SOCIAL EUROPE: SPAIN AND NORWAY EXPOSE THE BANKRUPTCY OF EUROPE’S IRAN RESPONSE

Europe's response to the US-Israeli strikes on Iran exposes a continent locked in dependency and struggling to find its voice.

Liberal globalism has collapsed, and the vacuum is being filled by an increasingly violent, lawless illiberalism that trades principle for hierarchy and force. The centre right — and its European figurehead, Friedrich Merz — is often framed as the main counterweight to illiberal disruption.

Yet when the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on 28 February, Merz revealed himself once again as Trump’s loyal junior partner, announcing he would not “lecture” the allies on their military actions. He later added that international law does not apply to this war. Last June, Merz went further, calling Israel’s strikes on Iran the West’s “dirty work.” This realpolitik is the shortest route to a weightless, voiceless Europe in an increasingly lawless world.

Clinging to Atlanticism while the always-contradictory rules-based order is being violently dismantled from within Washington is not hard-nosed realism. It is a category error: loyalty to a structure that no longer exists, directed toward a partner that has openly declared European interests subordinate to American unilateralism. Macron stopped well short of principled opposition; Starmer hesitated before authorising British base access within 24 hours — a flip-flop that signalled nothing

Full article: https://www.socialeurope.eu/spain-and-norway-expose-the-bankruptcy-of-europes-iran-response