Alina Polyakova and Benjamin Haddad
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pertise and vast, integrated single market to shape global norms and
rules on everything from environmental protection to data privacy.
That U.S. companies have adopted the terms o the General Data
Protection Regulation, the ¥’s ambitious data privacy law, shows how
eective the bloc is at exporting its norms. Yet the ¥ has at times
underestimated the importance oÊ hard power in supporting soft
power. When Brussels was negotiating a free-trade agreement with
Ukraine in 2014, it in essence sent well-meaning economists to a
deeply geopolitical Ãght. E leaders thought o the European Neigh-
borhood Policy, with its comprehensive package o reforms, as a sim-
ple tool to promote good governance in ¥ border states. What they
failed to appreciate was that its signiÃ-
cance was more geopolitical than any-
thing else. Most Ukrainians saw the
agreement not as a collection o tech-
nocratic tweaks but as an opportunity
to anchor their country more fully in
Europe and thus challenge Russia. And
indeed, when Ukrainians overthrew
their president after he refused to sign
an association agreement with the ¥, Russian President Vladimir Putin
reacted by invading eastern Ukraine and seizing Crimea. Ironically,
for all the talk o Putin’s anachronistic, Machiavellian understanding
o power, the Russian president was much more attuned than Brussels
to the real signiÃcance o the ¥’s technocratic instruments. Europe’s
timid support for Ukraine, even after Ukrainians protested—and in
some cases died—while brandishing the ¥ Áag, likely emboldened
Moscow to invade Ukraine, intervene in Syria, and meddle in several
Western elections. Instead o mostly standing by, Europe should
have seen the Euromaidan revolution as an opportunity to take a
principled stance against a revisionist Russia.
Europe’s eorts to reconcile itsel to power will have to include an
understanding o the geopolitical role its single market can play in
ensuring European sovereignty. From breaking Russian gas monopo-
lies to blocking Chinese investments, the European Commission can
use its regulatory bureaucratic instruments to ensure that Europe is
not a theater for the actions o predatory great powers. To do so, law-
makers will have to overcome their dogmatic attachment to openness
and put a more realistic defense o European citizens at the core oEuropeans will need to
intellectually reconcile
themselves to power, a
di¦cult proposition for
their technocratic leaders.