Lessons from the Cold War for Europe
Europe needs democratic legitimacy and political cohesion if it is to hold its ground externally. Sienna Nordquist draws lessons from the Cold War for the present and argues that Ukraine is being defended in Brussels as well.
The European Union faces two interconnected crises: foreign and domestic. The first in its foreign policy: how can it continue to defend Ukraine without American security guarantees? The second in domestic policy: how can it spur economic grow with unsustainable public debts? Addressing the foreign policy crisis relies upon a response to the domestic fiscal issues because endemic budget crises threaten democratic stability within member states and shorten their fiscal space to invest in infrastructure and military preparedness. Without strong and stable member-state democracies, the EU does not have the ability to defend its values in the international system against heavyweights like the US and China. Although national fiscal reforms can increase the resources available for security, European cooperation on foreign policy takes precedence over economic reforms because the War in Ukraine threatens the freedom of European states, making security needs paramount. However, the continent needs answers to both policy questions, and should look to history for creative solutions.
Popular media and scholars are increasingly drawing parallels between the Cold War (1945-1991) and today. Hegemonic rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union feels familiar in the rising geopolitical competition between the US and China. Yet, understanding what is different for Europe in this period of geopolitical fragmentation offers greater lessons and guidance for the future than what remains the same.
During the Cold War, twelve current EU member states were Soviet satellite states or republics, and Cyprus was territorially divided in a violent conflict. East Germany was reunified with West Germany in 1990, nine of these states joined the EU in 2004, and the other two were acceded to the EU in the latest 2007 enlargement. Europe, as conceptualized through the EU, therefore has a territorial and member-state quantity advantage compared to the resources and power it held during the Cold War. The EU, as a configuration of institutions rooted in democracy and a rules-based order, has not only more than doubled in size compared to most of its Cold War history, but also maximized its ability to protect its citizens and the environment through innovative political mechanisms like the general data protection regulation (GDPR), and the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). As policy issues like data protection and environmental sustainability take a back seat in global policy discussions, reinforcing Europe’s competitive advantage in these policy arenas can attract investment – for growth and security – in times of geopolitical turbulence.
The EU rules-based order that the continent depends upon for actualized peace is worth defending. Now is the moment for the EU, UK, Schengen Area, candidate states, and Ukraine to take advantage of its unparalleled opportunity in European cooperation, cohesion, and democratic resurgence. Addressing the two crises framed above requires confronting uncomfortable new risks facing European democracy and the legitimacy of its security and energy infrastructure.
European cooperation
Europe was highly fractured during the Cold War. In addition to being split down the middle by the Iron Curtain – or literally divided into two states in Germany’s case – countries like Spain and Portugal were under authoritarian rule and therefore excluded from the precursor institutions to the EU, like the European Economic Community (EEC), until 1986. European nations also faced periods of internal social conflict related to ideological shifts and decolonization during the Cold War, such as the 1968 protests and the Troubles in Northern Ireland. At present, European countries are witnessing a period of high political polarization and large-scale interstate conflict in the War in Ukraine, but lower domestic social conflict and violence than that experienced during the Cold War.
European cooperation is much stronger today than during the Cold War. European cooperation is institutionalized through the articles and treaties of the EU in a way that was not politically formalized in the economically-oriented EEC. The European Parliament, for example, has more power and democratic processes than it did during the Cold War. Twenty-one EU member states also share a common currency, the euro. While the euro does not competitively challenge the US dollar’s (USD) stance as a reserve currency at present, its stability will become politically advantageous if the US and China become more confrontational in the international system. Indeed, the euro has appreciated against the USD and Chinese renminbi throughout the geopolitically tumultuous 2025.
Within member states, the demos is more socially and politically harmonious than during the Cold War, even with a renascent far-right making electoral gains. European cooperation has paid serious economic dividends for member states as European institutions have grown in geographic coverage and policy scope. Whether European cooperation can successfully navigate global issues including the US and China trade war and military build-up will depend on how committed nation-states remain to policy cohesion.
European cohesion
For Europeans, the EU promotes institution building, economic growth, and policy coordination. For non-Europeans, the EU is perceived as a regulatory power that monitors and sanctions non-EU companies’ business with the continent and regulates citizens’ visits within the Schengen Area. The US has traditionally taken issue with EU regulations that hamper American businesses’ operations with European enterprises and consumers while remaining committed to treating the EU as an extension of its alliance with individual European countries. The perception of the EU is also driven by its participation in the G7. EU members Italy, Germany, and France, in addition to the UK, are G7 members; the EU is also represented as a body at G7 convenings. Despite a long postwar history of US-EU cooperation in the international arena, the Trump II US administration fundamentally altered the transatlantic alliance in February 2025 at the Munich Security Council, and with the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) declarations. The US established an official policy of interference within European democracies, ironically as a supposed attempt to protect the European people from the “elite-driven, anti-democratic” EU (11). The US is no longer engaging Europe like a traditional ally.
The fragmentation of the US-Western European alliance is a significant break from the Cold War. The US and Western European states frequently disagreed on foreign policy throughout the Cold War. For example, US pressure played a significant role in France and the UK’s withdrawal from Egypt during the 1956 Suez Crisis. The legitimacy of Western institutions, and American and Western European commitments to them, however, were never questioned. Doubts about US commitments to the political community of NATO and other multilateral organizations imply that the world order is becoming the antithesis of EU values at precisely the same moment that such institutional checks and commitments to the rule of law are most needed. Yet, the greatest threat to the EU’s long-term stability and capacity to balance economic, tech, and security rivalry with the US and China is domestic, not foreign.
