The keynote lecture covers the conference theme of Europe in a Fragmenting World by setting out the EU’s journey from the ‘eye of the storm’ in 2025 through the ‘eye of the needle’ over the coming generation of planetary politics.
The EU is currently in the early stages of a planetary organic crisis with challenges arising from the global south, the rising east, the warming north, and the setting west. The EU has historically approached such challenges and crises through liberal ideas of international order, but today the need for strategic autonomy and a geopolitical union has griped the agenda.
The lecture sets out how planetary politics, characterised by truly planetary relations of causality that can only be understood and addressed holistically, alter our focus from liberalism and geopolitics towards normative empowerment to address contemporary challenges.
The lecture concludes that passing through the eye of the needle this century demands a holistic understanding and attitude to changing demography, shrinking human ecological niche, accelerated conflicts, rising autocracy, and economic nationalism.
Conference details: https://www.euia.eu/
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) sabbatical details: https://www.rj.se/en/grants/2024/the-european-unions-normative-power-in-planetary-politics/