When the world was still a global village, a small European country could reasonably choose to be unaligned or neutral. It could steer its course as a sovereign nation and do some nice cherry-picking from international alliances on the side. If it was blessed with resources or a profitable niche business sector, then it could even delude itself with the belief that it hardly needed others at all.
Look at Switzerland, which calmy and neutrally sailed the waves of globalization for many years. Look at Iceland: in NATO but outside the European Union, and which never built a standing army because it never had the need. Or look at Norway, another NATO member outside the EU, proudly enjoying its wealth and independence while quietly copying most of the EU’s rulebook. Until a few years ago, all these small states thought they had the best of all worlds.
No more. While large, predatory global powers with imperialistic ambitions are at each other’s throats again, the little ones become prey. Now, suddenly, they feel vulnerable and seek cover in Europe.
Iceland will hold a referendum on joining the EU by 2027. Public support for joining—45 percent, according to some polls—is well established, according to the country’s foreign minister. It seems almost forgotten that the Icelandic government itself stopped accession negotiations in 2013 because it did not want to subject its fisheries to EU rules. Now, Iceland argues that its previous advancement in accession negotiations is a positive going forward. As a NATO member, the country relies solely on the United States for its security. But with U.S. President Donald Trump backtracking on his NATO commitments, it seems unwise to keep betting on just one horse. Recently, the EU and Iceland have also had talks about more defense cooperation.
Norway is making a similar trade-off. Norwegians have voted against EU membership twice via referendum. For decades, most Norwegians were not keen on having another referendum. Now, polls show that 63 percent wants one, after all. The “no” vote still leads with 48 percent, but the “yes” vote is at 41 percent, which is up from 27 percent in 2023. Because sovereignty and EU membership are controversial topics in Norway, discussions on the issue have been postponed until after parliamentary elections in September.
Then there is proud Switzerland, which made such a fetish of undiluted neutrality that, in 2021, it rejected a new bilateral treaty with the EU that would “infringe” too much on the country’s sovereignty. Switzerland demanded more access to the EU single market, but it balked at adhering to some fundamental rules that EU member states are subject to. In 2024, however, after quickly returning to the negotiating table, it signed a draft deal with Brussels.
Switzerland even increased cooperation with NATO a bit. In April, a Swiss army division traveled to neighboring Austria for military exercises—the first such exercise in 30 years. In an interview with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung last week, Dutch Adm. Rob Bauer called the Swiss policy to sell weapons to other countries and then preventing them from giving those weapons to Ukraine “bullshit.” He went on to say: “The world’s fate will be decided on the killing fields of Ukraine. What is at stake is the concept of free democracy and the international rules-based order. Without this order, Switzerland cannot maintain its neutrality.”
The direction for all these countries is clear: Find shelter with other European nations. With superpowers hunting for territory, waterways, data, minerals, and labor, international rules that used to protect small states give way to raw power grabs, intimidation, and bullying tactics. In the new world order, mass does count. Belonging to a large group becomes a survival strategy. The Armenian parliament voted earlier this year in favor of an EU membership bid. Even in Andorra, a microstate, a closer relationship with some EU policies is being debated.
As far away as Canada, support for EU accession has shot up like a comet after Trump’s remarks about annexation. According to a recent poll, 44 to 46 percent of Canadians would like their country to join the EU.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a wake-up call for many nonaligned or neutral countries that thought they could navigate smoothly through life as a buffer. Now, autocratic, mercantilist leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump, and Chinese President Xi Jinping dominate the world. In a new book, The Hour of the Predator, Italian Swiss writer Giuliano da Empoli compares them to the cruel 15th-century condottiere Cesare Borgia—the same prince who Niccolò Machiavelli famously wrote about. These modern Borgias do not accept buffers, full stop.
Today, many worry about fragmentation in Europe. It is true that EU member states disagree on how to tackle important issues like the common budget, enlargement, and defense. These disagreements can be fierce at times. But they are also inevitable. In Europe, 27 member states hold the helm, and they often have different interests since they are sovereign states. In the past, their clashes often led to war. In the 1950s, they designated Brussels as the place where they could vent their national positions to avoid war and find compromises. So, their continuous arguing is business as usual, especially when important new subjects like defense and security are on the table.
To a certain extent, quarrels in Brussels are not a sign of fragmentation but proof that the EU mechanism is still working well. As Erik Jones, the director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute, recently wrote, “Europe may be slow in pulling itself together, but it has a knack for making epochal changes by working through huge stacks of small decisions. The raft of reports and the flurry of jargon are all part of the process of putting the necessary pieces into place.”
There may always be fragmentation in Brussels, but there is a lot of cohesion nowadays, too. These days, countries need friends—and small countries even more so. Finland and Sweden concluded that their EU membership alone could no longer guarantee their security and signed up to NATO. Member states like Denmark, which were mainly in the EU for the single market, are now deepening their membership by finally joining EU defense initiatives and are even promoting the use of Eurobonds (common loans) they previously balked at. In EU budget discussions, according to insiders, the Nordic countries are much less frugal than before. They want to invest in safety, whatever the cost. Relations between the United Kingdom and the EU are better than they have been in years. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer even attended a summit with the EU recently to discuss a joint security and defense agreement.
Even the long-stalled EU enlargement process is gaining momentum again (https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/eu-enlargement_en). In negotiations with most of the nine official candidate countries, five of which are in the Western Balkans, there is suddenly progress. . New economic incentives are used to draw candidate countries closer to Europe’s single market. Montenegro, in particular, is now close to accession.
In 2018, Icelandic professor Baldur Thorhallsson wrote in his book, Small States and Shelter Theory: Iceland’s External Affairs, that small countries are more politically, economically, and militarily vulnerable than large ones. They are also more susceptible to crises and attacks. For them, security is largely an illusion.
Iceland is a case in point. By relying solely on U.S. protection through NATO for many years and allowing itself to pick fights with the EU and the UK over fisheries and other issues, it found itself completely alone in 2008, when a financial crisis decimated the country’s outsized financial sector and crippled the economy. No one came to its rescue. Today, with the United States, China, and Russia jockeying for power in the high north—such as Washington trying to claim Greenland and Moscow trying to take over bits of Norwegian Svalbard—Iceland feels vulnerable. In this new light, many Icelanders see EU membership as a valuable insurance policy, not just a bureaucratic nuisance.
The lesson is, of course, that the more a country is embedded in larger structures and clubs, the better. Sovereignty has a price, as the British have also discovered.
In April, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen admitted that the EU is known for its divisions, inertia, and complicated compromises. But, she said, when superpowers violently waltz over others, you begin to appreciate that Europe “has no bros or oligarchs.” Having discussions, seeking compromises, not invading neighboring countries, having welfare states with large middle classes that thrive on stability—all these things make Europe stand out positively compared to Russia, the United States, or China. “Europe is our home,” she said. “And people know that. They feel that.”