Domestic threats outweigh international intimidation
Securing stable and predictable fiscal policies at the member state level is crucial to making infrastructure and defense expenditure possible and in designing credible commitments of common European economic statecraft. Several EU countries are exceeding the 3% GDP threshold for state deficits provided in the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), including Italy, France, Hungary, and Austria. Taking two examples, Italy’s deficit is decreasing but the country is experiencing a slowdown in output growth despite being the largest recipient of NextGenEU (RRF) financing. France, on the other hand, saw its bond yields surpass Italy’s in 2025 and has a parliament that was hamstrung for months and unable to pass a budget until early February 2026 after a series of changes in the premier. Even the best performing European economy, Spain, is without an annual budget.
The agency of the European Union depends on member states’ fiscal capacity and its relationship to democratic accountability. Recent constitutional changes in states like Germany, which eliminated the so-called “Debt Brake” after the 2025 federal elections and therefore gave the Bundestag power to increase government spending, are promising avenues for European member states to increase investment confidence. However, fractious debates in Germany and nearly all EU member states over pension system financing remain and will further stretch governments’ fiscal capacity in the years and decades ahead.
The aftermath of Brexit stymied most national far-right movements attempts to call for their own member state’s exit from the EU. Salvini’s Lega, for example, did an about-face on both membership in the EU and eurozone. Other prominent far-right movements, such as Germany’s AfD or Spain’s Vox, are willing to openly criticize the EU and its leaders but fall far short of calling for an end to EU membership. Post-covid European policy, chiefly NextGenEU financing, has therefore successful contained calls for disintegration, even amongst the continent’s most extremist ideologues. It has been less successful, however, at finding ways to continue a unified European foreign policy or to coordinate a European-led NATO policy. The preference for unanimous decisions on the European Council has held up sanctions packages against Russia due to, at times, Hungarian and/or Slovakian opposition. Leaders like Orbán and Fico are more likely to see their political interests as aligned with Russia than the EU, making consensus difficult. And the AfD, for example, has called for a return to the EEC model to replace the common European sovereignty offered by the EU’s institutions.
Despite these internal threats to European security from political elites in certain member states, messaging from European institutions must remain committed to inclusive language of populations within those EU member states. In other words, the EU should not alienate national populations in states undergoing democratic backsliding with claims that they are the enemy of the EU. Their leaders may oppose European integration and even challenge the EU itself, but Europe’s survival and the EU’s integrity depends on the support of national populations. Any implicit suggestion that it could manage better without those populations increases the odds that a change in democratic power within those states will still leave domestic policy at odds with Brussels. The targeting of certain domestic populations helps extremist parties within the country demonstrate that Brussels does not represent their interests. A remedy to this issue can be accomplished by better communication from EU officials and national leaders to the public on the geopolitical challenges facing member states today. This ought to include transparent delivery on how and why Europe must respond to countermoves by the US and China, how this will affect pocketbooks and job opportunities, and justification for the development of an autonomous European foreign and economic security strategy for the future.
The European Council must consider reforms that streamline future decision-making to make such democratic accountability with European citizens possible. Such changes may include centering the role of the European Council (EUCO) around foreign and defense policy, but with greater power for the Commission’s High Representative on Foreign Policy; developing an institutionalized communication procedure that allows the EUCO to speak as one voice; formalizing the publication of agendas and reporting to the European Parliament both before and after EUCO meetings; and capping abstentions to two per calendar year per member state to incentivize continued consensus politics under constructive abstention.
EU policymakers, especially those on the European Council, must mitigate EU disagreements that discourage common European strategies in the realms of defense, economic development, and digital and monetary sovereignty. Prolonged infighting risks a greater reliance on backdoor dealings, potentially opening up European institutions to even larger claims that it is deliberately opaque.
Instructions for the future
External threats have challenged European sovereignty and values before, as they are again challenged now. Cold War efforts to economically integrate Europe drove European integration through 1991. Since then, external challenges from US-Chinese competition, as well as the threat of a Russian invasion beyond Ukraine and into NATO or EU territory, require deeper EU political cooperation in addition to economic integration. The EU must drive a recommitment to the rules-based paradigm, economic growth paired with democratic accountability, and speak with one voice in international affairs.
This task will be all the more difficult as the US dismantles its traditional international security partnership with Europe. Most blatantly, the US attempted to expand to Greenland before the EU rebuffed American overtures preceding Davos with threats of tariff retaliation. Such glaring disregard for the basic principles of the transatlantic relationship shakes the integrity of the NATO alliance. The EU should be well reminded that its member states offer one another different expertise, policy advantages, and resources that allow European cooperation to be leveraged in these times of uncertainty. Future disagreements over Greenland can be repositioned by the fact that it is not Greenland that stands between Russia and the US, thereby offering the US security protection on that side of the globe, but instead Ukraine and the EU’s eastern and northern member states. American and European security will therefore be strengthened only by providing security guarantees to Ukraine and reinvigorating the longevity of democratic appeals and processes within their nation-states, and the EU itself.