The war in Ukraine, Donald Trump’s erratic belligerence toward Venezuela and his theatrical threats aimed even at Greenland are not isolated spectacles of global disorder. They are stress tests. And under this pressure the European Union’s leadership has revealed something far more troubling than disagreement or hesitation, a profound incapacity to act with clarity, courage and strategic autonomy.
Europe today appears less like a union of sovereign democracies and more like a committee perpetually waiting for instructions. While history accelerates Brussels deliberates. While threats multiply statements are polished, softened and released too late to matter. This is not diplomacy. It is paralysis disguised as process.
Ursula von der Leyen has come to embody this failure. Her tenure has been defined by grand rhetoric and careful avoidance of confrontation. She speaks fluently of values, resilience, and unity, yet consistently shrinks from the hard choices that give those words meaning. Leadership, after all, is not about vocabulary. It is about consequence.
Ukraine is the clearest indictment. Faced with the most serious war on European soil since 1945, the Union has acted as a generous payer but a timid power. Weapons arrive slowly. Red lines are endlessly debated. Strategy is outsourced to Washington, leaving Europe exposed to every electoral mood swing across the Atlantic.
Trump’s behaviour only sharpens this reality. His attack on Venezuela, the kidnapping of its president and his absurd sabre rattling over Greenland are not policy positions so much as warnings of an imperialist authoritarian figure. They demonstrate how fragile Europe’s security becomes when it depends on the temperament of a single American president. Yet the EU response remains reactive, almost submissive.
This is where von der Leyen’s danger lies. She has normalized dependence as prudence and hesitation as wisdom. Under her leadership, Europe has learned to speak loudly about norms while whispering when confronted by force. The result is a Union that appears morally confident but strategically hollow.
Free journalism does not demand neutrality in the face of dysfunction. It demands clarity. The European project was never meant to be an elegant debating society. It was meant to ensure that Europe would never again be a playground for stronger powers. Today, it risks becoming exactly that.
The answer is not anti Americanism, nor reckless militarism. It is adulthood. Europe needs leadership willing to define interests, accept risk and act before crises metastasize. That requires confronting uncomfortable truths, including the failure of those currently at the helm.
Von der Leyen’s defenders will argue that consensus is slow by design, that unity requires patience. That argument confuses method with outcome. Consensus that cannot produce power is not unity. It is collective weakness carefully managed.
History is unforgiving to institutions that mistake comfort for stability. The world is reorganizing around power, speed, and will. Europe cannot afford leaders who wait for permission to lead. The cost will not be theoretical. It will be measured in lost influence, broken borders, and diminished futures.
Europe does not lack resources, talent, or legitimacy. It lacks nerve. And nerve is not found in communiqués or summits. It is forged when leaders accept that safety without sovereignty is an illusion, and that dependence dressed as cooperation eventually collapses.
The crises of today are warnings from tomorrow. Ukraine bleeds, American politics convulse and global norms erode. Each moment of European hesitation writes another footnote in the story of decline. This trajectory is not inevitable, but it is being chosen.
If Europe wants to matter, it must rediscover the courage to decide. That means leadership change, strategic independence, and an honest reckoning with failure. The alternative is to continue watching history unfold elsewhere, while congratulating ourselves on process.
That is not leadership. It is managed decline with better branding. And it is precisely why the current European leadership, personified by Ursula von der Leyen, represents not continuity, but danger. Danger to credibility, danger to security, and danger to the very promise that Europe once made to itself.
Europe was built to be more than a market and more than a moral lecture. It was built to protect its people in a hostile world. Until its leaders remember that purpose, every crisis will expose the same truth: the Union speaks, the world acts.
This imbalance cannot be corrected with slogans or summits. It requires resolve. Without it, Europe will remain wealthy, well spoken, and increasingly irrelevant. A continent that waits to be led will eventually be led by others. History has never been kind to spectators. Europe should remember that now. Before consequences become permanent. And irreversible.
Ursula von der Leyen must leave.
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