Year LXVII, 2025, Single Issue, Page 12
Europe as a Third Power
The Profound Relevance
of Altiero Spinelli’s Views Today
SPYRIDON ST. KOGKAS
Introduction.
The emergence of the new imperialist bipolarity between the USA and the Russia-China axis—the East’s most compact bloc in geopolitical, military, energy and economic terms—is threatening European unification, and we have to accept that this is due to a crisis of the European Union’s attempt to establish itself as a regulatory force in the global order that was born from the collapse of the Eastern socialist bloc.
This assumption needs to be taken as the starting point for a deep analysis of the strategic causes of this situation and a realistic assessment of how to address the crisis, with a view to ensuring Europe’s recovery and its ability, in the future, to act independently of these two superpower blocs on the global chessboard.
For every European, analysis of these causes is a priority political task that must lead to a complete dissection of the EU project’s geopolitical and existential crisis.
This is not something that can be done within the framework of an article, nor is it part of a typical academic research process. Crucially, it should contribute to a public conversation within the federalist and pro-European forces with the aim of generating a series of practical conclusions able, in turn, to drive action suited to the new conditions. It is about supporting concrete steps to end the crisis while also treating it as a strategic opportunity to accelerate Europe’s federal unification.
The EU today, especially since the start of war in Ukraine and Trump’s re-election to the White House, has to realise that all the theories underpinning a linear, supposedly harmonious, development of the European project are relics of a superseded historical era.
Europe currently seems to be at risk of regressing to a state even further back than where it stood after the end of World War II. Such a scenario, were it to materialise, would completely invalidate all the developments of the past 65 years, while, in particular, strengthening the view that the nation state constitutes a better option than the EU for the peoples of our continent. It would represent, in both public opinion and broader popular belief, an ideological defeat of the federalist idea, and of all those who lead, and have led, the EU, particularly over the past three decades. Today, therefore, it is not enough just to condemn nationalism; it is also necessary to courageously identify the processes that have driven European society towards the forces that would see the EU dissolved in the name of national sovereignty.
The European Union’s failed attempt at geopolitical, social and cultural integration and its refusal to wage a political struggle against the various ideologies that, although different, sustain the idea and practice of the nation state, are the root causes of the resurgence of the anti-federalist pole and of extremist forces.
Were it not for the traditional European political families’ indifference, lack of courage and vision, and, above all, fanatical commitment to intergovernmental ideals, and their cooperation with an internal EU administrative mechanism that relied on them to control the process of building the European Union, we would likely not have seen the popular disillusionment, disengagement and ultimately conservatism that are so widespread among European citizens today.
Unless we take this observation as the starting point for our hermeneutic approach, we are destined to remain passive and bewildered onlookers, and our efforts to analyse the rise of the far right inevitably sterile. Faced with the enormity of the effects of our refusals to accept reality, are we really going to allow ourselves to remain in a state of emotional shock, failing to seek the errors in our own interpretation and action?
The idea of Europe as a third world power was espoused in the post-war era by Altiero Spinelli who recognised the continent’s long-term geopolitical importance in the balance of global powers, both within and beyond the context of the Cold War. The abandonment of this idea-perspective—a major strategic failure on the part of the entire political and intellectual leadership of the European Union—was was disguised by creating a new narrative, loaded with illusions and complacency, namely the false idea that economic unification and territorial expansion could be achieved without the foundations of a federal state. Amidst the jubilation that followed the collapse of the Eastern bloc, European leaders prioritised their dream of creating and integrating new markets, based on a regulatory utopia in which these could be coordinated without the need for definitive political overcoming of national state structures, without creating new democratic powers at the level of the European institutions, without guaranteeing the citizens military and energy security, and without involving them in the new cycles of development enabled by the continuous advances ushered in by information technology.
Logically, this optimistic illusion endured for a time. European monetary and banking policymakers focused on a stock market-driven model of globalisation. This model, ultimately shaped by the specific policies of corporations, organisations and elites, obviously had nothing to do with supporting a single development plan for the European Union—one based on a political entity built around a European federal people of different nations. And no one wanted to shatter the (dangerous) illusion that the economy and enlargement were working well.
All the exponents of the intergovernmental model thus celebrated the ‘ideal balance’ between nation state and confederation in a global market considered to represent the end of history. The forces leading the Union during this period made the decisions that catalysed the current crisis.
In short, they allowed social structures to disintegrate; accepted refugees without a strategy for their reception and integration into the labour market; and established the Economic and Monetary Union through political choices that led to a new North-South divide in Europe, and ultimately to the PIGS crisis.
