Europe’s Strategic Infancy
Growing up is not an option. It is not even part of the conversation. The operative question is how to bring back the “good mother” – the United States – and how to keep using Russia as the household bogeyman.
The new Global Risks to the EU 2026
report pretends to be strategy: thirty threats, probability grids, five-point
scales. Underneath the bureaucratic packaging is something else. Not
geopolitics – a family drama. A refusal to accept adulthood.
The Mother
In this mental model, the US is not a sovereign actor. It is a parent with
compulsory duties: feed, shield, pay, reassure. No negotiation, no reciprocity.
Protection by default, like a kitchen that restocks itself.
A potential US refusal to underwrite European
security is treated as treason. In the report’s implicit scale of fear,
Washington stepping back is placed next to Russian nuclear escalation. A mother
who “withholds protection” is as frightening as a warhead.
The Stepfather
Trump is a stepfather who does not care about
inherited obligations. He speaks in the language of conditions: contribute,
pay, defend yourselves. For Europe this is not realism – it is an intolerable
breach of emotional contract.
The demanded outcome is childish: the
stepfather should either turn into a loving father immediately or disappear so
that “mother” can return to her old role. Trump’s refusal triggers outrage, not
adjustment.
The Bogeyman
Russia fills the psychological need for an undefined threat. It is not assessed
by capability, resources, logistics, or political cost. It is an
undifferentiated menace whose intentions are fixed by assumption.
The report states as axiomatic that Russia
will “attack NATO after Ukraine.” No modeling, no constraints analysis, no
discussion of capacity. A bogeyman does not require evidence. Doubt is already
disloyalty.
The Fear
Ending the war is classified not as opportunity but as risk. War maintains
structure: an enemy, a protector, and a script. Peace requires independent
decision-making – something Europe refuses to contemplate.
Continuation of the war stabilizes identity:
dependency on Washington and a permanent claim to moral victimhood.
The Tactics
When the parent is distracted and the bogeyman refuses to perform on command, a
child has one remaining instrument: public hysterics. Not diplomacy, not
bargaining, not power. Emotional blackmail.
That is the tone of the European public
security discourse:
If you do not protect us, you want us destroyed.
If you question escalation, you “serve Moscow.”
Under this framework, geopolitical adulthood
is structurally impossible. The objective is not capability but reassurance.
Not autonomy but proximity to a patron.
It is not strategy.
It is dependence dressed as doctrine.
As an operational psychologist, I would
advise Washington and Moscow to give these overgrown children the standard
prescription: go eat some worms, Europe.