Abstract Europe in the 1990s constituted a testbed for International Relations (IR) theory predictions. We compare the predictive power of Structural Realism and the Tsinghua School’s Moral Realism in accounting for European outcomes following German reunification and the loosening of post-Cold War bipolar constraints. Some prominent structural realists anticipated intensified securitization, including hard balancing, nuclear proliferation, and even a great European war. Yet European leaders decided to bind a powerful reunified Germany in new institutions (monetary union) and did not hard balance against it. We argue that this outcome is best explained by Moral Realism’s emphasis on political leadership as a core determinant of strategic preference formation that mitigates structural drivers. We then apply Moral Realism prospectively to current strategic “forks in the road,” outlining sharply divergent outcomes for the European Union (EU): reform and relevance, or stagnation and marginalization under intensifying Sino-American strategic antagonism (the so-called “New Cold War”). We use two issues as litmus tests: European data and artificial intelligence (AI) sovereignty and a French-led nuclear umbrella. The pervasive diagnosis of the ongoing Europe’s crisis as a “leadership deficit,” calling for figures akin to Adenauer or de Gaulle to arise, resonates with our core finding: Leadership decisions, rather than purely structural dynamics, will determine Europe’s destiny.
Trigkas et al. (Thu,) studied this question.