"The old world order no longer exists." This was the rather blunt and decisive statement made by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz during his speech at the Munich Security Conference , where he sought to narrow down the changes underway in the globalized world, characterized and determined, one might say unequivocally, by Europe's currently marginal role and the resulting crisis in relations with the United States.

According to the German Chancellor, the European Union should commit to building a new transatlantic partnership to respond to the threat posed by China, which, according to the Chancellor's analysis and as far as it seems possible to understand, is reinterpreting the new world order. But ultimately, what does the German Chancellor want us to understand? What role does she want to carve out for an overly fragmented European Union that, in fact, is "defective" in its very structure due to a lack of political unity, having not yet become a true federation? In other words, it would be necessary to change the "internal" rules of the game within the European Union to manage the "new" and "unprecedented" "external rules."

This is especially true, one might argue, when major international players have recently demonstrated a tendency to increasingly weaken multilateral institutions, rather than finding common and agreed-upon solutions to the global problems looming forcefully on the horizon. And even more so when traditional Western leadership, or rather, perhaps, what was perceived as such, has been severely challenged by the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which has exposed collective intentions that, rather than presenting themselves as univocal and unidirectional, have instead revealed the critical issues existing in transnational relations and the complexity of constructing alliances.

It would seem reasonable to deduce that the "New World Order" will likely be managed by those, or simply those, who prove strong enough to offer the international community a convincing, effective, and binding alternative political model. Will the European Union be able to do so? It's very difficult to say, because, upon closer inspection, the transformative process underway seems to be moving too quickly to wait for the so-far static timeframe of an International Organization (if one wanted to call it that) that appears to have remained in the starting blocks. Transforming, and quickly, so as not to succumb to strategic irrelevance. This would be useful for the European Union to do. Talk of a new Transatlantic Partnership would seem premature at this stage, especially at a time when the federative process necessary for equal dialogue has not yet begun. This is especially true given that, upon closer inspection, a potential new world order cannot emerge spontaneously from old, historically outdated alliances, and above all, it must be guided, not simply endured.

In other words, today, the European Union would appear unable to continue to base its international role on the existence of rules shared by its Members alone, necessarily having to relate externally with balances, rules and values that are very different and no less significant than its own.

Giuseppina Di Salvatore

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