Europe’s overseas possessions could be a major global asset

It is crucial to examine the chain of causality in any international event and, by now, it is obvious that the simultaneous crises in Ceuta and the Falklands are interconnected. The evidence is simply too strong. ‘American and Israeli rightwingers had in recent weeks called on Morocco to act on Ceuta to punish Sánchez for his opposition to the war in Iran’, the Financial Times suggested, a charge that the Spanish prime minister agrees with. Multiple high-profile accounts from within the US and outside, including the son of the Israeli prime minister, connected the Ceuta crisis with an Islamic invasion against Europe, invited by Spain’s socialist leader.

Meanwhile, President Javier Milei announced sanctions on oil drilling off the coast of the Falkland Islands. He stated that Argentina’s claim over the territory would prevail this time, because Britain was facing an immigration and economic ‘crisis’, and that he would sign a decree to expand the resources of the Argentinian Ministry of Defence and accelerate the construction of a naval base in Tierra del Fuego. In a subsequent joint statement, the governments of Chile and Argentina reiterated that the Malvinas (as the Falklands are known in the Spanish-speaking world) belong under Argentinian sovereignty. The statement noted: ‘President Kast reiterated the support of the Government of Chile for the legitimate sovereignty rights of the Argentine Republic over the Malvinas Islands, South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands, and the surrounding maritime areas.’

In a manner similar to Ceuta, prominent voices within the US and Israeli right instantly started a social media blitz on why Argentina has a legitimate claim to the Falklands, and why Britain is weakened due to mass migration. ‘The nations of the New World were created as acts of will within recent history, by founders who chased fortune beyond the horizon and built something new,’ the Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy of the US State Department posted on X. ‘The United States stands with our friends in the Western Hemisphere in honor of our Western roots, values, freedoms, and future.’ President Trump hinted that the US may not come to Britain’s aid if war breaks out with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.

If trends are to be believed, one can argue that the new American right, with its hawkish eye on the Western Hemisphere, is very different from what was anticipated, especially for those who thought the election of Trump would lead to a global populist movement, including in Europe. Temperamentally Christian-evangelical and demographically Hispanic, the leaders of the new American ‘civilisationalist’ right, wallowing in their tech-fuelled echo chamber, have memed themselves into believing that Europe is simultaneously decadent, pacifist and conquered by Islam and mass migration, and that Israel and Argentina are the two true allies who are going to be part of a new crusade against that.

They might not be in power forever, but in the short term the damage might be acute. Other than that, Americans couldn’t care less about the problems of the Old World. Regardless, they are correct that Europe is wholly unprepared for a new imperial settlement, where the United States, China, Turkey and Russia are all predatory powers, and that the threads of simultaneous crises in Ukraine, Armenia, Greenland, Ceuta, Gaza and the Falklands are all connected.

Currently, six European states possess 13 overseas territories, which are by extension territories of the European Union itself. However, in an open era of renewed questions about territorial conquest, it has been striking that there has been little concerted European effort to develop, resettle, repopulate and strengthen these sparsely populated territories. A European Union response should have entailed, at a minimum, a coalition of these six states under the banner of the EU, encouraging families to settle in these territories by making land and housing relatively affordable, while also encouraging businesses such as cafes, schools, data centres and AI and drone manufacturers to establish operations there. Small naval detachments, under joint patrolling commands, could provide a permanent security presence and help protect these communities and their surrounding waters. Yet none of that has so far materialised.

Other great powers have already recognised the strategic value of maintaining overseas networks and deploying personnel beyond their borders. Russia runs a state-directed expeditionary force in Africa, known as the Africa Corps, which originally developed from the rump of the now-defunct Wagner Group. Turkey uses military and security companies in countries including Libya, Syria, Somalia and Sudan. Chinese companies such as Frontier Services Group provide order in exchange for resources and the safety of Chinese engineers. Recent American involvement in Venezuela or American private actors providing security in Haiti are other such examples. From a purely strategic perspective, Europe could therefore make greater use of its overseas territories rather than treat them as distant, underdeveloped, marginal possessions. Developing these territories could provide new opportunities for population growth, investment, employment, housing, military bases and economic development.

Why has there been no such movement? Europeans have not yet grasped that recent global changes are structural, and are here to stay. The Trump Administration’s new National Security Strategy directs the United States towards a hemispheric empire. Venezuela is now run practically as a colony of the United States. This isn’t new, but a return to a very 19th-century conception of American power. As Brendan Simms wrote recently, the ‘western question’, for Europe and Britain, has returned.

The response of European states, from Denmark to Spain, has so far been to run under the umbrella of the EU while simultaneously waxing lyrical on the benefits of NATO and a US hegemony. But the European Union is by design fractured and unsuited for a world of renewed great-power predation. For decades, European states could rely on the United States as the ultimate guarantor of the norm against territorial conquest: an order that allowed them to treat the defence of distant overseas territories as a secondary concern. That arrangement can no longer be taken for granted.

