Europe Still Lives in a Security Utopia

Jakub Grygiel

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In his 1943 book, U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic, the famous American journalist and political thinker persuasively argued that foreign policy ought to be balanced—that is, a state’s foreign commitments must match its power. When a gap arises between commitments and power, the culprit state pursues a foreign policy that invites danger because its aspirations abroad are not backed by its power. For Lippmann, the United States had a tendency throughout its history to conduct such an unbalanced policy. But today, it is Europe’s foreign policy that is, to use Lippmann’s word, “insolvent.”