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Political extremism is widespread on the EU’s periphery. Even more alarming is that signs of chauvinism, fuelled by economic resentment and fear of immigration, are reappearing in western Europe, reflected in part in the recent referendums. The entire party system no longer seems to fit many voters’ needs, leading to eruptions of inchoate and nihilist anger.

So far these tendencies have been limited but, with the exception of eastern Germany, western Europe has only experienced prolonged economic stagnation, not a full-scale depression. If such a depression strikes Europe, then pluralist democracy as we have understood it may indeed be at serious risk.

A critical problem is that the EU’s two great historical challenges are now pulling it in opposite directions. On the one hand, further enlargement is critical to spreading democracy, development and peace. On the other, west European electorates have made clear they will not tolerate further enlargement if this involves increased subsidies and immigration, especially Muslim immigration. For European governments to ignore these signals, and bring Turkey into the EU without referendums, would require abandoning any pretence of making the EU or individual state elites more responsive to their publics. This would ensure a drastic worsening of anti-establishment extremism across western Europe.

I remember in this context two conversations with Germans from 12 years ago, during a period of heightened debate on immigration and German national and cultural identity. One, a liberal intellectual, told me that the fears of many ordinary Germans should simply be dismissed as both inherently contemptible and contrary to Germany’s real economic interest.

The other interview was with former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. He told me that having experienced what German chauvinism had once done to Europe and Germany, he was extremely cautious about “fooling around” with identities and emotions in this fashion. Given the rise of the radical right in several parts of Europe, we would indeed be fools not to pay attention to warnings of this kind.

And, without Turkish membership of the EU, how can one dream about membership for Ukraine? Even if Ukrainian membership can only take place in the very long term, to proceed towards it while blocking Turkey would make it clear that the EU is a white Christian or post-Christian club. This would send the worst possible signal to the Muslim world in general and risk gravely destabilising Turkey.

There is no way to abolish this dilemma. It can, however, be mitigated if the EU combines modesty with imagination. EU leaders should recognise that given the internal division, lack of democratic will and, above all, economic weakness among the existing member states, grandiose plans for further enlargement must be abandoned.

The promise of membership must, however, still be held out to the countries of the Balkans. Here the shameful west European failure in the early and mid-1990s, and the presence of European troops on the ground, creates a moral and political obligation of a kind that does not exist vis-a-vis Turkey or Ukraine. At present, what the EU has created in the former Yugoslavia is only a set of interlocking ceasefires. For the threat of war to be removed it is vital that the process of full integration into the EU continue.

The EU needs to think more imaginatively about creating a European space beyond its borders – an opportunity rather than just a problem. After all, the existing EU enlargement model also brought potential problems, especially of the creation of new, hard frontiers between intertwined areas such as Russia and Ukraine, or the Kurds of Turkey and Iraq. The great advantage of a looser network of associated states is that it can in time be expanded to include not only Ukraine and Turkey but Russia, the southern Caucasus and the Maghreb – states that are inconceivable as full members.

The EU was beginning to develop a quasi-Roman idea of itself as a kind of soft imperial force, spreading its system to the whole European continent or even – in the dreams of some of its wilder adherents – the world. These dreams have been shown up as vain. The EU needs to think of itself instead in Byzantine terms, as a weak centre with only limited means to pursue its interests and stabilise its periphery. But then again, the idea of the EU as Byzantine will surely not shock anyone who has ever worked in Brussels.

The writer is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington and author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism