We have entered a new era. Of course, it is difficult to foresee what the emerging world will look like. But some trends are unmistakable. The abduction of Nicolas Maduro and Donald Trump’s desire to seize Venezuela’s oil resources, as well as the threat over Greenland, are not isolated incidents. They are part of a series of actions and declarations that seem to signal a lasting and profound evolution in our global system.

We are likely entering a new age of imperial conquests, and what economist Arnaud Orain has called “finitude capitalism” – marked by growing rivalry between major powers for the control of resources (financial, natural, labor and more). But for how long?

What we know about this world we have glimpsed is that gentle commerce and international law are no longer relevant. This new regime of capitalism is instead defined by the seizure of resources and the capture of value in the name of national interest and the law of the strongest. It sacrifices “weak zones,” both political and economic, relegating them to the status of vassals or colonies on the peripheries of imperial centers. In this emerging world, the European Union is the lamb among wolves.

The American umbrella

The United States’s shift toward alignment with autocratic Russian and Chinese powers has revealed the truth: “The European king had no clothes.” What is more, the EU seems largely paralyzed. Paradoxically, it lacks the flexibility that comes from the long histories of empires. While it appeared to react during the recent pandemic and financial crises, it did so without altering the fundamentals forged during the era of “liberal capitalism,” which we know to have established in law a form of public powerlessness.

Overall, the EU was built over time on a “liberal-federal” logic: a liberal single market, free and undistorted competition, free movement of capital, an independent European Central Bank, free trade agreements, a very modest budget, and an abandonment of industry and sovereignty in the name of the American umbrella. The global shift we are witnessing renders this entire liberal-federalist apparatus obsolete.

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