Every political order rests on a story it tells about itself. For eighty years, the Western narrative was coherent and compelling: a community of democratic nations, bound by shared values, had constructed an international order where law constrained power, institutions enabled cooperation, and the strong accepted limits for the benefit of all. America led this order not merely through might but through legitimacy; the arsenal of democracy, the indispensable nation, the shining city on a hill.

That story died in the first week of January 2026.

When American helicopters lifted Nicolás Maduro from Caracas, they carried more than a deposed dictator. They carried the remains of a narrative that had already been fraying for years but had never been so publicly, so brutally, so unapologetically torn apart.

The challenge facing Europe (by which we mean the EU, and other states under the security umbrella such as the United Kingdom, Norway, and the broader democratic community) is not merely military or economic. It is fundamentally narrative. What story does the West tell now? What story does Europe tell about itself? And in a world of competing narratives, whose story wins?

The Competing Narratives

America's New Story: Dominance Without Apology

The Trump administration is not operating without a narrative. It has simply replaced one story with another.

Let’s be clear the US has often acted with impunity, but it has always fabricated the story to fit the myth. The old American narrative spoke of leadership through example, alliances as partnerships, and power exercised within self-imposed constraints. The new narrative is older still, it is a return to nineteenth-century great power politics dressed in twenty-first-century language. The Monroe Doctrine has been explicitly revived as the "Trump Corollary." The Western Hemisphere is America's sphere of influence. Within that sphere, American interests are supreme, and those interests are unapologetically material: oil, minerals, strategic position.

This narrative has the virtue of honesty. When Defence Secretary Hegseth promises America will "get something economically in return," he is not dissembling. When Trump states he will "run" Venezuela and "deal with" Greenland, he means it. The gap between rhetoric and reality—always the weakness of the old Western narrative—has been closed.

The new American story also has domestic resonance. It speaks to an American public exhausted by decades of inconclusive foreign interventions framed as values promotion. No more nation-building. No more democracy export. No more blood and treasure spent on ungrateful foreigners. America first, in simple and comprehensible terms. But this narrative carries costs. It cannot be universalised. It offers nothing to allies except subordination, nothing to the global South except a choice of masters, nothing to the international system except a return to the logic of spheres and strength. It is a story that works for the hegemon and no one else.

Russia's Story: Vindication

Moscow is narrating January 2026 as vindication of everything it has argued for two decades.

When Russia annexed Crimea, the West condemned it as a violation of the rules-based order. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West framed the conflict as democracy versus autocracy, law versus lawlessness. Russia always countered that this framing was hypocritical and that America acted no differently when its interests were engaged, that international law was merely a tool of Western dominance.

Venezuela proves Moscow's point. 

The United States has now done what it condemned Russia for doing: used military force to impose regime change in a sovereign state. The legal pretexts differ, drug trafficking charges versus protecting Russian speakers, but the substance is identical. Power determines outcomes and the law is decoration, the story to play the game. 

Russian strategic communications are already exploiting this relentlessly. Every Western criticism of Russian behaviour can now be met with a single word: Venezuela. Every appeal to international law can be dismissed as hypocrisy. The moral authority the West claimed in opposing Russian aggression has been squandered by America itself.

This narrative has particular potency in the global South, where memories of Western intervention are long and resentment of Western moralising (and European Empire) runs deep. Russia is positioning itself not as a defender of international law, for its own violations are too obvious, but as an honest broker in a world where all great powers behave the same way. 

China's Story: The Responsible Power

Beijing is narrating Venezuela as the latest evidence of American decline and Chinese ascent. This is not through triumphalism, which would be counterproductive, but through careful positioning as the responsible alternative.

Chinese strategic communications emphasise three themes. First, America is chaotic and destabilising, a declining power lashing out unpredictably, dangerous to friends and enemies alike. Second, China respects sovereignty and non-interference, preferring economic partnership to military coercion. Third, the future belongs to those who build rather than those who destroy.

This narrative is, of course, selective. Chinese coercion in the South China Sea, pressure on Taiwan, and domestic repression all contradict the story of peaceful development. But narratives need not be true to be effective. They need only be more credible than the alternative.

Venezuela gifts China an extraordinary opportunity. Beijing can now claim the moral high ground on international law. Not because China follows it, but because America has so visibly abandoned it. In a competition between two hypocrites, the one who hypocritises (is that a word?) less loudly may win.

Chinese messaging in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia has already been shifting.

Europe's Story: The Silence

And what is Europe's narrative? What story does democratic Europe tell about January 2026?

The honest answer is that Europe has not yet found its voice. The response to Venezuela was fragmented and mealy-mouthed. The EU called for "restraint" and respect for international law without naming the violator. Individual nations ranged from Spain's clear condemnation to Eastern European silence to British fence-sitting. Norway, outside the EU but inside NATO, has (at the time of writing) said almost nothing.

This incoherence is not merely tactical failure. It reflects a deeper narrative crisis. Europe's story about itself depended on the transatlantic partnership. The narrative of democratic values, institutional cooperation, and rules-based order assumed American commitment to the same principles. When that assumption collapses, the European story becomes incoherent.

What remains? Europeans can no longer claim to represent a unified West, because the West is visibly disunified. They cannot claim that rules constrain great powers, because the greatest power has just demonstrated otherwise. They cannot claim moral authority through association with America, because that association is now a liability.

The Narratives at Stake

What Has Been Weakened

The Rules-Based International Order

This phrase, increasingly contested. Over recent years, is now functionally dead as a serious organising principle. The rules-based order always depended on the fiction that its primary guarantor was also its primary adherent. When America openly violates the rules it wrote, the concept collapses. Future invocations of the rules-based order will be met with derision in Moscow, Beijing, and much of the global South. Europe can no longer rely on this language to legitimate its positions.

Western Unity

The narrative of a unified West has been shattered (much to the joy of Putin et al) The interests of the United States and Europe have diverged fundamentally, not merely on tactics but on basic principles. Europe cannot pretend this divergence does not exist. Nor can it pretend that unity will be restored when administrations change; the forces driving American behaviour are structural, not personal.

NATO as Values Alliance

NATO was always a military alliance, but its legitimacy rested partly on a narrative of shared democratic values. That narrative cannot survive American threats against a founding member's territory. NATO may continue as a military arrangement, but its identity as a community of values is finished. Future NATO communications that invoke shared principles will ring hollow.

Democracy Promotion

The Western narrative of democracy promotion, the idea that democratic nations have standing to encourage democratic development elsewhere, has been severely damaged. When the leading democracy kidnaps presidents and announces it will "run" other countries, appeals to democratic values become self-parody. European democracy promotion efforts will face heightened scepticism; why should anyone believe European motives are different from American ones?

What Has Been Exposed

European Dependence

The depth of European security dependence on America has been brutally exposed. Europe cannot defend Denmark against American pressure. It cannot deter American coercion. It cannot even articulate a unified position. The narrative of European strategic autonomy is publicly revealed as aspiration without substance (it has been factually true  since inception, now this reality matters). 

The Limits of Soft Power

Europe has long told itself that soft power - economic weight, normative influence, institutional leadership - compensates for limited hard power. Venezuela demonstrates the limits of this belief. Soft power did not constrain American action. It did not protect Maduro (nor should it have, given his record). It offers no protection to Denmark. Hard power remains the ultimate currency, and Europe has underinvested catastrophically.

The Transactional Reality

The transatlantic relationship is now exposed as transactional in ways Europeans preferred not to acknowledge. American protection was never unconditional; it was always contingent on American interest.

The narrative of alliance-as-partnership is revealed as alliance-as-patronage, and the patron has begun demanding payment.

What Might Be Strengthened

European Identity as Distinct

Paradoxically, the rupture with America may strengthen a distinctly European narrative. If Europe can no longer define itself through association with America, it must define itself on its own terms. This is painful but potentially clarifying. What does Europe stand for, independent of what America stands for? The question is now unavoidable.

The Narrative of Constraint

Europe might claim the narrative ground America has abandoned: the idea that power should be constrained by law, that sovereignty matters, that international institutions serve collective interests. This narrative is available. Europe has not invaded anyone recently. It has not kidnapped any presidents. It continues to operate through multilateral frameworks, however imperfectly.