Externally, they failed to develop any political strategy for the Middle East at a time when the reach of extremist and terrorist forces was still limited; made economic deals with Russia and China that—based on fragmentary actions and designed to serve Germany’s interests—did not benefit the Union’s economy in the long term; opted for short-term trade deals with the Global South; pursued no global political initiative; and embraced economic expansion and the conviction that the model of soft economic power would drive unification forward until it eventually—at some undefined future time—culminated in political union.
The ‘Europe as a Third Power’ idea promoted by Altiero Spinelli established the priority of purpose necessary to define unity of action—the reverse is not possible.
His pragmatism did not stem from theoretical obsession with any analytical scheme, as he had no interest in confirming any academic or ideological prejudice. It was grounded, rather, in the principle that geopolitics, political science and international relations are all shaped by power balances.
The Third Power idea did not arise from the experience of the American Revolution, or from any attempt in the history of continental political conflict to build an empire or other great geopolitical zone.
Spinelli, in essence, elaborated a compelling reinterpretation of the argument first clearly advanced by the great Luigi Einaudi in the late 19th century—namely, that a United States of Europe is the only realistic response to the cyclical recurrence of global conflicts between the world’s great powers: conflicts posing an existential threat to humanity.
Spinelli’s insistence on the need for a United States of Europe in order to have a third global power therefore has a profound realist dimension underpinned by an understanding of the character of the great powers that shaped the post-WWII world. The victors had presented Europe with a stark choice regarding its historical future: to become a federation or to resume its historically cyclical role as the battleground in the struggle for global hegemony, with all the attendant consequences in terms of dependence, subjugation and destruction. In short, Third Power or eternal slave and victim of the other global powers.
Spinelli therefore knew that the Third Power concept was not a great project capable of gradually evolving in normal times, ideally in the absence of external interventions and influences. Nor did he see it as based on some irrational hatred of the idea of nation or state. Spinelli recognised that, in the wake of the devastation wrought by the Second World War, the nation state had ceased to be a historically useful tool for the European peoples. The geopolitical dimensions of the victors, irrespective of the form and symbolic value assumed by the political figures at their helm, left no room for illusions as to why Europe, as long as it remained a group of nation states, could be nothing other than a gathering place for political dwarfs and puppets in an evolving global context. This explains why preservation of the nation-state model will always be the political and diplomatic strategy of the two—or more—superpower blocs situated outside Europe and acting in opposition to it.
The importance of the Third Power idea reflects the logic of a lasting political revolution at the level of geopolitics, society and culture across vast geographical areas. Spinelli, analysing Europe’s long-term historical interests within the global geopolitical framework, saw that in the absence of the force of the imminent prospect of a world federation, the risk of Europe’s extinction or absorption remained the only constant in international politics in the age of imperialism.
He thus held that even the very concept of world federalism and democracy cannot be safeguarded in the absence of a geopolitical stronghold—or space—able to express balance over time and, through its innovative federal unification, offer the world a compelling model of international relations based neither on classical liberalism nor on classical pragmatism/realism, but on their synthesis and transcendence within a European federation.
In Spinelli’s view, the Third Power—meaning a united, federal, sovereign and democratic Europe—is geopolitically destined to constitute a cultural alternative to the imperialist powers of the West and the East, thus serving Kantian world peace not as an emotional utopia, but as a continental power organised to constitute a deterrent force in any war threatening the freedom and existence of humanity.
Reflections on Federalist Pragmatism.
No coalition of forces, no matter how negatively it might be viewed, is strong enough to become definitive and permanent. Within it, therefore, there must exist forces that apply theories of adaptation to reality in order to direct it towards their interests, which may diverge from those of other forces. Thus, pragmatism can never be completely devoid of idealism, since the subjective tendency to seek dominance over other forces in order to uphold one’s ideals leads to strictly realistic exploitation of the given situation.
No power on the world stage currently defends federalism as a global value in the international order. The fact that some countries operate federally internally has no bearing on their international diplomatic and political strategy. The most pressing challenge for the European Union today is to intervene in the international situation as a subject that operates federally internally, while externally defending the prospect of a global federal order as the only realistic development for the survival of human society—an axiomatic premise capable of guiding a strategic choice in the management of international relations in the 21st century. At this point, however, as demonstrated by the Draghi Report and other subsequent ones, the issue of the EU’s strategic autonomy runs into obstacles of a political nature, rather than a lack of sound proposals on how it should be achieved. In fact, we have the solution to the problem, but not the decision to solve it.
