The United States has long had a clear message to its European allies: Do more!
Spend more on defense, shoulder more risk, accept more inconvenience, spurn Soviet and Russian natural gas, catch Kremlin spies, push back against communist-led trade unions, send European armed forces to fight in U.S. wars—the list was long. Europe’s contribution was never enough. Indeed, discontent about burden-sharing precedes the founding of NATO. At a 1949 Senate hearing on U.S. accession to the alliance, Secretary of State Dean Acheson was asked if this would mean “substantial numbers of troops over there.” He responded: “The answer to that question, senator, is a clear and absolute no!” The assumption at the bloc’s founding was that U.S. support was a bridge to European self-reliance.
Ten years later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower complained that self-reliance wasn’t happening. “Our forces were put there on a stop-gap emergency basis,” he said, according to a 1959 memo. “The Europeans now attempt to consider this deployment as a permanent and definite commitment.” He complained that allies were trying to make the United States a “sucker.” Every U.S. president since then has reiterated the complaint, none more than Donald Trump.
But behind Washington’s repeated call for Europe to “do more” usually came a second one: “Not like that.” The worst-kept secret of trans-Atlantic security policy is that from the dawn of the Cold War, the United States sought not only to bind Europe into a common defense against the Soviet Union but also to keep it in a state of tutelage. That meant strangling all attempts to build independent European defense structures or strategies.
Some Europeans have resisted this. In 1958, French President Charles de Gaulle requested a tripartite NATO directorate for nuclear strategy. When Britain and the United States refused, he withdrew the French Navy’s Mediterranean fleet from NATO command and withdrew permission for U.S. nuclear weapons to be stationed on French territory; the U.S. Air Force had to hurriedly shift 200 warplanes out of France. In 1963, he withdrew the country’s Atlantic and English Channel fleets from NATO command; in 1966, he demanded that all NATO bases be removed from French territory and pulled France out of the alliance’s command structure.
The threat from the Soviet Union overshadowed these rows. Few doubted that, in the event of a military conflict, France would fight alongside NATO allies. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 and the threat from Moscow appeared gone—and as NATO allies grew impatient with U.S. leadership that was overambitious in some places, overly hesitant in others—European allies began to assert their own priorities.
A signal event was the 1998 Franco-British cooperation agreement signed at Saint-Malo, France, which stated that the European Union (to which Britain in those days belonged) “must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises.” Then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright responded by firmly telling NATO allies that Europe’s nascent efforts to cooperate on security should mean “no diminution of NATO, no discrimination, and no duplication.”
The advocates of European defense have had a rocky ride in the quarter-century since then. The more France talked up “strategic autonomy,” “emancipation,” and other buzz-phrase concepts, the more Britain and other Atlanticist members of NATO pulled back. The EU’s Common Security and Defense Policy generated “more words than warriors,” as Julian Lindley-French, the chairman of the Alphen Group, told me.
Now that has changed. Spooked by Russia’s war in Ukraine and trans-Atlantic ructions, the Europeans are serious—deathly serious—about taking care of their own defense and security. The war of words is raging. University of Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash writes of “America the Horrible.” British House of Lords member Andrew Roberts decried the “sheer brutality” of the Trump administration’s behavior, which he said had thrust Britain into “utterly uncharted territory.” German Chancellor-elect Friedrich Merz, a lifelong supporter of German Atlanticism, calls for German “independence” from the United States. “The free world needs a new leader,” said EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas, who was previously the prime minister of ultra-Atlanticist Estonia.
Current woes are only the start. What happens if the White House not only pulls out of supporting Ukraine but dismisses Russia’s next European invasion as a mere “border skirmish” unworthy of U.S. involvement? Or worse—what if a Russia-aligned White House actively opposes European action to aid the invaded country? Washington could disable any weapons that use U.S. high technology, cut off access to satellites and other critical infrastructure, and shut down NATO’s U.S.-run headquarters.
For now, the biggest shift is in decision-making. Dismay, disgust, and growing dread have shocked Europeans into ending the disagreements among themselves that have hamstrung European security since the United States sabotaged the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt during the 1956 Suez crisis. At the time, the French decided never to trust the Americans again; the British decided never to have another trans-Atlantic row. Today, the former European Atlanticists who for decades acted as a skeptical, pragmatic brake on any talk of a European army, defense budget, military headquarters, or intelligence service have become the accelerators of change. “We have all turned into Gaullists,” Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said in February.
