by Magnus Söderman
It is no longer enough to manage the ruins of the old Europe, nor to rely on some imagined renaissance of the nation-state. Either we reclaim history, or the future will be shaped by others.
A person who lacks self-confidence and constantly apologises for their own existence may earn sympathy from others. Rarely respect. And they will quietly watch their deepest ambitions and dreams fade away. For a civilisation, the ending is far more brutal.
You do not build confidence by apologising for yourself. There is, of course, a balance to strike, but endlessly flattering Donald Trump or showing understanding for Russia’s aggression is not enough. When the great powers rattle their weapons, we should not transform into a peace movement that immediately backs down.
Rearming and preparing to defend
what is ours without hesitation does not make someone a warmonger. To assert sovereignty — and perhaps even raise our ambitions further — may be a risky game, but it is the only correct path. Sometimes it seems that our political opponents, or at least some of them, understand this better than the opposition’s placard-waving pacifists.
Emmanuel Macron wants to open the door to a European nuclear umbrella, and Friedrich Merz declares that Germany must build the most powerful army in Europe. The Nordic countries will defend Greenland, while battle-hardened Ukrainians share their experience. This may be the beginning of something important.
I am particularly concerned by the fear that a militarised, Europe-centred NATO would simply become another spearhead for the ideological madness that has dominated our continent for decades. Those who believe that miss a basic truth: militarisation does not produce left-liberal absurdities. When life and death, defence and war once again become real, a reset takes place. The fundamental principles that sustain peoples, nations and civilisations return to the forefront. It is precisely the absence of these principles that has allowed left-liberal self-destructive behaviour to flourish.
Neither the gender-trained advertising strategists within the armed forces nor the recycled 1968 radicals of the EU bureaucracy will last long once “achtung Panzer” echoes above roaring diesel engines and Jas and Mirage jets break the sound barrier overhead. A soldier instinctively prepares to sacrifice his life for blood, land and the deeper bonds that truly matter. That is what motivates people. The diversity brochures will be trampled into the mud beneath heavy boots and forgotten the moment military exercises begin in the Baltics.
Our task is not to feed Europe’s
insecurity or continue suppressing the potential within our own people. On the contrary, we proclaim that Sweden is our country and the Swedes are its people. Beyond that: Europe is our civilisation and our greater historical sphere.
Europe cannot be understood as merely an administrative construction or a marketplace created by treaties and bureaucrats. Europe is older than all modern institutions. It has been shaped through millennia by peoples, languages, faith, struggle, philosophy, science, art and shared experience. The European peoples are different, yet they belong to the same civilisational family.
In a world dominated by continental powers, no European nation can fully defend its freedom, economic independence or cultural identity alone any longer. Europe’s fragmentation has become our weakness. Our age therefore demands a new European realism.
Europe is not only geography. Europe is a historical and cultural organism shaped through centuries of shared development. From Athens and Rome to the Nordic kingdoms, from cathedrals to universities, from voyages of discovery to science and art, there runs a continuous tradition.
The peoples of Europe are branches growing from the same trunk, and together they should not merely form a European Union, but an Imperium Europa — one grounded not only in culture and history, but also in geopolitical reality and the recognition that the old European nationalisms were, in part, self-destructive.
No genuine community can exist without compromise. European nations will at times have to accept limitations on their own short-term interests in order to secure the long-term strength of the continent. That is civilisational maturity in a globalised world.
Just as the provinces and regions of Sweden were once brought together into a greater kingdom, the peoples of Europe must learn to think beyond immediate national egoism.
Perhaps the idea is uncomfortable. It has been for me as well. But I cannot ignore the alternative: a weak Europe descending into a chaotic mixture of rivalries, with nations once again looking toward foreign superpowers for protection and favour, while irresponsible nationalism refuses to lift its eyes beyond the nation-state at the expense of our civilisation’s future.
“But how realistic is it to speak of Imperium Europa considering the state of Europe today?” The question is fair. Yet it also reveals the insecurity we must overcome. If you step into an arena facing an opponent larger and stronger than yourself, knowing the fight will happen whether you wish it or not, then you would do well to remember Cook’s words from the poem How Did You Die? Then you enter the struggle determined not merely to survive, but to win. The alternative is surrender before the first blow has even been struck.
The civilisational struggle is already underway. There is no escaping it. So there is no harm in daring to think big. Think Imperium Europa.
It is hardly a new idea. I share it with Charlemagne. The Holy Roman Empire was chaotic and divided, yet the idea of a shared European destiny was present within it. Carl Schmitt’s concept of Grossraum, along with figures such as Count Coudenhove-Kalergi and Baron Evola, also looked beyond the narrow and immediate.
Of course, this is an election year (in Sweden)
and naturally “the small” will dominate political debate. That is understandable. But the age of the small state — at least for now — is coming to an end, and whether we like it or not, another order is emerging.
The idea of small-scale libertarianism or a new-old agrarian society is beautiful, I cannot deny it. It is a utopian dream, fascinating in its own way, just as revolutionary romanticism stirs something within every man. But in the end these are literary exercises, and I have made peace with that reality.
Fortunately, there is still a place for strong local identities within Imperium Europa. Throughout our history, regional identities have remained powerful. The Swedish nation-state — itself a top-down construction — never managed to erase the distinct identity of the people of Jämtland. French, certainly, but region first. And yes, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern exists, but Bavaria is far closer to the heart of the woman whose family has awakened to the sight of Munich for ten generations.
Empire is an idea — an attitude that looks outward, upward and beyond. The region is life, soul and home. The local and familiar is organic and instinctive, while empire represents civilisation, scale, endurance and continuity across time. Region and empire are both older than the nation-state. What becomes of the nation-state in the future, I do not know, but because its foundation is more artificial and imposed from above, it is easier to reshape than either regional or civilisational identity.
Perhaps that is where the true dividing line lies: between those who still believe the peoples of Europe can survive as historical actors, and those who have already accepted that our continent should be reduced to little more than a geographic area among others. A museum of former greatness. A marketplace. A tourist destination. An administrative waiting room between Washington, Moscow and Beijing.
I refuse to accept that. And I do not believe Europe’s peoples truly accept it either. For decades we have been taught to feel shame about power, to distrust strength, and to see every expression of civilisational self-confidence as a step toward catastrophe. But no civilization survives through self-hatred. No culture endures by endlessly apologising for its own existence. Sooner or later, Europe too must once again choose to live.
In the end, Imperium Europa is not primarily about maps, bureaucracy or uniforms. It is about the will to remain something distinct in history. About daring to think in generations rather than election cycles. About understanding that freedom can never be separated from strength, and that strength always demands sacrifice, loyalty and a common direction.
Otherwise others will shape the future for us. And then our children and grandchildren will no longer ask why Europe failed. They will ask why we abandoned it while we still had the chance to defend it.