But why does reality insist on reminding us of this enormous gap between knowledge and will?
Pragmatism, here, means deciding who should make policy on strategic autonomy within Europe—who should be accelerating Europe’s federal unification, and whose task it is to analyse the changes that the wise drafters of the various reports highlighted as both feasible and needing immediate implementation.
The European institutions are not designed to bring about their own internal revolution towards federation, and they also seem incapable of getting the member states to collaborate in order to effect the necessary changes. Consequently, in addition to a power vacuum at the constitutional level, there is no ‘Jacobin’ centre and no conscious European people capable, as a responsible agent, of acting to obtain the state it deserves—namely, the European federation or United States of Europe.
This gap is also a politically unfilled void. In political history, especially at times of crisis, internal institutional transformations are either driven by political minorities, centres or political elites within the institutions, or they are imposed by political elites supported by majority social subjects that act and press for change.
When such revolutionary social subjects do not exist, true institutional change, really addressing the needs of the situation, is unlikely to occur. Even if we look at the issues of federal choice through the prism of the member states, we find that they will only act in emergency situations, to seek emergency solutions. That is, only in situations of war, revolution or both.
In the grey areas in between, the leading member states (i.e., the incumbent governments of the confederation’s leading member states) need to agree to pursue—through cooperation and with the support of their peoples—the gradual formation of the initial historical core of a revolutionary entity that will exert pressure on the weaker and more moderate forces of the remaining states. In this context, it is also necessary to consider the opposition of those member states that are trapped in an intermediate position—be this due to their dependence on forces outside the European Union, because they are acting as saboteurs of European unity to benefit third parties, or because, despite being under threat, they cannot get their national political systems to accept the transfer of their sovereignty (a structural weakness in the face of the fear of dissolution, internal social unrest or an extreme political crisis).
At the point we have reached, the speed of global developments worldwide is such that we can no longer afford to dream. The subject of the federal people cannot be formed overnight. However, the idea of a federal vanguard, made up of a heterogeneous coalition of forces that recognise the immediate need to pressure the European Union into making all the changes—even preliminary ones—required for its transformation into a federal state, can be pursued as an immediate political objective. And that means determining who will make the historically significant decisions.
Let us not deceive ourselves.
Asking the current European Union—formed through a transnational, bureaucratic and confederal process—to approve changes that would shake its very foundations, amounts to nothing more than a historically symbolic appeal. What is lacking—like the political subject itself—is the leadership capable of turning such changes into reality.
In this situation, with the passing of time already working against Europe, the issues needing to be addressed—military autonomy, technological renewal and investment, social and economic development—remain unsolved.
This is precisely where the paradox created by the nation states and the administrators of domestic power comes into play. The nation states are configured to act immediately—to show results, present solutions or narratives to the citizens of their countries, and above all to give the impression that there exists a ruling class committed to ensuring that specific situations are managed in specific ways by specific people.
There can be no pragmatism in the exercise of a political strategy forced to unfold in an international emergency when no part of the institutional system perceives itself as an entity required to offer solutions, narratives and specific people to lead the process of adapting the institutional system to the evolving reality.
Thus, in the face of a vacuum of European federal political leadership, the peoples of the European Union find themselves abandoned to the political hegemony of the populists within their states.
The Existing Scenarios.
There can be no mistaking the nature of Trump and Putin’s planned and coordinated efforts to turn Europe into a mosaic of nation states, thereby triggering the EU’s collapse, disintegration or gradual decline—a process that would see resistance within an ever-growing number of member states to any initiative even vaguely resembling a move towards federal integration. The general picture is worse if we also consider that France and Germany, due to the strength of anti-European far-right forces within them, continue to lurch from one government crisis to the next.
The basic element of the line adopted by these forces is not public rejection of the European Union, and certainly not condemnation of the value of Europe as an idea. Rather, it is a form of populist republicanism that can and does appropriate democratic rhetoric to set the nation state, alleged to offer more direct democratic control, against the distant, foreign and opaque bureaucracy of a supposedly corrupt supranational directorate.
But is there any basis for a democratic confrontation with these heterogeneous anti-European forces within the nation states? Has even minimal support emerged among the mainstream European political families for the creation of an informal European front within each member state, focused on a series of key issues? The answer is no. Beyond joint declarations of the kind typically made during European election campaigns, there has been no agreement in this sense, and no political force seems to be seeking one.
Have the EU institutions made any concerted efforts to reach civil society within the member states in order to launch a coordinated campaign to defend European democracy against nationalist narratives? No, there have been no efforts to reach civil society, or even to systematically offer it initiatives that might allow social forces to become a support engine for the European federal project.
