Politics & Power Quote by Hjalmar Branting

Branting manages to congratulate and caution in the same breath, which is exactly what you do when history is moving faster than diplomacy can metabolize. The “new, free nations” aren’t just a feel-good postscript to empire; they are political actors reentering a club that was never designed for them. By calling their arrival “the return of the prodigal son,” he borrows a moral fable of homecoming and forgiveness, but he also smuggles in hierarchy: Europe as the father-house, the “new” states as wayward children. It’s generosity with a paternal edge, a welcome that quietly sets terms.

Then he pivots: celebration, yes, but also “new sources of friction here and there.” The phrase is deliberately understated, almost breezy, as if boundary disputes, minority claims, and revenge politics are mere scuffs on an otherwise polished floor. That minimization is the tell. Branting, a social democratic statesman and internationalist, is signaling a post-World War I reality: self-determination is ethically compelling and strategically combustible. Nations carved out of collapsed empires (especially in Central and Eastern Europe) bring unresolved maps, competing national myths, and great-power anxieties back into the “community” that had just torn itself apart.

The intent is to sell integration without romanticizing it: welcome these states, but don’t pretend their admission is cost-free. The subtext is a warning to Western European audiences tempted to treat independence as the end of the story. Branting is hinting that liberation is not a clean reset; it’s the start of a new negotiation over borders, legitimacy, and who gets to define “Europe” in the first place.