For thirty years, Europeans believed that sovereignty was almost obsolete and that we would be fine with a world without great tension and with nourished and therefore peaceful economic exchanges. With today’s brutal world, which sees the return of Donald Trump, no one in Europe understands that today it would be better to start from the opposite principle: in a world that has once again become violently competitive, it once again becomes the raw material of power. But 21st century sovereignty no longer consists only of possessing a territory, an army, a currency and a flag. Much more than that, it consists of controlling the flows on which an economy depends: borders, energy, minerals, technologies, data, ports, cables, straits: the entire supply chain must be controlled.
It is from this angle that we must read the Trumpian obsession with Panama, Hormuz, the Greenlandthe Arctic, maritime routes or strategic spaces. Behind the usual provocations and excesses lies a rather correct intuition: geography has returned to the center of the global game. Panama connects two oceans, Malacca controls an essential part of the trade between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, Bab el-Mandeb opens the Red Sea and Hormuz remains one of the main global energy arteries which until February saw nearly 20% of global oil and gas traffic flow through its waters. A few dozen kilometers of sea can therefore be enough in the event of war to disrupt global logistics and energy chains.
There is a crazy paradox in our new Western lifestyles, always in search of more modernity and freedom: we have built the most dependent economy in history on diverse resources, often very far from our countries. The cloud depends on data centers and therefore electricity. L’artificial intelligence depends on semiconductors manufactured in a few areas of the world. The electric car requires lithium, cobalt, copper and rare earths. The Internet crosses the oceans by submarine cables. A strait and a rare earth ultimately come under the same logic: whoever controls an essential element of the system has leverage over those who depend on it.
Produce, protect, control
This is what gives the Trump doctrine its coherence. Reindustrialize: sovereignty. Controlling borders: sovereignty. Producing your energy: sovereignty. Securing raw materials: sovereignty. Staying ahead in AI: sovereignty. Defend your technological champions: sovereignty. Maintain the dollar and a navy capable of securing trade routes: sovereignty.
Above all, the United States has a colossal advantage: a large part of the world’s digital infrastructure is American and the Americans owe it only to themselves and to those who supply them with the raw materials for it. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI or SpaceX are not the American state, but they constitute an extraordinary ecosystem of power. Europe is also finally beginning to officially recognize the scale of the problem which is above all its responsibility. The Commission itself estimates that the Union depends on third countries for more than 80% of the main digital products, services, infrastructure and intellectual property rights; it still only represents around 9% of the global semiconductor market. This is scary for our future generations!
Europe risks becoming a power under supervision
This is where the consequences become much more serious. Because economic dependence always ends up producing political dependence. What is European strategic autonomy worth if its defense still largely depends on American capabilities? What is digital sovereignty worth if the cloud, software and much of the AI come from elsewhere? What is the energy transition worth if the necessary technologies depend on Asian value chains? And what is the value of industrial policy when energy is expensive, critical resources are imported, and American and Chinese competitors benefit from much more powerful industrial ecosystems? We keep repeating it: the EU is a power of illusion which would be nothing without its suppliers and its multiple service providers.
Because there is nothing or almost nothing left in Europe. The Draghi report specifically identified slowing productivity, energy costs, lagging innovation and global competition as threats to European prosperity. The Commission itself now recognizes the need to reduce dependencies and close the technological gap.
The danger is therefore not only economic. It is geopolitical. A Europe that does not fully control its defense, its energy, its raw materials, or its digital infrastructure will gradually lose its ability to decide alone. In a serious crisis with Washington, Beijing or a strategic supplier, it discovers that its political freedom ends exactly where its dependence begins. Once again, Europe has for too long confused normative power with real power. Regulating a technology that we do not produce does not make us sovereign. Taxing a foreign platform does not create a European platform. Supervising AI is not enough if the models, chips and computing capabilities are produced elsewhere. Sovereignty is not primarily the right to prohibit but it is the capacity to do.
European downgrading widely in sight
Trump reasons from a fundamental fear: preventing America from becoming the big loser in the global system that it itself helped to build. Europe should have exactly the same concern. You have to push for a Mega, a “Make Europe Great Again!” »
We just have to look around us at those we see as simple predators. Because the China transformed globalization into industrial power. India is transforming its demographics into an economic and technological power. Gulf states are converting their hydrocarbons into finance, infrastructure and AI. States possessing lithium, cobalt, copper or rare earths are discovering their new negotiating power. Meanwhile, Europe is aging, struggling to create technological giants and remaining dependent on the outside in several strategic sectors.
The dark scenario is therefore not that Europe becomes poor. It is more subtle: that it remains rich but gradually ceases to be powerful. A huge consumer market, heavily regulated, militarily protected by the United States, technologically equipped by the Americans and Asians and dependent on the outside for part of its resources. Will we ever get out of this? For Europe, it is no longer a question of understanding. It’s about catching up. Because in the world to come, those who do not control their dependencies always end up depending on the will of others.
*Sébastien Boussois is a doctor in political science, media consultant, researcher in international relations associated with the CNAM Paris (Defense Security Team) and the Geostrategic Observatory of Geneva (Switzerland) and director of the European Geopolitical Institute (IGE).
