Europe’s crisis tourism: how the Iran war swallowed the EU’s geopolitical agenda

Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen In the days after the United States and Israel tipped the Middle East into a new and catastrophic crisis with their attacks on Iran, European leaders were all over the map.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz both voiced support for regime change in Iran soon after the strikes started more than four weeks ago.

Each of them also questioned the continued utility of the international rules-based order, while Merz’s foreign minister Johann Wadephul even said international law “cannot be invoked” by a “regime like Iran”.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz initially supported regime change in Iran.

Photo: dpa In Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was quick out of the blocks to condemn the war as illegal.

He refused US requests to refuel fighter jets on joint US-Spanish bases and used a televised national address to say “no to war”, following President Donald Trump’s threat to cut off all trade with the Iberian nation.

But Sanchez’s was a lonely dissenting voice.

As the situation spiralled, soaring energy prices and the prospect of a new wave of displaced migrants heading for Europe proved clarifying.

This was not Europe’s war but European countries would surely pay a price for it.

Germany, France, Italy and others rejected Trump’s demands to get involved, while fears quickly surfaced that another American foray into the Middle East would drain resources from Europe’s primary foreign policy objective: supporting Ukraine.

A proposal by top diplomat Kaja Kallas to expand Operation Aspides, which monitors shipping routes in the Red Sea to prevent Houthi attacks, was rejected by the European Union’s 27 member states. “This is not our war.

We have ⁠not started it,” German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said. “What does Trump expect a handful or two handfuls of European frigates to do in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful ⁠US Navy cannot do?” The crisis – and the evolving European response to it – has been revealing in more ways than one.

It shows that Europe is a long way from being the geopolitical player that many leaders have frequently aspired for it to be.

Instead, combined with the confused response to the war in Gaza, near-silence on the presidential toppling in Venezuela and the current fumble over funding for Ukraine, it paints a picture of Europe as an international crisis tourist – hopping from geopolitical flashpoint to flashpoint, swept up by global events with

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