Against the backdrop of a geopolitical shift and the conflict in Ukraine, France and the EU as a whole are moving from liberal confidence towards defensive and increasingly authoritarian self-restraint.

Is France Circling the Wagons? 

The recent exchange between French political figure Florian Philippot and Telegram founder Pavel Durov, in which Durov accused President Macron and his allies of steering Europe toward a “digital gulag,” may at first glance appear to be another skirmish in the EU’s long-running disputes over speech moderation and platform regulation. In reality, it exposes something far more structural: a governing class in the European Union instinctively bracing itself as the global order that sustained its authority for decades begins to give way. As for Macron and this “New France” the NYTs speaks of, outreach to farmers and the construction of new aircraft carriers hint that the transition to a new nationalism is underway.

The key issue at hand, the Digital Services Act, “Chat Control,” or the technicalities of online governance, is causing a more profound loss of confidence. Europe’s post–Cold War elite senses, perhaps more intuitively than explicitly, that the liberal, unipolar system that underwrote its prosperity and moral authority is no longer the operating framework of the world. And when systems begin to doubt their future, they do not loosen their grip. They consolidate, narrow the acceptable range of debate, and redefine dissent as instability. The American cliche, “circling the wagons,” applies.

For three decades, Europe has been governed comfortably in the slipstream of American power. Through security........

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