’Strategic Earthquake’ In Europe Signals Age Of Uncertainty

Authored by Alastair Paynter via OilPrice.com,

• A convergence of crises – geopolitical shifts, energy instability, and economic stagnation – marks the end of a historical era and the beginning of a more volatile multipolar world order.

• Challenges include mass immigration, a potential Ukraine settlement favoring Russia, reduced U.S. security guarantees, and unsustainable fiscal models. Defence spending, energy strategy, and resource security.

• Populist movements are accelerating as supranational institutions lose influence.

Geopolitically, the events of the first half of 2025 strongly indicate that seismic change is coming to Europe. From the diplomatic wrangling over the end of the Russia-Ukraine war to relations with the Trump administration in the US, Europe’s leaders face a number of serious and pressing dilemmas. One reason the present moment is so pivotal is that a number of major shaping factors have converged at precisely the same time, a kind of ‘great conjunction’ that signals the close of a number of historical cycles and patterns. One epoch has ended and another is about to begin.

Just what this new epoch will look like exactly will become clearer over the next few years. In the meantime, the heightened sense of volatility will bring great risk to investors even as it also presents rich opportunities. Worldwide, the globalist order is in decline,e and a new nationalist-centric order is taking its place. While this shift had been evident to careful observers for quite a long time, the events of the last year, particularly those surrounding the election of US President Donald Trump, caught many people, including governments, off-guard. They had wrongly assumed that globalism was the future.

In practice, this transformation has profound implications, not least because it heralds the emergence of a multipolar world and the disintegration of the ‘rules-based order’ which has predominated since the end of World War Two. It has also become increasingly clear that many of the supranational organisations that have for so long provided the framework through which modern governance and trade take place appear to be cracking up. This includes the UN and the WTO, as well as more regionally-focused entities like the EU and NATO.

In terms of specifics, European governments (including those within and outside the EU as well as the EU itself), face a number of major dilemmas.

Their strategic choices will have major ramifications for the continent for many years to come.

1. The most explosive factor in domestic politics, particularly in Western Europe, is the question of mass immigration. This issue is connected to all others and ties into debates not just over economic and social questions but also the very fundamentals of identity and sovereignty. Of course, the significant rise of populist and nationalist parties across the continent is directly tied to mass immigration and could augur the end of the ‘postwar consensus’ and a dramatic shift in governing priorities.

2. Europe’s governments face dual prospects of a) a post-war settlement in Ukraine in which Russia obtains its strategic and territorial objectives, and b) a US pivot away from NATO and Europe and towards the Far East. The realisation that Europe can no longer rely on the US for military protection, whilst not increasing its own defence spending to 5% of national government budgets has sparked a marked change in defence policies across the continent. Many governments have announced intentions to increase defence spending and business within the continent’s already extensive defence sector is likely to increase. However, this plan is most likely a decade-long endeavour and can only successfully occur within the context of a healthy, functional economy. Any plan to rely on increased borrowing to foot the bill would likely come unstuck as it would only exacerbate existing economic woes.

3. Europe’s economic malaise has been universally noted. Even before the Trump administration came to power, it was clear that existing spending habits were not sustainable. A senior banker on another continent remarked to me last year that the “terrifying” levels of government debt in Europe would certainly ensure the collapse of the social model of governance. In truth, Europe’s economies have been struggling ever since the 2008 financial crisis. Within the EU, the top-heavy bureaucratic structure and mass of extensive regulations have made the prospect of imminent recovery rather remote. Germany had been the motor that kept the EU economy going, yet its own economy has fared very badly in recent years under the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war and increasingly stringent Green regulations.

4. Europe’s lack of competitiveness is notable in a number of domains. The innovation and investment dilemma has become readily apparent with French President Emmanuel Macron publicly recognising that the stifling regulatory space had prompted a vast exodus of talent and capital to fresher pastures such as the US, the UAE, and parts of the Far East. The gap in AI capability is one particularly prominent example.

5. Energy strategy is another area in which governments will have to reassess their options. The war in Ukraine revealed the extent to which governments like Germany had become dependent on Russian gas. Furthermore, the commitment to radical Net Zero targets, made in a context within which climate politics was ascendant, will have a sharp impact on industrial output. However, politically-speaking, it must be asked how much of the climate-centric Green political impetus was reflective of a globalist political framework which was in reality already in decline. Electorally, the Green Party in German enjoyed less support in 2025 than it did in 2021, losing 33 seats. Yet, the new coalition government of Chancellor Merz has made major concessions to the Greens including the promise of devoting €50bn of a new (borrowed) €500bn special fund to climate protection.

More widely, the recent electricity blackouts in Portugal, Spain and parts of France underlined the fragility of the current energy framework. On this, two immediate questions arise. Firstly, how can governments ensure that widespread power outages do not grow more frequent as energy policy has been directed towards Net Zero targets? Secondly, how can such governments expect to manage the inevitable social unrest that would ensue from repeats of such incidents at a time when tensions are already running high?

6. The power cuts in parts of Western Europe once again highlight one of the major drawbacks to hyper-globalisation—the reliance on highly complex but fragile systems. This has been witnessed on a global scale in many different areas, such as last July when a CrowdStrike software update interrupted airlines, banks, healthcare and broadcasters across the world. Then there is the Red Sea crisis, the result of Yemen-based Houthi rebel activity, and a major source of risk in an area through which 30% of the world’s container shipping normally passes. It serves as a prime example of how local flashpoints can have major global ramifications. As the world moves away from hyper-globalisation to a more regionally-based order, supply chains will likely be revised so as to mitigate the level of risk present during a period of great geopolitical instability.

7. Related to this point is the question of resources. As the ‘rules-based order’ wanes there will likely be a return to a much more ‘cut and thrust’ modus operandi as far as state power projection goes. As the grand strategist Gregory Copley noted recently, “Sovereignty is what can be defended, either directly or by alliance.” Globally, there will be a number of key strategic regions of interest, reminiscent of the various ‘Great Games’ of the nineteenth century, such as the Anglo-Russian ‘Great Game’ in Central Asia or the ‘Scramble for Africa’. Today, the completion of the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) has provided significant strategic advantage to Russia, which now has uninterrupted trade access to the Indian Ocean. Moreover, Central Asia is becoming a highly important region economically-speaking, not least due to the presence of Rare Earth Elements (REEs), an important factor which is also at play in Africa, as a new ‘Scramble’ effectively takes place there again too, albeit in a different guise. In addition to these, both the Arctic and Antarctic will be of keen interest to the great powers of the 21st century as well as to those with geographical proximity.

President Trump’s repeated comments vis-à-vis Greenland, currently an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, are indicative of a number of American strategic objectives. One of these concerns the vital question of REEs, as Greenland possesses some of the world’s largest reserves, including yttrium, scandium, neodymium, and dysprosium. Continental Europe’s prospects in this field are an important point of exploration. While Europe currently does not produce any REEs, various deposits have been located across the continent, from Norway and Sweden to Greece. Interest in these areas is growing, and with it, consideration of the potential for mining, a factor which will have to be balanced with environmental concerns, presents a possible field of interest for investors over the coming decades.

These factors are, of course, only some of the wider strategic concerns with which European governments will have to grapple over this coming transformative period.

In the background to all this lies the powerful rise of populism and nationalism, which looks set to grow stronger. How present ‘status quo’ governments choose to respond to the varying strategic challenges of the day will have a major impact on the internal political landscape of respective states as well as the broader geopolitical picture. The present interim period brings with it a sped-up political cycle that sees many national governments at present quite unstable. How all the pieces on the board end up remains to be seen. In the meantime, we could be in for a period of great instability and uncertainty.