Is there a readiness to counter the shared authoritarian course of the US and Russian/Chinese imperialists through a renewed political appeal aimed at mobilising democratic citizens against this international axis of totalitarian and pro-totalitarian power structures? No, there is no such will at institutional level.
In relation to the issue of strategic autonomy, the absence of a common European defence industry facilitates the tragic game of arms trading openly played by EU member states—not only those aligned with Russia, but also, for example, countries such as Spain and France, which continue to arm Turkey despite its relationship with Russia and its threatening rhetoric towards Greece, a fellow EU member state.
The issue of defence autonomy, linked to the desire for a minimal European defence strategy that would see Europe equipped with its own armed forces, defence industry and military leadership, independent of the member states, is therefore more complex than the debate over withering or reinvigorating NATO. Essentially it is a matter of establishing whether the current situation can be addressed through decisions taken with a view to creating a sovereign federation within its territories, responsible for defending its citizens and protecting its institutional culture.
The Third Power idea is more than just a simple slogan. It concerns the organisation of all Europe’s external affairs and its international presence in relation to the internal political dynamics of its member states. For this reason, every setback to European integration at the level of the member states delays and complicates the implementation of decisions regarding any independent international presence of the EU.
It is not, therefore, a concept that can be strengthened through generic slogans urging citizens to pressure their governments into adopting a firmer stance in immediately demanding the institutional reforms needed to restart the unification process.
The need to forge a common political front across all the member states against the forces of dissolution must first be addressed through central decisions by the EU institutions that oblige the political families within the European Parliament to draft and submit to their national parliaments extraordinary legislative proposals for the authorisation of direct military and financial support measures in favour of the Union’s defence arm.
To achieve consensus on Treaty reform, Europe’s institutions, political families and civil society must coordinate their efforts to build a unified and recognisable institutional and social front across the continent. This front should work not only towards reforming the Treaties and bringing about an extraordinary defensive rearmament of the EU, but also towards the immediate establishment of a clear position on the international political stage—one supported by a solid (although not necessarily unanimous) majority that opposes the United States, viewed as a threat to global stability and the democratic cohesion of the Free World.
Several measures are therefore needed: vigorous condemnation of US interference in Antarctica and the Middle East and institutional fortification of Europe against any form of intervention and interference by the USA in its internal affairs, backed by a system of escalating and proportionate sanctions; submission of an EU proposal on NATO’s obligations in the new global landscape; cessation of all economic cooperation with any country globally that endorses the military policies of the United States, Russia and China within the geopolitical boundaries of the EU, both maritime and terrestrial; a global diplomatic and trade policy response to Trump’s tariff war against, in particular, Latin America, Canada and Africa; the establishment of a process of strategic rapprochement with the United Kingdom on a commercial, technological and military level.
Is all this feasible? Yes and no. At the point we have reached, none of the measures demanded by the current global context appear readily achievable. However, without profound and rigorous debate on the set of actions that might enable even partial implementation of the Draghi Report, the political will to achieve this objective will never materialise. The Draghi Report is not the product of a broad and democratic process of elaboration. In Europe, we are not working towards the formation of a common public opinion aligned with the federalist-oriented pragmatism underlying Draghi’s proposals. Consequently, what is feasible—according to the evaluation methodology proposed in the report—remains unachievable, because we are not building the mechanisms for some kind of European civil lobby around these proposals. What is needed, therefore, is the active engagement of industrialists, scientists, citizens, the academic community and of course military experts and professionals.
All this goes beyond academic debate and pertains to the political sphere that, throughout Europe, must henceforth be shaped by discussion of the imperative to accelerate the development of European unification towards a federal model. For this reason, all the above measures, proposals and lines of attack primarily concern ways to create, within the political life of all the member states, the transmission belt represented by the existential necessity of institutional reform, so as to reframe the whole of public European debate, in all the member states, around an idea that will mobilise two distinct camps: that of the European democratic forces, and that of the forces of national sovereignty.
Unless we seek to legitimise decisions to relinquish portions of national sovereignty in favour of the establishment of a European federal state, there will be no mobilisation of the party bases and youth wings of Europe’s democratic political families, or of the currently marginalised section of civil society still sympathetic to the European idea; and above all, the hypocritical forces—hidden and overt guardians of divided national sovereignty that actually support the agenda of Meloni, Orbán, Le Pen and AfD—will not be exposed for what they are.
