05 March 2026 – At the recent Munich Security Conference, the U.S. Foreign Minister invoked themes that resonate far beyond transatlantic relations: civilisational identity, cultural continuity, sovereignty, strength. Migration, he argued, threatens “the survival of ‘our’ civilisation.” Europe must become stronger, less internally divided, more decisive.
These themes deserve careful and systemic reflection. For the Club of Rome, the question should be what strength means in the 21st century, and whether Europe’s distinctive political form is an obstacle or an asset in navigating the global polycrisis.
Civilisation, memory and selective narratives
When political leaders frame migration as a civilisational threat, they invoke a hierarchy of belonging–something bounded, coherent, endangered by “others.” But Europe’s own historical trajectory includes large-scale migration, colonial expansion and the decimation of Indigenous peoples and their governance systems. European migrants crossing the Atlantic were themselves people in motion, encountering not empty land but complex First Nations societies with distinct cosmologies and ecological knowledge.
This historical awareness does not invalidate contemporary concerns about migration governance. But it demands humility. When “our civilisation” functions as a defensive concept, memory becomes dangerously selective. A mature political community must hold its full history—including its violence—without collapsing into either self-rejection or self-idealisation. For a globally constituted organisation like the Club of Rome, this matters structurally. Any conversation about civilisational resilience must avoid reproducing hierarchies that position Europe as normative and others as peripheral. The polycrisis demands epistemic pluralism, in fact pluriversal approaches—not defensiveness based on a questionable understanding of civilisation.
Religion, identity and political order
Invoking shared “Christian values” —as happened by the US Foreign Minister in Munich—in global security discourse operates similarly. Religious heritage can inspire genuine ethical commitments to dignity and solidarity. But when deployed primarily as an identity boundary, it becomes a tool of cohesion through exclusion—and frequently reinforces hierarchical, patriarchal social norms: strong centralised leadership, cultural homogeneity, narrowly defined social roles.
Europe’s challenge—and that of all democratic regions—is to ensure that cultural identity does not displace universal principles. Human dignity, gender equality and pluralism cannot be contingent on cultural homogeneity. They are normative commitments forged through hard historical learning. Systemic interdependence, as the Club of Rome has long emphasised, requires inclusive frameworks. It cannot be sustained through identity-based defensiveness.
Strength as adaptive capacity
There are fundamentally different models of strength. One equates it with decisiveness, centralisation and speed—clarity over complexity, control over deliberation. Another understands strength as institutional resilience: the capacity to negotiate across diversity, transform conflict into procedure and sustain legitimacy through participation.
Europe’s complex, often slow political architecture emerged from a specific historical insight: unmediated power politics on the European continent produced catastrophe. The EU was deliberately constructed not as an empire, but as a continuous negotiation among sovereign states choosing interdependence over domination. From a systems perspective, this negotiated interdependence is not weakness—it is adaptive capacity. In conditions of climate instability, biodiversity loss, social fragmentation and geopolitical rivalry, adaptive capacity is a core strategic asset.
Europe as project, not fortress
The Club of Rome’s global membership—spanning Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East—rightly challenges Eurocentric assumptions and brings forward alternative knowledge systems, including Indigenous ecological perspectives long marginalised by dominant development models. A strong Europe in the 21st century must therefore be a listening Europe: one that engages Global South partners as co-designers of transformation, not recipients of solutions; that advances climate justice as a shared commitment; and that grounds its authority not in heritage claims but in demonstrated equity.
Democracy as systemic advantage
In recent authoritarian trends democratic deliberation is persistently framed as an obstacle to geopolitical effectiveness. But long-term systemic transitions—decarbonisation, circular economy transformation, social equity restructuring—cannot be imposed from above. They require legitimacy. Legitimacy requires participation. Authoritarian efficiency may accelerate short-term decisions, typically with significant collateral damage, but it rarely builds the durable ownership that implementation demands.
Europe’s democratic architecture, for all its procedural density, generates precisely the learning loops and distributed responsibility that systemic transformation requires. Democratic backsliding, persistent inequality, and contested migration governance are real failures demanding urgent reform—but the answer is deeper democratic commitment, not retreat into simplified power narratives.
A Europe that withdraws into civilisational defensiveness will shrink. A Europe that deepens its democratic project, embraces historical accountability, and positions itself as a genuine partner in global transformation will expand its relevance. Democracy is not Europe’s weakness. It is its most transferable contribution to a world searching for viable models of cooperative resilience.
