The text is taken from the first issue of the journal “Centar” of the CSPR RS

The European Union has for decades sought to position itself as an autonomous political actor on the international stage, capable of shaping the course of global processes. Yet today, despite its economic strength, single market, and the appeal of enlargement, it is increasingly evident—under the influence of numerous global factors—that its reach and influence remain limited. In key security and geopolitical matters, Europe appears less and less as the one who decides, and more and more as an object of other actor’s decisions. Although it is one of the world’s most economically developed regions, its material power has not been matched by proportional strategic autonomy. Amid intense global realignment, the Union aspires to a seat at the table, but is ever more visibly finding itself on the table, where others articulate their own interests. The rift between Europe’s self-perception and reality has laid bare a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the EU project: it has failed to build power as a geopolitical subject in the classical sense, and has instead evolved into a system of technocratic and normative governance, aimed primarily at disciplining its own member states. Within that system, Germany has asserted itself as the central axis by embedding its legal, economic and regulatory models into the very foundations of the Union. It does not manage Europe through overt, formal domination, but through control of institutional levers, the normative framework and regulatory rules that shape decision-making across the entire system. The paradox of the modern era is that the state which twice in the twentieth century caused the greatest upheavals and calamities on the continent became, after 1945, the center that defines the boundaries of what is possible, desirable and permissible in Europe. From the combination of fear of a reawakening of German power and the political realism that demanded its permanent institutional anchoring in the West emerged the Schuman Declaration and the European Coal and Steel Community, originally conceived as a means of containing German industrial strength. Over time, however, a historical reversal occurred in which the very mechanisms designed to restrain Germany became instruments for expanding its influence. Germany did not seize control of Europe abruptly; it achieved this gradually, by embedding its own models into Europe’s institutional architecture.

Formally, the European Union is a community of equal states, in which decisions are made by consensus or by qualified majority. In reality, it functions as an order in which power derives from control over norms, regulations and institutional mechanisms that determine how decisions are made in key fields. It is precisely in this domain that Germany has, over time, gained a structural advantage and become the principal holder of real authority. This authority manifests itself through the directorates of the European Commission, whose technocratic apparatus continuously produces standards, procedures and normative frameworks that define the behavior of states, markets and institutions. Germany recognized early on that real power is forged in these seemingly technical spheres. That is why, in core areas such as competition, the economy and finance, it has structurally embedded its legal, economic and industrial matrix. The logic of ordoliberalism—that is, the German conviction that the state does not manage the system directly but instead sets the framework of rules which must be obeyed—together with fiscal discipline, formalism and debt control, has become a dominant lever of European policy and one of the key instruments through which Berlin secures its central and privileged position within the European order. However, the power Germany has accumulated within the EU has not been built as classical geopolitical power, but rather as supremacy in the domain of rules and regulations, grounded in a neoliberal paradigm that prioritizes fiscal discipline, market logic and a limited role for the state in the strategic projection of power.

The current administration in Washington is increasingly viewing the prevailing European model—shaped under German normative leadership—as a source of ideological and security vulnerability for the broader Western space. From this perspective, the European Union is building an ever more complex system of norms and procedures, while simultaneously losing strategic clarity, demographic stability and the capacity to effectively stabilize its immediate neighborhood. The new American approach therefore gradually departs from the partnership paradigm in which the EU was seen as one of the pillars of shared security and shifts toward a policy of pressure, correction and the reshaping of Europe’s institutional framework and identity trajectory. In the American perception—more openly than at any time since the end of the Second World War—Europe is increasingly seen less as a guarantor of Western security and more as a source of risk that must be actively managed. This shift was further and unequivocally articulated in the new United States National Security Strategy, published in early December 2025.

In that strategic document, Europe is not presented as a bearer of a security role, but as a zone of internal instability, institutional inertia and political ambiguity. Particular emphasis is placed on challenges linked to mass migration, demographic decline and ideological concepts that displace Europe’s own traditional foundations. From such a framework follows the conclusion that, from the American perspective, Europe needs to be reshaped ideologically, civilizationally and institutionally—not so much as an equal strategic subject, but rather as a problematic security space within the broader Western system. Later in the same document, it is specifically stressed that Europe carries the burden of deep internal structural problems, including regulatory practices that constrain sovereignty and freedom, migration policies that transform the continent and generate social conflict, demographic decline and the erosion of national identities. This is coupled with an American assessment that, if these trends continue, the reliability of certain European states as allies becomes questionable. Within this American perspective, a clear distinction is drawn between the European Union as an institutional framework and Europe as a security space in the broader geopolitical sense. Accordingly, the EU appears in the United States National Security Strategy only in a limited and mostly indirect way, while Europe is treated primarily as a security space and as a set of allied states within a wider security framework. This is an indicative signal of political hierarchy within the Western bloc. Precisely for that reason, part of the political elite in states such as Estonia—consistently pro-Atlantic and existentially tied to the American military presence—has expressed concern that the new U.S. National Security Strategy could, due to this shift in focus, call into question the stability of the eastern flank and the EU’s role as a guarantor of security. That concern does not stem from resistance to Washington, but from the assessment that the American strategic framework is increasingly counting less on the European Union as a partner and more on direct bilateral management of allies and pressure on the very foundations of the European project.