This is not a narrative of strength but of legitimacy; and legitimacy has value. In a world where America and China compete through coercion, Europe might offer an alternative, a partnership without domination, cooperation without subordination. The global South may be more receptive to this message now than before Venezuela.

Democratic Resilience

European democracies have an opportunity to narrate their own resilience. The democratic backsliding visible in Hungary and elsewhere can be framed as a challenge being met rather than a decline being suffered. If Europe can demonstrate that its democracies remain functional, legitimate, and capable of collective action, it offers proof of concept that the democratic model works, even when its supposed leader has abandoned it.

What Is the Western Narrative Now?

This is the central question, and it does not yet have an answer. Indeed in many respects the reinforcement of the Monroe Doctrine approach by the White House puts Europe outside the original concept of "the western hemisphere. So what is the West, and what might it mean?

The "West" as a narrative construct may not survive 2026. In fact, in some respects that might be helpful if it didn't. The term implied unity of values and purpose between North America and Europe, and the wider Anglosphere, if not wider democratic word. That unity is visibly absent. Continued use of "the West" as a framing device obscures more than it reveals.

What might replace it? There are many ways this could go, but here are the most likely possibilities:

The Democratic World

Europe might shift from "Western" to "democratic" as its primary narrative frame, outside of English this is often the framing you find already. This positions Europe as part of a global community of democracies - including Japan, South Korea, Australia, and others - without privileging the American relationship. It allows for American inclusion when American behaviour warrants it, and exclusion when it does not. The narrative of democratic solidarity is more flexible than Western unity; it can accommodate American dysfunction without being destroyed by it. After all, America does not own democracy. 

The European Project

Europe might turn inward, narrating itself as a distinctive civilisational project: the attempt to build transnational cooperation on the basis of law, rights, and institutions. This narrative does not require American validation. It positions Europe as an experiment in post-national governance, imperfect but worth defending on its own terms. The risk is insularity, a Europe that talks only to itself, losing influence in a world that does not share its preoccupations.

The Multipolar Middle

Europe might narrate itself as a pole in a multipolar world, not aligned with America against China, nor equidistant between great powers, but pursuing European interests through European means. This is Gaullist logic extended to the continental scale. The narrative accepts great power competition as the operating environment and positions Europe as a player rather than a prize. The risk is that Europe lacks the cohesion and capability to sustain this role; the narrative would be aspirational rather than descriptive.

The Narrative Battle Ahead

The coming months will determine which narratives prevail, not through an abstract debate but through events, responses, and the stories told about them.

If Greenland falls under American control (however that may be) the narrative of European weakness becomes entrenched. If Europe responds with genuine strategic initiative, the narrative of European resilience gains credibility. If European responses remain fragmented, the narrative of European irrelevance takes hold.

Russia and China will invest heavily in narrative warfare. They will amplify European divisions, mock European pretensions, and position themselves as alternatives to a discredited West. They have significant advantages: state-controlled media, sophisticated disinformation capabilities, and receptive audiences in a global South already sceptical of Western moralising.

Europe must fight on this terrain.

Fundamentally, it requires an answer to the values question. Narratives that lack substance eventually collapse. If Europe claims to stand for democracy, rights, and law, it must demonstrate that claim through action. If it claims strategic autonomy, it must build the capacity to achieve it. If it claims to offer an alternative to great power coercion, it must show that alternative works.

The story Europe tells will shape what Europe becomes. In the silence left by America's narrative self-destruction, the space exists for Europe to speak. The question is whether Europe has anything to say.

Conclusion: The Battle for Meaning

Geopolitics is ultimately a battle for meaning. Power matters, but power is mobilised through narrative. Nations act on the stories they believe about themselves and others. Alliances cohere around shared narratives and fracture when those narratives diverge.

January 2026 marks the end of one narrative era and the uncertain beginning of another. The story of the West - unified, values-driven, institutionally anchored - is over. What replaces it is not yet determined.

Europe's challenge is not merely to defend territory or maintain prosperity. It is to articulate why European political life is worth defending - what distinguishes it, what it offers, and crucially, why it matters. This is the narrative that must be constructed, communicated, and sustained, not just by campaigns and government communication (in fact not forced at all) but by communicating it through action. 

The alternative is silence. And in the narrative battle now underway, silence is defeat.