Talks are advanced on a new defense and security pact between the EU and Britain, which will end a nine-year post-Brexit blight in cross-channel relations when it is likely signed in May. Ministers from Britain regularly attend EU summits, as do those of non-EU Norway. Big EU member states, such as Germany and France, which have jealously guarded their national security interests over Brussels’s meddling, are now more willing to see the European Commission—led by former German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen—take the lead with joint borrowing, new agencies, new powers, and new scope.
All this has practical consequences. For a start, this is a terrible time to be selling U.S.-made weapons or any kind of high-tech system in Europe. Trump has publicly mused on restricting the features of new, sixth-generation F-47 fighter jets sold to allies, saying: “We’d like to tone them down about 10 percent, which probably makes sense because someday, maybe they’re not our allies, right?” Worries are also growing about a so-called kill switch on U.S.-built weapons that would allow Washington to unilaterally restrict, for example, access to software and data systems. This U.S. technological veto previously stopped Ukraine from using British Storm Shadow missiles—which contain U.S.-made guidance systems—against targets inside Russia.
Trump’s loose lips are sinking deals. Portugal and Canada are reportedly considering canceling part of their purchase of Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters. Having seen Elon Musk withhold satellite service to Ukraine, Italy has backed out of acquiring Starlink. The Danes are debating whether Trump’s threats to Greenland mean they should choose the Franco-Italian SAMP/T NG air defense system over U.S. Patriots in a contract due to be signed later this year. British arms manufacturers have gone on a marketing offensive, highlighting their “Trump-proof” supply chains.
Plans are also advancing for a major European financial instrument to fund defense. (Disclosure: I am one of the authors of a proposal for a European Rearmament Bank.) A key condition: Only contracts with European arms manufacturers will be financed. All this will not only cost U.S. jobs, profits, and taxes—it will erode U.S. influence over Europe, too.
Intelligence sharing has been another bastion of U.S. influence in Europe. For decades, the vast capabilities of the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and other agencies have given the American side the upper hand in relationships with their European counterparts. Leads from the U.S. side have helped countries such as Germany and Estonia catch Russian spies. In return, European agencies were glad to help out with any niche capabilities that might prove useful.
No longer. European spymasters now think twice about sharing their choicest morsels with U.S. counterparts. “Suppose it ends up in the PDB and he blurts it out?” one European intelligence official told me, referring to the President’s Daily Brief, the highly classified daily distillation of the U.S. intelligence community’s most topical secrets. Europeans also worry about the administration’s capriciousness. They saw intelligence sharing with Ukraine turned off in order to punish the government in Kyiv for its reluctance to follow along with U.S. cease-fire plans. Suppose the White House decides to give another European ally the same medicine? European intelligence efforts were once mocked. Now they are gaining budgets, clout, staff, and expertise.
The transition is going to be messy. Europe is still woefully short of the troops, tanks, artillery, munitions, logistics, surveillance, and other assets needed for a solid conventional defense; it also lacks the air power and long-range weapons needed for effective conventional deterrence. Even providing a modest reassurance force in a post-cease-fire Ukraine looks fanciful without U.S. logistical and other support.
Compensating for that will require an imposing display of political unity that says “don’t mess with us”—plus convincing plans for rearmament, conscription, and nuclear posture. Europeans must also get to grips with Russian attacks below the threshold of outright war: sabotage of infrastructure, cyberattacks, dirty money, and propaganda. All that will mean not just the sacrifice of some national political sovereignty and a bonfire of other taboos but also higher taxes, lower living standards, and less generous public services.
The trajectory is clear. The more Trump proclaims “America First,” the more Europeans hear sauve qui peut—and stampede away from the wreckage of an alliance that they wrongly took for granted. Every step in that direction creates more clout for Europe and less leverage for the United States. As von der Leyen noted recently, “Reality is a strong ally.” And reality is pushing hard for change.
Paradoxes abound. The United States will end up with something it always wanted to avoid: a lean, mean, muscular, independent-minded Europe. Indeed, it would not be too fanciful to build a monument to Trump in central Brussels, setting him alongside the founders of European unity such as Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, and Simone Weil.
It’s not all bad. This new entity—one might even call it the United States of Europe—may be a capable, effective partner for future U.S. administrations in dealing with China, combating climate change, and more. But it will be far more a partnership of equals. On other issues—such as global financial management, conflict in the Middle East, and international law—Europeans will have their own ideas and their own priorities. They will assert them unhesitatingly and perhaps uncomfortably. The era of tutelage came at a price. But Americans may miss it when it’s gone.
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