In September 2019, two months before officially taking office, the new European Commission president was already insisting that the European Union needed to change. On the one hand, Ursula von der Leyen promised a new “geopolitical Commission,” but on the other, she wanted the EU “to be the guardian of multilateralism.” The difficult question was left unstated: How exactly is the EU supposed to reconcile the great-power maneuvering of geopolitics with the more level playing field of multilateralism?
Geopolitics is the ruthless pursuit of self-interest by powerful states, no matter the cost to others. Multilateralism involves mutual agreements among states pursuing their collective welfare. At a minimum, the two sit awkwardly with each other; at the worst, they are radically incompatible. The latter is true of the current system of globalization, which has been supported by a complex system of multilateral rules and agreements among states.