National inhibitions about subordinating particular interests and assumptions to a wider European consensus have left the EU institutions without the ability either to promote shared European interests or to act effectively when those interests are threatened.

It has gradually developed a number of institutions and instruments for exerting external influence, although not an underlying consensus about the purposes they should serve or the threats to which they should respond. Peacekeeping and peace- making in marginal African states and the seas around them, while the United States managed potentially more serious threats in the Middle East and Eurasia, are now having to give way to collectively confronting major challenges. Policy-makers in Washington— especially those in an incoming Trump administration—expect NATO’s European mem- bers to look after their own region. It is not easy to be confident that the member governments of the EU and their useful but fragile common institutions will be able to generate either the domestic support or shared appreciation of external challenges to meet the challenge.

Of course, it’s easy to spot signs of disarray. Modern Europe is messy, and its institutions and policies are imperfect. Some of the threats facing the EU are real: slow growth and austerity, for instance, within the eurozone. Others, like rising right-wing nationalism and migration, are less so, for reasons I will discuss at the conclusion.

We ignore European unity at our peril. Most observers analyze Europe as 28 separate countries — even though doing so generates geopolitical nonsense. To see why, consider one recent example: etc.

This is only one example of how, despite its fragmentation, Europe effectively projects power in those areas that count most for global influence. Certainly, European governments often disagree among themselves, sometimes vociferously and in public. Yet policy coordination, both formal and informal, permits European governments to act as a unit to influence the outside world. Three modes of European coordination are critical: common EU policies, coordination, and tacit policy convergence.

ll European countries are democratic and economically interdependent, and they share largely uncontested (indeed, often invisible) borders. Hence they coexist without posing any mortal threat to one another.

Several examples and:
For China to challenge Europe or the United States on an equal basis, Beijing would need to outspend the West not for one year, but for decades — something that delays the projected point where (at current trends) it would surpass the West close to the end of the 21st century.

t Europe maintains enduring alliances. & By contrast, Russia and China can call on few allies

The EU is, in fact, the world’s second-largest economy. Even more importantly, it is the world’s largest trader of goods and services.

“Soft power” measures the ability to advance foreign-policy goals by disseminating and manipulating ideas, information, and institutions that help persuade other countries to act in particular ways. Soft power is employed by various means, and the EU belongs among the world’s most effective manipulators of many of them.

Other European economic instruments are less visible but no less important. One example is foreign aid.

Europe further leverages its regional market power through a “neighborhood policy” of bilateral agreements w

Europe’s ability to project coercive force to compel others to acquiesce to political demands does not

, other governments become committed to institutional rules Europe has designed, thereby influencing the policies of individual states.

The underlying determinants of global influence — military capabilities, nominal and per capita income, trade and investment competitiveness, the intrinsic attractiveness of symbolic ideas and institutions

It manipulates economic power with a skill and success unmatched by any other country or region. And its ability to employ “soft power” to persuade other countries to change their behavior is unique.

Another example of a uniquely effective instrument of European economic power is the imposition of economic sanctions. Ukraine again illustrates the point. As with aid and trade policies, 90 percent of the cost of recent Western sanctions against Russia falls on Europe. This reflects Europe’s unique clout as the largest trading partner not just of many countries in the former Soviet Union, but nearly every country in the Middle East and Africa. It is hard to imagine sanctions working anywhere in the world without Europe’s active participation. The United States, by contrast, hardly trades with most of these countries, and thus it lacks the capacity to levy effective sanctions on its own. For example, Washington sanctioned Tehran continuously for 35 years with little effect. After Europe signed on to tough sanctions in 2013, Iran agreed to a nuclear deal within two years.

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Conclusion: all actors share certain important characteristics. The EU practices its politics differently from the three other actors