I NTRODUCTION The collapse of Europe’s security order coincides with a period of global transformation. Both these phenomena threaten to change the international environment that the EU has grown accustomed to – and that has served its interests relatively well. Both also raise major questions over the sort of actor the EU wants to be. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the immediate security imperatives of the EU and its Member States have often found themselves clashing with the goal of enhancing the EU’s global influence. The narrative of a struggle between democracy and autocracy, while perhaps well suited to the Russo-Ukrainian War and the EU-Russia standoff, fits less well in a diverse global order in which many states are loathe to choose sides. Admittedly, even its application in Europe has become questionable, given Poland and Hungary’s struggles with the rule of law, the EU’s reliance on autocracies for its energy security, and Ukraine’s democratic imperfections prior to the war. With Ukraine owing its military successes largely to American largesse, the fact that the EU depends on the US for its own security has become undeniable. When combined with persistent struggles in getting candidate countries such as Turkey and Serbia to align with its Common Foreign and Security Policy, it is questionable just how much influence the EU will be able to wield further afield. Yet while the immense challenges of internal reform and breathing new life into a now­geopolitical enlargement process suggest a regional focus for the EU’s core strategic priorities, the EU can still take certain measures to avoid losing sight of the rest of the world. While in many respects the EU appears set to become a regional actor, to ensure its own influence within the broader global order it should not allow this to result in the deepening of the EU’s image as a civilisational actor whose liberal normative discourse does not always align with EU policies. A RESILIENT GLOBAL ORDER … BUT A CONTINENT IN CRISIS With war raging so close to home and the pan-European security architecture from Lisbon to Vladivostok having all but collapsed, it may seem somewhat odd when Brussels­based officials insist that the EU must play a role in upholding order in the‘Indo-Pacific’. The point here is not to question the need for European engagement in Asia, but rather to highlight the implicit assumption that guides such pronouncements – namely, that it is not just the European security order but the global‘rules-based international order’ itself that is endangered today. | 1