It could well become one of the iconic images of the war: a Libyan man, grinning broadly, walking the streets of Benghazi holding a self-made design that reads very simply, “Merci Sarkozy.”

It is a sentiment that, given the continued unrest in post-Qaddafi Libya, the French president may one day come to regret. But it speaks to a broader truth in international relations: true influence in global affairs can only come if soft power is backed by its harder counterpart.

For all of Nicolas Sarkozy’s attempts to exert European influence in North Africa—he expended huge amounts of political capital just three years ago to set up a now almost forgotten Union for the Mediterranean—it was not until he ordered Rafale fighters to bomb Tripoli that he changed the shape of the region’s future, for good or for ill.

It is a reality that the European Union frequently seems to want to ignore. Indeed, the very idea of creating a high representative for foreign affairs was driven by the desire to bring together, in one coordinator, all of the EU’s global soft power roles, particularly in trade and development.

But security policy, which technically is also part of the high representative’s remit, has never seemed to be on the agenda. As one senior American official recently fretted to me, if the EU could not find a role in the Libya war—a relatively simple air campaign against a country with a third-world military—it will never be able to become a hard power player.

The importance of hard power is frequently denigrated in EU circles. As the world’s largest economic bloc, the thinking goes, a more coordinated and focused use of trade policy and development aid—taken together with a new, sophisticated diplomatic corps—should move the EU to the top ranks of international actors.

But that logic belies almost all recent evidence to the contrary. Japan, the consummate financial giant and military dwarf, has played little to no role in influencing international affairs beyond its immediate waters despite spending much of the last twenty years as the world’s second largest economy.

China, on the other hand, has grasped reality and now spends as much on defense as France and Britain combined. All one needs to do is spend a few minutes with leaders in capitals as disparate as Canberra, New Delhi, and Jakarta—not to mention Washington—to sense how the People’s Liberation Army build-up is shifting strategic thinking throughout the world.

Even where aid policy has been coordinated and well directed, its influence has been limited. The billions of euros spent by the EU on development aid in the Palestinian territories over the last fifteen years has not increased its influence on the Arab-Israeli conflict, just as the billions of dollars spent by the United States on aid to Pakistan appears to have had almost no effect on American influence over Islamabad’s strategic priorities.

And there is a moral question that attaches itself to such efforts: should aid and trade policy really be used for strategic purposes, when both—particularly development assistance—is intended to help feed and clothe the needy masses?

Rightly or wrongly, Europe’s influence overseas remains strongly tied to the legacy of empire and the deployability of its militaries. Britain and France drove a global coalition into war in North Africa not on the strength of its strategic vision, or at least not entirely. It was because of its ability and willingness to use its air forces in anger.

Similarly, Britain still plays a top-tier role in South Asia and the Middle East—and France in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa—because of the historical ties derived from their histories of colonization. It may be an uncomfortable reality, but it is reality nonetheless.

One of my most vivid memories from my postings in Baghdad are the meals I spent with a retired (and now deceased) Iraqi admiral who waxed poetic about his admiration for the British military, under whose guidance he had done much training, decades after all legal ties to Britain had gone. His grandfather had fought alongside the British-backed King Faisal during the Arab Revolt—and he had the photos to prove it.

It has become fashionable in Brussels to argue those ties are gone, never to be recaptured. But as the 2009 furor that erupted in India over David Miliband’s ill-timed lecture on Kashmir and the more recent reliance on French forces to restore order in Côte d’Ivoire both illustrate, former colonial masters still play an outsized role in the worldview of their former colonies.

The lesson, then, is not to ignore Europe’s strengths—its still formidable, though weakening, militaries; its historical ties to certain parts of the developing world—in order to form a new, soft, Brussels-based power. Instead, it should be refocusing on those very things that make it an influential global player. Countries should be reinvesting in their depleted militaries and ending the gradual—and in some cases, not so gradual—chipping away at their diplomatic corps.

Conveniently, Europe already has a common security forum where its military strengths are focused and where its global ties could be maximized. They don’t call it a common security policy, however. They call it an alliance.

Even though it sits just minutes away, en route to Brussels’s airport, the EU seems to regard the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as an afterthought. One NATO ambassador from a non-EU country once claimed to me he spent more time with his country’s EU ambassador than most of his European counterparts. It may have been an exaggeration, but at times it doesn’t appear like much of one.

To be sure, there is the awkward issue of Turkey and Cyprus. But if the EU truly wants to see its geopolitical role in the world match its economic standing, it will force Cyprus to allow Turkey into the EU’s security dialogue so that the two Brussels-based organizations can work seamlessly together.

Robert Gates, the former U.S. defense secretary, once told me about a spat he had with then-French foreign minister Bernard Kushner in which he described NATO as the front military wheel of a geostrategic bicycle that should have the EU as the back political wheel. Kushner dismissed the idea, but it seems apt—only through the close collaboration between Europe’s currently disparate military and political competencies can it truly achieve a top-tier role as a global actor.

Rather than creating new and sometimes redundant structures, to create a truly strategic Europe, leaders should strengthen the institutions the EU already has. It should build on its advantages—its military traditions, its legacy of empire, its diplomatic expertise—and push the EU ever closer to NATO, where its strategic vision can be given the hard power it needs.

Peter Spiegel is Brussels bureau chief of the Financial Times and a former national security correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal.

To reinvigorate debate over European foreign policy and Europe’s role in the world, Carnegie Europe is publishing a series of essays from leading policymakers, diplomats, experts, and journalists on Strategic Europe over the coming weeks. A new essay will appear every day.