The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - The Two-Speed EU of the Future || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

The EU struggles to take any decisive action on foreign and security policy because it has to wait for all 29 member states to agree. Whereas the US can make and enforce security decisions at the drop of a hat.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4bCclWO

Hey, all, Peter Zine here, coming from Colorado. Today we're going to talk about Europe. Specifically, the Europeans are being faced with, what is not a new problem. The idea is that the United States on a whim, in this case, with the Trump administration, and make a decision and enforce security realities across the continent in a matter of hours or days, whereas the Europeans have to sit down and have a meeting among their 29 member states and hash things out over days, over hours, over weeks, over months, over years. And then maybe, maybe, maybe there needs to be a new treaty that has to be ratified by everybody.

and so it's a decade or two decades or three decades from now when action finally starts happening. The problem is an age-old debate in Europe that goes back to the late 80s. The debate is over whether we should be bigger or closer. So the idea, step one, is that the more members the European Union has, the more geopolitical and economic heft it will have, and the more powerful it will be on the larger stage. And, you know, it doesn't take a lot of genius to see the logic behind that the United States is in part very powerful because it controls the best part of an entire

continent and that allows it to be a huge force economically, politically, politically, culturally, and project power. Where I say, Swaziland, not so much. And so when you take a country or take a union of the EU that has as many people as the United States, you would think at least on the surface that it should be able to punch at its weight. The problem with that is if you've got 29 members, you've got 29 opinions. And for the big issues, which most foreign affairs issues are big issues, and all security issues are big issues, everyone has to agree. Every single member has a veto.

So if only one country disagrees with the path, that plan falls apart, which is one of the reasons why four years into the war, with Europeans having explosions on their territory, a hot war, on their border, and the Russians specifically threatening each and every country individually, you still haven't seen the Europeans be able to take a really firm stance that has really tipped the balance because they have one member, Hungary, who is basically in the Russian's pocket. And it's galling. So being big is great, but that's not enough.

The second path is called getting closer or getting deeper. And the idea is that you change the treaty structure of the European Union so that these national vetoes don't exist or that they're harder to use. And if you do that, if you allow fewer voices to derail whatever the common goal happens to be, well, then you can act faster. The thing is, countries then have to give up their vetoes before the issue comes up, knowing that when an issue that is of importance to them surfaces, they might not be able to stop it. Now, the EU has edged this direction with something called qualified majority voting,

where a certain percentage of the states representing a certain certain percentage of the population can force something over the others. But this really has to do with economic issues that are really not all that important as opposed to foreign policy and especially security issues, which everyone thinks are. It's part of the reason why the United Kingdom ultimately left the EU. What's being debated now, also not a new idea, is something called a two-speed Europe, where you get a cluster of European countries that want to go the deeper route, who integrate more and more tightly and give away their vetoes for core decisions. So basically you'd have an EU light, that is everybody, and then in EU deep, which is a cluster of six, seven, ten,

15, 20, whatever the number happens to be, who agree to coordinate on not just economic and financial issues, but political and security issues as well, without those national vetoes, or at least with them watered down. It's an intriguing idea. Organizationally, it would be horrible because at every meeting you have to decide what is in what bucket and whatnot, and then those other people just leave the room because they've got vetoes and they're not invited. But there's a couple other obstacles that are going to prevent this from probably moving forward.

Step one, this requires yet another treaty. And every time the Europeans start a treaty process, it's at least a decade long. So whatever they do now is not for the Ukraine war. It's for the world on the other side of Ukraine, on the other side of Trump. And based how things go, there may be a hot war in Europe when that is happening. And so this will all be tossed to the side based on current circumstances. The second problem is that the two countries that matter the most in these discussions are Germany because it's the largest population and the largest economy and the biggest industrial place by far.

And France, because it has a nuclear deterrent and is the most powerful military by far, and is also second largest in the Union by every other measure. These countries don't want to give up their vetoes. Think of it this way. Let's say the United States and Canada merge into a super state. And let's say the next president just happened to be from Ontario. And all of a sudden you have a Canadian commander-in-chief commanding American forces. Can you see how that would be really awkward?

So in the case of a deeper union where the Germans and the French and a lot of other countries are involved, let's say we have a, I don't know, a Latvian president. And the Latvian president is now commanding the French nuclear force. This sort of integration culturally for everyone to really, truly, deeply agree that they're on same sides to the point they're willing to bleed because someone else made a decision. That is not something that happens or two or five or ten or twenty years. That is something that has to start at the beginning or require a devastating conflict that is so extreme that everyone was already fighting and dying on the same side anyway. That just hasn't happened in Europe yet and

it's probably not going to happen even with the Ukraine war or more to the point any sort of merger would happen after. So all the countries who want to maintain their vetoes could veto this plan. And then once you get to the other side, you have to decide what sorts of sovereignty to pool and whether that actually makes a difference at all. Because when you're talking about the Trump administration specifically or the United States in general, all of this is already done. All of this was done over 200 years ago. You could even argue that since the civil war, it's been locked in hard. When someone from Virginia or New York or California is president, It's not like you have a half a dozen states that refuse to pay taxes and actually go through with it or pull their troops.

There's no legal structure. There's no cultural structures. There's no support in these societies for things like that. In Europe, all of that is still there. These are nation states talking about pulling power. They are not component states of a larger political entity. So I find this very unlikely that this, just like the last couple times it's gone down, is going to lead anywhere. The question is whether or not the legal structures of the EU are going to fracture under the pressures that they're in.

And if once that happens, a new form ultimately emerges from the other side. And I'm down on paper going back 20 years saying that some version of that is far more likely than the negotiating incrementally into a more federal Europe. Because these systems we have right now in Europe are designed for globalism. They're designed for multi-party democracy. They are designed for not having a hot war, and those worlds are going away. And I really doubt the Europeans are going to be able to adapt their institutions before they snap. Now, what happens on the other side of that? That's a different conversation.

But we have to have that breaking event first. Brexit didn't do it. So far, the Ukraine war hasn't done it. And it doesn't look at the Trump administration is going to be doing it. So it's going to have to be something a lot more dramatic. And that's just not in the cards. today.