Europe’s enduring dependency on U.S. military capabilities is not an accidental flaw but a fundamental feature of the trans-Atlantic security architecture. Since the inception of NATO in the late 1940s, the United States has served as the primary integrator—the strategic glue that sustains the cohesion of Europe’s collective defense. This U.S. role as NATO’s strategic, operational, and technological backbone has created a deep and intricate dependency, making European efforts to bolster their own defenses inherently limited unless this core support is addressed.
The debate over defense budgets, which will feature prominently at next week’s NATO summit, suggests that Europe can defend itself simply by recruiting more soldiers and accumulating aircraft, tanks, artillery, drones, and other hardware. However, counting troops and weapons is a flawed exercise. The real challenge is that Europe lacks the critical capabilities necessary for integrating and sustaining combat operations over a long time—the so-called “strategic enablers” that are almost entirely provided by the United States.
These enablers include intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, including satellites and radar; precision strike capabilities to hit high-value targets; long-range air defense systems to intercept and neutralize sophisticated threats; and robust infrastructure for command, control, and communications, which is vital for coordination and decision-making. What’s more, most of the European military leadership lacks extensive experience in commanding large ground formations, a skill that is critical for rapid deployment and operational effectiveness in crisis scenarios.
The list of military deficits goes on: European air forces are generally incapable of executing complex operations such as the suppression of enemy air defenses or deep strikes against high-value or hardened targets in the enemy’s rear, like we have seen Israel conduct in Iran. European navies, despite some recent improvements, remain limited in anti-submarine warfare, a crucial component when facing an adversary like Russia. The inability to conduct these missions underscores Europe’s reliance on U.S. assets and the gaps that need urgent addressing.
These deficiencies—compounded by an equally grave deficit of strategic seriousness and political will—were on stark display during the debate over a possible deployment of European ground forces to secure a hypothetical ceasefire in Ukraine. The inability of the countries involved in the discussions to collectively deploy even two or three mechanized brigades—each comprising roughly 3,000 to 5,000 troops—illustrates Europe’s systemic limitations, notwithstanding the large quantities of hardware and troops on the continent. These shortcomings directly undermine the credibility of NATO’s regional defense plans and deterrence, especially in the Baltic states, where larger NATO countries like Germany are expected to field credible forces capable of deterring Russian aggression.
If Europe cannot independently project and sustain forces without U.S. support, then the alliance’s deterrence is severely compromised as U.S. disengagement looks increasingly real. The next couple of years could, therefore, open up a phase of dangerous vulnerability. For European allies to ensure that they can field combat-capable forces if needed, it is absolutely essential that they accelerate investments—right now, not tomorrow—in precisely those critical enablers that have been largely provided by the United States.
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