This article analyses the systemic, geopolitical and strategic implications of recent changes in the world and suggests the elements of a European global strategy. Identifying the Indian Ocean as the ‘geographical fulcrum of the twenty-first century’, the author believes the region is an unnoticed but vital space where Europe must be present. Europe’s political unity, he maintains, will not happen peacefully or through consensus, but of necessity and via an alliance of ‘volunteers’. It will be more Bismarckian than federalist.