April 21st, 2026

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The European Union’s difficulty in forging a forceful and coherent foreign policy is often blamed on institutional limits or on leadership gaps. But the deeper constraint is domestic — and it runs through European societies themselves.

Across Europe, a new divide is hardening over how to respond to Russia’s aggression. The divide cuts across the familiar lines of left and right, and even across longstanding battles over European integration.

At its core lies a simple but decisive question: should Europe confront Russian aggression to prevent a wider attack, or should Europeans be looking for ways to forge a compromise with their Russian neighbour, even at Ukraine’s expense? European citizens are divided.

Russia’s war against Ukraine is no longer a foreign policy question for Europeans. It has become a domestic political battleground.

This security–collaboration divide structures public opinion, reshapes party competition, and increasingly decides elections. Political parties and candidates have begun to take clear, sometimes starkly opposing positions—and voters are on board.

The graph below shows that there is not one single factor that distinguishes the security-oriented Europeans from the collaboration-oriented. This dimension cuts across many standard cleavages including East/West, left-right, pro EU and anti-EU.

Europe’s geopolitical challenge is not only external. The end of the Orbán era does not resolve Europe’s Russia problem; it reveals how deeply it is embedded in domestic politics. The divide is not temporary — it is structural. And it will shape Europe’s capacity to act for years to come. Canada’s strategy should be calibrated accordingly.

Dietlind Stolle is James McGill professor in political science at McGill University and the former director of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship.