconomic challenges. Yet, Europe struggles to come to terms with the “geo” in geopolitics and geoeconomic. The article advances the argument that these difficulties are an effect of EUrope's self-description and self-observation in universal terms: Obviously, EUrope recognizes the presence of other players on the international scene. But to the extent that European modernity is seen as universal rather than merely European the organization of political space in terms of difference (e.g. geopolitical or geoeconomic competition) runs into contradictions. EUrope envisions itself both as a province among provinces (competing with China and increasingly also the US) and it retains the ambition to singularly represent the world. In a nutshell, casting itself in universal terms, EUrope struggles to process and acknowledge difference, and faced with difference tends to talk to itself about itself. The article demonstrates that this is not due to a lack of strategic resolve but rather the effect of antinomies at the core of EUropean geonarrative production.