Since the start of the war in Iran, on February 28, 2026, Europe has once again exposed its most persistent strategic weakness: the distance between speech and presence. In an international system under pressure — energy, security, alliances and critical routes — two European leaders realized what many still hesitate to assume: influence is not proclaimed, it is exercised. And it is carried out on the ground.
Volodymyr Zelensky was the first European leader to act in accordance with this reading. In a world that has entered an era of systemic vulnerability, marked by interdependent, rapid and cumulative crises, Zelensky knows that the Middle East is not a peripheral theater, but a decisive space for the very evolution of the war in Ukraine. His tour of the region, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, and maintaining contacts with Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, was not a symbolic gesture: it was a strategic operation. By including Damascus in his itinerary, he reinforced a clear message: the balances in the Levant today are part of the power architecture that directly conditions European security.
Shortly afterwards, Giorgia Meloni became the first European Union leader to be present on the ground. His trip to the Gulf, focusing on Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, had a clear energy dimension, but it would be reductive to read it only from that perspective. By positioning himself alongside the main regional actors, Meloni affirmed something deeper: a European leadership that does not limit itself to reacting, but seeks to be where decisions are made. And it was.
The contrast is inevitable. As the crisis intensifies in one of the most volatile regions of the international system, the European presence on the ground has, in practice, been limited to these two leaders. Europe, as a bloc, remained mostly on the declarative level.
But contemporary geopolitics is no longer organized along these lines. We live in an era of systemic vulnerability, where energy, security, technology and regional stability intersect in real time. In this context, absence is not neutral: it is a loss of relevance. Being on the ground is no longer just a diplomatic gesture: it has become an instrument of power. It allows direct access to information, fine reading of local dynamics, building trust with decision makers and, most importantly, the ability to influence results. Those who aren’t there depend on third parties and always arrive late.
Zelensky and Meloni do not “yet” represent a unified Europe in external action, but they represent something perhaps more important: a political intuition aligned with the times in which we live. They realized that, in a world where power is fragmented and redistributed, presence is the new form of sovereignty.
Europe will have to make a choice: continue to produce statements from Brussels, maintaining an indirect and conditioned influence, or accept that, in the geopolitics of the 21st century, distance is irrelevance. Because, in a crisis, the line that separates those who count from those who are counted is drawn simply: between those who leave and those who stay.
Leave a Reply