These fears are further intensified by the fact that European states have built their strategies on the assumption that Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty constitutes a firm and almost automatic security guarantee by the United States, which allowed them to focus on economic and social development while investing relatively little in their own defense capabilities. Yet even at the Alliance’s founding—under the influence of the U.S. Senate—the collective-defense obligation in Article 5 was formulated in such a way that each state, in accordance with its own constitutional procedures, undertakes those measures it itself deems necessary, rather than automatically going to war. In essence, what in Europe has been perceived as an almost unquestionable guarantee has always depended on political will in Washington, not on legal automatism. This reality was indirectly acknowledged already in the early phase of the Cold War by Konrad Adenauer, who on several occasions insisted that only American officials in key military and civilian positions could hold the Alliance together—thereby confirming that NATO cohesion and the security of Western European states in practice rest on the continuous political and military presence of the United States. Precisely for that reason, the question of U.S. political will is crucial for allies who for decades have treated their security as something essentially guaranteed by default.

Parallel to this shift in American strategy, initiatives within the European Union to develop a security and industrial infrastructure of its own are gaining strenght, beyond complete dependence on U.S. influence. The most concrete expression of that ambition has become the new instrument Security Action for Europe (SAFE), formally established by Council Regulation (EU) 2025/1106 of 27 May 2025, through which Europe seeks to build an autonomous defense-industrial complex less tied to transatlantic supply chains and decision-making processes. However, although SAFE is presented as a common European project, it is clear that its concept and priorities to a large extent reflect German industrial and normative-legal interests, which Berlin—through long-term positioning within the directorates of the European Commission—has managed to translate into policy for the entire Union. In that sense, SAFE is a logical continuation of a German strategy in which supremacy in the realm of rules and standards, first consolidated in the domains of markets and finance, is now gradually being transferred into the sphere of defense and armaments. In practical terms, through SAFE Brussels is attempting—via new financial mechanisms—to restore the strategic self-confidence of Europe’s defense industry. Joint procurement and production subsidies for ammunition, armored combat vehicles and associated systems, air-defense assets, and missiles are meant to create the image of a Europe that, for the first time since the Cold War, is investing more seriously in its own military power. However, when one moves from the level of political decisions to the level of concrete weapons systems, it becomes clear that the scope of that power is structurally limited by the configuration of the combat systems themselves. Most key components—from aircraft platforms and radar and electro-optical sensors, through command-and-control and communications systems, to cryptographic protection, guidance and satellite support—are technologically and by standards integrated into the operational and technological framework of the United States and NATO. Operationally, this means that functions such as tactical data networks, satellite communications, positioning and time synchronization, battlefield-management software and certain layers of guidance depend on standards, infrastructure or licenses over which Europe does not have full control in crucial segments. Without that key aspect, Europe’s current security architecture could not function at full capacity and with that dependency, any proclaimed autonomy remains confined to rhetoric and industrial programs.

An additional paradox is that key Western European military-industrial capacities—such as Rheinmetall, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann/KNDS, Airbus Defence and Space, BAE Systems, Leonardo, Thales, and Saab—are largely privatized. It should be borne in mind that these corporations have different ownership models and degrees of state influence, but this does not change their market orientation or limited production of expensive platforms. This means they are to a significant extent driven by the logic of profit, shareholders and high margins, so SAFE, instead of creating a broad base of cheap, mass production, primarily results in vast public funds being channeled toward a few dominant corporations which, due to numerous structural constraints, in practice deliver only relatively small production runs of extremely expensive platforms with long delivery timelines—thereby producing a fundamentally limited effect on Europe’s operational defense capabilities. Precisely within such a balance of power—where SAFE fails to secure broad, mass and low-cost production—it is logical that the United States will not allow the emergence of a European defense architecture in which the American role becomes secondary. This is not only because Europe currently cannot function without the American technological base, but also because any serious attempt at genuine autonomy would entail a weakening of U.S. influence over Europe.

On that front, a symptomatic example is the deepening of bilateral cooperation between Germany and Turkey in the fields of defense and the defense industry, whereby a national initiative acquires a European dimension as Berlin seeks to integrate Turkey into European defense-industrial supply chains and, indirectly, into the SAFE framework. Such an approach sends a clear political message about Europe’s ambition to choose its own partners in defense and armaments independently, rather than having Washington decide. However, by late November it became clear that Turkey would nevertheless not enter the program, making the entire endeavor an even more striking mirror of Europe’s powerlessness. A further dimension is added by the normative condition built into SAFE itself—that at least 65% of the value of components in the final system must be of European origin—which, if implemented in practice, would constrain the previous dominance of American suppliers and gradually redirect procurement toward Europe’s defense industry. Accordingly, SAFE is, on the one hand, ambitious enough to articulate what Europe wants; on the other, its implementation reveals the fundamental dependence of Europe’s security architecture on the United States and its limited sovereignty when it comes to choosing partners and technologies. The very same American strategic document that describes Europe as a space of instability rather than as a partner in shaping global security also sets the frame within which the outcome of this instrument is viewed. This means that Europe may plan greater security spending, but the effective reach of SAFE will nonetheless remain constrained by Washington’s strategic priorities.

