The Return of the Repressed: The Colonial History of the EU's Geopolitical Turn
Journal: JCMS Journal of Common Market Studies
Year: 2025

Abstract This article examines the EU's current geopolitical turn: the push to have the EU embrace power politics and develop a ‘strategic autonomy’, both vis‐à‐vis global powers and its own ‘neighbourhood’. This turn is significant since it marks a shift away from what is said to be the post‐cold war EU's liberal approach to world affairs. By openly embracing ‘hard power’, Brussels is also severing the continuity between the present rhetoric and its founding narrative about the EU as an anti‐ge