Some might say, but are you calling for a polarisation of Europe? Do you want political civil war within our societies? Of course not. On the contrary, it is precisely because we want to prevent the forces instigated by Washington and Moscow from creating political and social disasters in European societies that we are striving to define the process that will lead our democracies to reflect on the critical nature of the current moment, and, through the member states’ institutions, constitutional principles and rules, foster a broad awareness of the challenges of the future.
The vision of Europe as a Third Power cannot advance if it rests solely on wishful thinking. It cannot avoid the great shocks of history, nor can it fail to revolutionise the way in which the EU’s structures have functioned up to now. The current balance of power and existential threat to European unification are giving rise to a new raison—a raison d'état for a federal Europe as a third global power. This, in itself, forces us to recognise that this turning point of historical development will be reached asymmetrically—not in the manner and at the time we would prefer, but, rather, through an extraordinary exercise in federal realpolitik.
The Cultural Dimension of the Third Power.
The relevance of Altiero Spinelli’s idea of Europe as a Third Power does not arise from a particular tradition, ideological religiosity, or ideological need to refer to an authority; rather it stems from an enduring contradiction within history—an unfinished process that its very opponents repeatedly and unwittingly bring to light.
This fact represents not only a timeless realism on Spinelli’s part but also his most significant Platonic idea: that the political cycle of world history cannot be renewed without the creation of a United States of Europe. This pragmatism is likewise the only idea capable of offering even a glimmer of hope to the citizens of the European Union, and those of the entire world. On this basis, Spinelli’s idea enters the realm of the cultural autonomy grounded in Europe’s humanist and democratic tradition.
Freedom—understood as the continual creation of spaces that foster individuality and personal development in the face of all tyranny, and as the ceaseless commitment to balancing law and freedom—is at the heart of Europe’s identity and uniqueness.
Moreover, while Europe’s geopolitical position helps to explain the cultural significance of European unification, its importance is not just cultural. It also raises the issue of the link between politics and the sense of a common destiny, which since the Second World War has depended on the ultimate prevalence of a Pax Europaea—precisely the contribution that a Federalist Europe could make to resolving the disorder and chaos of global politics. The establishment of a new form of international law, based on global equality and respect, carries more than just political significance. It also embodies the cultural and ethical leadership that Europe would assume in demonstrating to the rest of the world that only the implementation of a federalist model superior to any other model of the past—and therefore not a repetition of the American one or any other version—can bring global society in our century closer to a new evolutionary leap for humanity’s growth and prosperity. This is how a Third Power Europe, capable of balancing the world, could signal the end of nationalism and all its mechanisms—by introducing a new functional structure in which the only challenge facing citizens is the strengthening of subsidiarity and participatory democracy across the economy, society, science and culture.
The ethical imperative to restore an order that will not repeat the cycle of destruction, but rather enable the synthesis of the intellectual and material dimensions of civilisation—thus averting any risk of extinction—is the basis of Europe’s distinctiveness. This distinctiveness is not superiority but a material manifestation of European democratic civilisation’s refusal to accept that human dignity must be subjugated to the endless bloodshed of power.
The federal idea sets Europe’s position in a universal dimension, linking it to our planet’s need for a global power that does not seek to dominate and expand at the expense of others, but ensures, through its multidimensional influence, that the balance of power remains favourable to the possibility of federalism being adopted globally as the means of achieving the future global democracy of democracies.
Once again, realism reminds us that the real reason for defending the possibility of any normative principle can be found in non-normative ones. Europe as a Third Power is neither a legal construct, nor a philosophical concept; it is not a cult of the state, nor a new imperialist identity.
As a result of Europe’s historical condition of finding itself caught between the Atlantic power and land empires extending from Asia—its geopolitical constant—European politics is destined to be the key to determining how and when humanity’s dependence on these superpowers might finally end. As long as the challenge of transforming European unity into an independent state remains to be overcome, the crisis of international politics will continue to deepen, driving the world toward escalating suffering and catastrophe as a result of the two geopolitical superpowers’ blind monopolisation of the planet’s most pressing problems. The United States of Europe represents the crucial parameter for turning this geopolitical constant into a new balance of power, buying time for a new transition towards a global system of cooperation.
Consider, for a moment, the genealogy of the concepts underlying imperialist rhetoric from the First World War to the present day. What emerges is an endless metaphysical, ideological, fictional world of abstractions, based on interpretations of a global order in which there is no European federal state, no Third Power Europe. On the contrary, the European federation project is intertwined with the only normative principle capable of regulating all normative fictions and forms of power: the geopolitics of freedom, peace and the logic of the future.
