As the war in Iran tips the global order further into chaos, a potentially existential rupture on whether international rules still matter is threatening to tear Europe apart.
Over the course of Monday and Tuesday, leaders of the European Union’s institutions – considered among the most legalistic political structures on the planet – clashed publicly over whether the bloc should still be bound by global norms.
This followed more than a week of messy sparring among national political leaders from the bloc’s 27 member states over the legality of unilateral attacks on Iran by the United States and Israel that laid bare its divisions on geopolitics.
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On one side, mostly conservative officials who long for the fall of the regime in Tehran, regardless of the means. On the other, mainly progressives who – while shedding no tears for the Iranian hardliners – believe that endorsing breaches of international law is a dead end for a political body built on those same rules.
“Europe can no longer be a custodian for the old-world order, for a world that has gone and will not return,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday.
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At an annual conference for all of the EU’s overseas ambassadors, she asked whether “the system that we built – with all of its well-intentioned attempts at consensus and compromise – is more a help or a hindrance to our credibility as a geopolitical actor”.
