Can Europe Act as Leader of the Free World?
How I stopped worrying and embraced European strategic autonomy.
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Following the catastrophic meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, mused on social media that “the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.” The tweet attracted criticism, not least because Kallas’ claim to global leadership was not exactly matched by her own track record—earlier that week, she had allowed herself to be humiliated by making the trip to Washington and then being denied a meeting with the U.S. Secretary of State.
Especially from an Estonian, it was music to the ears of those who had been arguing for Europe’s strategic autonomy for years. The reality of Trump’s, JD Vance’s, and Elon Musk’s daily antics provides compelling reasons to press ahead with the agenda, even for those who harbor hope that NATO and the transatlantic relationship can eventually be salvaged.
Now, “strategic autonomy” has always been a weasel word. In its more uncontroversial version, the term referred simply to Europe’s need to do more to strengthen its defenses. In the more ambitious, sneakier version it meant doing more independently of the United States and relying on domestic (ideally French) defense industry instead of the U.S. one.
Even the most committed of Atlanticists would be hard-pressed to explain how that distinction matters at a time of a wholesale collapse of confidence in the United States as an ally. If Trump’s America is not going to come and fight for Narva, Estonia—and it would require a real suspension of disbelief to think that it will—what exactly is the point of buying American? With divergent priorities on both sides of the Atlantic, the exact same argument applies to U.S. materiél as to supplies from non-allied nations: namely, in the case of a conflict affecting Europe but not the United States (or vice versa), it is unlikely that U.S. manufacturers would prioritize their European contracts for deliveries, maintenance, or spare parts.
There has been some speculation about a “kill switch” that would allow the United States to disable the functioning of F-35 fighter jets, purchased at great expense by a number of European air forces. Whether an electronic back door is real or just a figment of paranoid European imagination, the U.S. government has ample control over the usefulness of the platform by providing or denying timely maintenance, repairs or ammunition for those planes—a consideration that must be weighing in new ways on the minds of governments who are considering paying top dollar for a state-of-the-art fighter.
Every day, the transatlantic relationship is hitting a new bottom, oftentimes in grotesque ways. Clearly, Ukraine’s success in the war is critical for Europe’s security. Trump, meanwhile, has done essentially everything in his power—short of normalizing the U.S.-Russian relationship or providing assistance to Russia—to set Ukraine up for failure. Ukraine “may not survive anyway,” the president quipped in an interview with Maria Bartiromo. Trump is considering, it has been reported, redeploying the 35,000 troops currently stationed in Germany to Hungary—a nation under the most explicitly pro-Russian and pro-Chinese government in the EU and NATO. One is left to wonder whether the new military bases in the country would be built with loans from the Belt and Road Initiative, of which Hungary is, in Viktor Orbán’s words, a “pillar.”
All sentient Europeans must understand by now that they are dealing with a U.S. administration that is qualitatively different from the first Trump term. There might be a role for flattering the U.S. president, or bribing him—or perhaps for offering one of the daughters of European royalty in marriage to Barron Trump—but none of that is going to change the reality of a fundamental unreliability of an administration that is casually picking fights with the likes of Poland for no reason whatsoever. The most important task ahead for Europeans is to place themselves in a position of strength as they seek to deter Russia and also as they engage with Trump.
Even Poland’s president Andrzej Duda, who has a reputation for being successful in his dealings with Trump, has expressed interest in France’s plan for sharing its nuclear deterrent—a step unimaginable just months ago. One constraint, of course, is that of capabilities: France’s stock of nuclear weapons, like its military, is not unlimited. More broadly, it may be a tall order for Europe to fill America’s shoes, especially unless European fiscal priorities change. The European Commission’s plan to unlock €800 billion in extra defense spending relies fundamentally on choices made by national governments. More for defense means either less for social safety nets—or extra borrowing, possibly rattling bond vigilantes.
It is, furthermore, not obvious that the EU with its principle of unanimity is the best vehicle for advancing such an agenda. More likely, we will see coalitions of the willing pressing ahead on subjects of mutual interest, leaving other countries behind. The meeting hosted by France’s defense minister in Paris this Tuesday on Ukraine, with some thirty European and non-European nations, is an example.
Can Europeans succeed without America? Coalition talks in Germany will provide an early answer. Because of its size and the robustness of its industrial base, the country seems indispensable to building a sustained bulwark against Russian expansionism in Eastern Europe that will not depend on America’s security guarantees. But there are grounds for cautious optimism—not least Europe’s sheer size, the degree of alarm in capitals most directly affected by America’s U-turn, as well as Ukraine’s success in inflicting debilitating damage on the Russian military. As Sander Tordoir, an economist at the Centre for European Reform, notes, Europe’s heavy industry outperforms the U.S. in important ways. “Europe collectively outproduces the United States in steel, vehicles, ships, and civil aircraft,” Tordoir writes. “European Union member countries, on average, also pay less to service their debts than the United States. This gives the EU the industrial heft and financial firepower to support Ukraine and embark on domestic rearmament as U.S. President Donald Trump abandons Kyiv and NATO.” The crude and brutish nature of the change in Washington can help accelerate the European adjustment in ways a more polite and more responsible U.S. policy could not.
If they are to hold their own against Russia and Trump, Europeans must move beyond purely defensive, reactive, and characteristically timid measures. At a minimum, if U.S. technology platforms such as X choose to disregard the Digital Services Act, there have to be consequences beyond just symbolic fines. The continent should regain the capability and the will to engage in “hybrid warfare” against Russia. European intelligence should be flooding Russian Telegram channels with divisive nonsense and causing disruption and uncertainty to daily lives of Russians. America’s increasingly predatory policy in the Western hemisphere can be countered too—the EU should be investing in Greenland and offer Canada membership in the European single market.
The obvious downside to a more muscular Europe is the waning of American influence over the continent. Together with the erratic protectionism of the Trump administration, it is exceedingly unlikely that Europeans will join efforts to contain China either militarily—by assisting Taiwan, for example, or through economic means. If anything, America’s retreat is a perfect opening for Chinese influence, illustrated by Wang Yi’s speech to the Munich Security Conference, which depicted Beijing as “a steadfast constructive force in a changing world.” And while one may sympathize with the plight of Taiwan, or deplore China’s role in facilitating Russian aggression, the Trump administration has essentially ensured that there is nothing for European nations to gain from embracing a more hawkish approach towards China.
One day perhaps, America will be “back.” But even during Biden’s term, under that same banner, Washington’s direction of travel—namely away from global leadership—was unmistakable. It would be fanciful for anyone to expect or hope for a return to any form of transatlantic order that existed prior to 2016. The best, and only, way for Europeans both to weather the current storm and to set conditions for an eventual reset of the transatlantic partnership is to press ahead aggressively to become a geopolitical actor in their own right.
Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC.
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Regarding production and markets. I hope you can promote more of economic integration in the union. But also important that the military-industrial complex has a democratic oversight in the EP
Dalibor, I feel you and you have several important points regarding the current historical-dramatic situation but ... Strategic autonomy is still unrealistic in general. The EU is still going to be interdepended as on India and others. Also, there is no national not to speak about European sovereignity as regarding global problems and challenges as climate, terrorism, AI etc. Cosmopolitan realism beats (nationalist) realism regarding IR even if realism is still popular.