The first practical problem is that European states, and even major European powers such as France, the UK and Spain, have limited incentives or capability to act alone. Yet banking on European solidarity is a gamble at a time when the continent is beset with persistent intra-European divisions. For the most part, the European response to the Ceuta crisis was to blame the Spanish government. The question of Greenland likewise pushed half of Europe to appease the United States. The Falklands will be no different.

The second problem is one of scale. For British overseas territories, Britain alone does not possess sufficient naval and military capacity to provide a strong and permanent defence of all of its worldwide territories and maritime interests, as well as to redevelop and resettle them. A coordinated CANZUK naval structure, however, could provide a much larger pool of ships, personnel, bases, intelligence capabilities and industrial capacity. But, despite the economic and military potential, there has been little serious movement towards creating CANZUK joint commands, banks or investment funds.

Both France and Spain face similar challenges, as they possess extensive overseas territories, military relationships and demographic networks that could provide personnel, foreign legions, bases and resources. And yet, these extended capabilities remain largely under-utilised, as they are organised through narrow national institutions.

The final related problem is political. Defending, resettling and developing dispersed overseas territories requires national governments to accept a broader understanding of national power. Imperial politics requires mass and scale, which automatically makes it overtly cosmopolitan. Any effective overseas strategy would require Europe’s major powers to think beyond their immediate demographic boundaries, and that approach is incompatible with the increasingly narrow and inward-looking forms of nationalism within. Populist politics also tends to prioritise issues that are geographically close and immediately visible to voters. Justifying overseas territories thousands of miles away becomes expensive and politically unimportant.

That brand of majoritarian populism is strategically short-sighted. Investment in overseas territories could contribute to European economic and demographic renewal by creating new places for families to settle, businesses to operate and infrastructure to develop. A data centre in a British overseas territory in the Pacific, for example, could create demand for housing, schools, cafes, restaurants, transport, telecommunications, energy infrastructure and other services. It could attract workers and families, encourage investment and create new communities around an existing overseas possession. Similar projects could be developed around AI research, drone manufacturing, satellite communications, renewable energy, ports and advanced manufacturing.

It would however require harnessing the material and demographic power of the entirety of CANZUK and more, not simply the United Kingdom. Economic, demographic and military growth create their own momentums. The paradox for European major powers is that they like to be considered as quasi-imperial entities with faraway overseas territories, while not adopting the requisite imperial policies, since doing so would go against, most importantly, majoritarian populism within their nation states. The ideas of a British Empire and Little England cannot coexist.

The major European powers who wish to defend and develop their overseas territories should therefore take several simple but urgent steps. First, they should create permanent overseas guards and legions: small, highly professional constabulary units recruited from their own territories, and from willing partner states with established military traditions. The system could build selectively on existing relationships within the British Commonwealth, Latin America and the Francophone world. It could also expand existing military exchanges with countries such as Fiji and Nepal, while France could develop a more systematic recruitment system for its Foreign Legion from Francophone countries. Recruitment should remain voluntary and legally regulated. These units could specialise in maritime security, island defence, disaster response, border security and expeditionary operations. Their relatively small size would keep costs manageable while giving European governments permanent forces specifically trained for the environments in which their overseas territories are located.

Second, European states with overseas territories should consider pooling resources towards an overseas territories investment fund or sovereign investment or defence-related bank dedicated to infrastructure and dual-use technology in their overseas territories. Investment priorities could include AI, drones, satellite communications, ports, renewable energy, undersea infrastructure, cybersecurity, telecommunications and advanced manufacturing. The objective would be to connect these strategically valuable territories economically, creating a network of mutually supporting overseas communities, with the aim of eventually resettling these territories.

The concept would have a historical precedent in the telegraph and steamship networks that connected European territories and commercial interests across the world during the 19th century. Modern technology could create a comparable network based on digital communications, satellites, autonomous systems, energy infrastructure and advanced manufacturing.

Finally, the major European powers with overseas territories should establish an exclusive intelligence-sharing arrangement focused specifically on their overseas domains. Such a framework could bring together intelligence concerning maritime activity, organised crime, terrorism, foreign military deployments, political instability, critical infrastructure, cyber threats and economic activity affecting the territories.

More than any other causal mechanism, it was fundamentally great-power competition and the fear of conquest and dismemberment that drove the expansion of major European powers from the 16th century onwards. This, in turn, produced a relentless effort to acquire land, resources and colonial manpower, sometimes through outright conquest, but more often through systems of governance, order, negotiated accommodation and the cooperation of local elites. Strategic competition, technological superiority and fear of rival great powers helped produce four centuries of European global dominance.

European major powers today do not lack money, talent or interest. What they lack is a strategic spark capable of restarting that competitive dynamic. The aegis of the European Union will not provide that. Individual major powers reviving their older imperial nodes and networks, might. A multipolar world is characteristically imperial, and is unlikely to favour any form of narrow nationalism because multipolarity, by definition, creates strategic conditions that small states cannot easily manage alone. Ceuta and the Falklands should therefore remind Spain, Britain and the rest of Europe’s major players, that 19th-century problems will require 19th-century templates.