Cradle of democracy, freedom? Why Europe can't live without an empire to dictate its peoples

By Jorge Coulon 

Europe calls itself the cradle of democracy and freedom. And yet it is also the continent that still preserves monarchies as if they were part of the natural landscape, unquestioned relics of a lineage believed to be immutable. This contradiction reveals a profound orphanhood: Europe has not known how to live without a parent to submit to, without an empire to order it, without a guardian figure to dictate the destiny of its peoples.

The fall of Rome was the first orphanhood. Since then, the continent has done nothing but seek substitute parents: the Pope, the German emperors, the Bourbons, Napoleon, the Habsburgs, the Third Reich. Each European war was—more than a territorial dispute—a desperate attempt to impose an empire on others, a single parent who would restore the lost order. The blood shed was not only for borders: it was the price of that unconscious need for protection.

But not all the anxiety was within its borders. For centuries, Europe lived in a relationship of fear and attraction with the empires of the East: the caliphs, the sultans, the Ottoman power advancing on its gates. That threat also became a fascination: Constantinople as a dream jewel, the crescent moon as a mirror image of the cross. Imperial Islam represented both the nightmare of the enemy and the temptation of another possible parent, stronger, more vast, more absolute. Europe fought it at Lepanto, contained it in Vienna, but never ceased to feel defined by it.

This tension with the Muslim East reinforced the paradox of a continent that is always building itself in opposition to the other, seeking in its adversary the parent it refuses to accept in itself. The 20th century, after the catastrophe of two world wars, left the continent in ruins and stripped bare. Its orphanhood was resolved by surrendering itself to another parent: the United States.

Under its protective wing and nuclear umbrella, Europe found security at the cost of its sovereignty. The European Union, instead of being a project of emancipation, became more of a technocratic guardian, incapable of becoming an autonomous political power, trapped between military dependence on NATO and submission to markets that dictate invisible rules.

The most tragic thing was the missed opportunity: the possibility for Europe to emerge as a cultural and political alternative to the empires that had devastated it. It never had the cultural capacity or the historical courage to be itself. Reconciliation with its diversity and the construction of a radical and plural democracy were open doors that it chose not to walk through. The weight of history acted as a black hole: it distorted the field, devoured its potential, and absorbed any attempt at autonomy. Where it could have given birth to a new form of civilization, it chose the comfort of tutelage and the mirage of consumption. Europe swallowed up its best thinkers, nullified its greatest achievements in terms of human values, and ended up weakening its ability to offer the world a different vision of common life.

The most paradoxical thing is that, deep down, Europe fears achieving its highest aspirations. Democracy and freedom are the names it proclaims, but it never fully embraces them.

There is always an excuse to delay their fulfillment: external threats, internal instability, the weight of history. It is as if it fears that, upon reaching that threshold, it will discover that adulthood does not consist of having a parent who rules, but of living without it.

Orphaned Europe, instead of embracing its orphanhood as an adult condition, insists on dreaming of empires. It cannot bear the harshness of its freedom. It prefers the nostalgia of scepters and thrones to the harshness of radical democracy. That is why its monarchies continue to breathe as if they were normal. That is why its political geography is a graveyard of empires that never stopped dreaming of returning.

Perhaps the continent's destiny is to recognize that orphanhood as its true identity. Not as a lack, but as a strength. Orphanhood does not need a parent: it needs memory and courage. And Europe, if it ever stops dreaming of empires, may finally learn what it means to live in freedom.

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This article was produced by Globetrotter. Jorge Coulon is a musician, writer, and cultural manager. He is a founding member of the group Inti Illimani. He has published Al vuelo (1989); La sonrisa de Víctor Jara (2009); Flores de mall (2011) and, most recently, En las cuerdas del tiempo. Una historia de Inti Illimani (2024)