In that context, other attempts to expand SAFE—above all with the United Kingdom—also appear as further confirmation of the same limitations. Despite initial political momentum, the process stalled at a relatively early stage due to pronounced financial, institutional and security-related problems. In substantive terms, such outcomes can be interpreted as an indication that within the Euro-Atlantic space the ultimate scope of SAFE continues to be determined within a framework in which American interests play a decisive role. Washington encourages Europe to significantly increase defense spending, but within limits that remain aligned with transatlantic priorities. In this context, it is difficult for European initiatives such as SAFE to develop a full capacity for autonomous decision-making on any matter of essential importance. SAFE therefore functions precisely as a test of the boundaries of European autonomy. Any partnership that is not aligned with transatlantic priorities ends up in a legal and political dead end. Internally, member states participate in decision-making within a legal and fiscal model that is to a significant extent shaped according to German standards, which makes them simultaneously participants and objects of discipline. Externally, the European project operates as a security framework whose actual role, limits and partnerships are ultimately determined by an external factor. The European Union thus appears as a subject that initiates and designs mechanisms, yet remains an object in the final shaping of the order within which those mechanisms operate. For smaller nations and states on Europe’s periphery, the real question is no longer whether they will sit at the table, but whether they can avoid becoming part of what is being served on it.

For the Republic of Srpska, such a configuration of the European order does not merely mean that the European Union must be viewed as a space in which external interests intersect, but also that all of this is refracted through the complex Dayton constitutional framework of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Formally, the EU appears as a partner of Bosnia and Herzegovina, yet in practice European levers of power are most often applied through the layer of joint institutions and through the involvement of external actors in the internal order, with the original Dayton framework increasingly interpreted as an obstacle rather than as a governing framework.

The practical consequence is that the Republic of Srpska, engaging with the European Union through the institutional framework of Bosnia and Herzegovina—which, according to the original Dayton logic, should reflect its status as a constituent subject—cannot reduce its strategy to a mere line of EU approximation without simultaneously opening the question of which institutions conduct that process, on the basis of which interpretation of Dayton and under whose security and political conditions. The smaller the EU’s real autonomy in relations with key global actors, and the greater the role of external factors in the internal processes of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the greater the risk, by all indications, that the European agenda may in certain scenarios be transformed into an instrument for the gradual dismantling of the Dayton position of the Republic of Srpska under the guise of reforms.

For that very reason, strategic reflection must also encompass work on one’s own structures of key importance—above all the strengthening of constitutional status, institutional stability and long-term social and economic capacities that make it possible to absorb external pressures, rather than merely endure them passively.

The essential challenge for the Republic of Srpska is not merely whether it will move closer to the European Union, but also which Union it is in fact approaching: the illusion of an autonomous and stable Europe, or the reality of a Union that is willingly subordinating itself to external geostrategic imperatives and ideological and political patterns that undermine its civilizational foundations. To the extent that the Union is being transformed under the pressure of internal contradictions and the simultaneous influence of Washington, it becomes uncertain not only what kind of Europe will emerge, but whether it will even survive in its current form as a political subject. It is precisely this uncertainty that requires the Republic of Srpska to make its long-term decisions not on the basis of a static image of Europe, but on the dynamics of its potential weakening, fragmentation or restructuring. If today’s Europe is simultaneously at the table and on the table, then the Republic of Srpska finds itself in circumstances in which its position is shaped not only in Brussels and Berlin, but also in Washington and other nodes of Euro-Atlantic power. At the same time, outside that framework, alternative global centers of power are taking shape, with which the Serbian people are historically and politically connected and in relation to which more active strategic ties can be built. Under such conditions, the struggle for the subjectivity of the Republic of Srpska—within the framework of the original Dayton Agreement and in relation to the European Union—is not a matter of tactical positioning, but a condition for survival as a political subject. This implies long-term work on the structural foundations of survival, above all on institutions, the demographic and rural base, education and sectors of the economy of strategic importance, in order to reduce vulnerability to external shocks and to projects imposed from outside.

This does not mean that the alternative to the European Union is geopolitical isolation or a simple substitution of one external anchor for another. For the Republic of Srpska, the real alternative does not lie in abandoning the European framework, but in viewing Europe as one instrument rather than as destiny, while simultaneously preserving internal stability and the capacity to engage with external actors on the basis of clearly defined national interests, rather than on the projections and expectations of others.