The EU’s recent geopolitical turn is not an unpresented development. Rather, it is yet another episode in a long series of efforts, dating to the interwar period, to have a synergistic geopolitics of European unity compensate for the decline suffered by Europe’s great powers. According to this logic, ‘Europe’ can only project power externally by centralising power internally, requiring a unified voice on the global stage.

As Peo Hansen will argue, this approach positions the ‘small state’ – with its pursuit of self-determination – as a significant obstacle both internally and externally. This, in turn, perpetuates a ‘fatal logic’, preventing ‘Europe’ from exiting its long and bloody twentieth century. The lecture will examine the incompatibilities between small states and a geopolitics of European unity, tracing their roots to the interwar and postwar periods, when sovereignty for smaller European and non-European nations began reshaping global dynamics.