Key Takeaways

Strategic autonomy is not a single objective: Operational autonomy in limited crises is achievable; full-spectrum collective defence without the United States is a multi-decade project at best and politically evasive to pretend otherwise.
Europe’s dependency problem is about enablers, not troop numbers: Command-and-control, intelligence, strategic lift, missile defence, space assets, and nuclear deterrence remain the decisive gaps.
Political will is insufficient without institutional reform: Rising defence budgets will not translate into power unless procurement, standardisation, and industrial consolidation are treated as strategic imperatives.
A European army is a distraction, not a solution: Without unified enabling architecture, it would duplicate structures, confuse command, and weaken deterrence.
NATO–EU cooperation is structurally constrained, not rhetorically deficient: Veto politics, unresolved disputes, and duplication risks limit what declarations of “complementarity” can achieve.
Autonomy framed as protectionism is self-defeating: Excluding key non-EU NATO partners from defence-industrial cooperation risks higher costs, weaker innovation, and degraded deterrence.
U.S. political volatility is now a strategic variable: Europe can no longer assume continuity or benevolence in U.S. policy and must plan accordingly—without undermining the alliance it still depends on.
The viable path forward is conditional autonomy within NATO: Reducing vulnerability requires deeper European integration inside existing deterrence structures, not an illusory break from them.

Introduction

The debate over European “strategic autonomy” has stopped being an abstract quarrel about institutional design and become an argument about survival under conditions of uncertainty. The trigger was not only Russia’s continuing pressure on Europe’s security environment, but also a burst of openly transactional transatlantic politics. In late January 2026, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told the European Parliament that anyone who believes Europe can defend itself without the United States is “dreaming,” explicitly warning that building a fully separate European defence posture would be ruinously expensive and would replicate (or substitute for) U.S.-provided nuclear deterrence and other strategic enablers. At roughly the same time, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas argued that Europe is no longer Washington’s “centre of gravity” and that the shift in EU–U.S. relations is structural rather than temporary—an argument framed as a lesson from the escalating crisis and the broader volatility of U.S. policy direction under Donald Trump.

The strategic question is not whether Europe should cooperate with the United States—cooperation is rational and, for now, indispensable—but whether Europe can reduce its vulnerabilities to U.S. domestic swings and bargaining tactics without undermining the alliance structures that still deter and defend. The answer turns less on slogans and more on capabilities, institutions, and credible financing.

Autonomy is a slogan unless it is defined

“Strategic autonomy” is often used as if it meant a single, measurable destination. It does not. In EU usage, it spans domains from industrial and technology policy all the way to defence and crisis management, with the core idea being the capacity to act without being dependent on others in strategically important areas. In the security sphere, the EU’s own European External Action Service framing—through the Strategic Compass adopted in 2022—leans toward the practical formula of acting with partners when possible and alone when necessary, including ambitions such as a rapid deployment capacity and improved military mobility.

The first analytical problem is that the European debate routinely conflates two very different projects:

One is operational autonomy for limited crises (evacuations, stabilization missions, maritime security, hybrid threats). The other is full-spectrum collective defence against a major power—exactly what NATO’s integrated planning, U.S. nuclear forces, and U.S.-enabled command-and-control were designed to deliver. Treating these as the same poisons the debate. Europe can plausibly become far more autonomous in the first sense within a few years; the second sense is a multi-decade effort, and pretending otherwise is unserious.

That is why the Rutte–France clash is rhetorically revealing but strategically under-specified. France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, rejected Rutte’s message and framed European responsibility as the “European pillar” inside NATO rather than as a break with the transatlantic alliance. What matters here is less the performative rebuke and more what the phrase implies: Europe wants increased agency without giving up NATO’s deterrence architecture. That hybrid position is coherent only if Europe closes real capability gaps and accepts deeper integration in procurement and planning—areas where European policy has historically failed.

The internal European split is also real. Danish MEP Henrik Dahl openly defended Rutte’s bottom line, arguing that Europe lacks independent strategic command, intelligence, and critical digital infrastructure, which remain anchored in U.S.-centred frameworks. One side wants autonomy as a political identity; the other insists autonomy is a bill to be paid in capabilities.

Capability gaps are the hard core of the argument

Rutte’s provocation was politically clumsy but analytically grounded: Europe’s dependency is not mainly about having too few troops. It is about lacking high-end enablers—integrated command structures, wide-area intelligence and surveillance, strategic lift and logistics, missile defence, space-based early warning, and the nuclear umbrella that underpins NATO’s deterrence. Media analyses across Europe have echoed this diagnosis, stressing that European forces remain fragmented, with persistent reliance on U.S. intelligence, surveillance, logistics, and strategic infrastructure.

If this diagnosis is correct, two comfortable myths collapse:

First, that autonomy is mainly a matter of “political will.” Will matters, but the binding constraint is procurement and force-generation reality. Dahl’s point that indignation is not a substitute for capability development is not just a rhetorical jab; it is a strategic truth.

Second, that creating a “European army” is the solution. It is not. Without the enabling architecture, a new flag on old forces produces duplication and confusion, not deterrence. Even Rutte’s critique of a separate force focused on exactly this: stretched resources, duplication, and strategic weakening that would benefit adversaries.

Crucially, however, acknowledging these constraints does not imply European passivity. The problem is not the absence of money or even effort, but the misalignment between rising inputs and the slow, fragmented conversion of those inputs into usable military power. In other words, Europe’s strategic weakness today is not primarily fiscal; it is institutional and industrial. It is against this backdrop that recent trends in defence spending must be assessed.

Europe is not standing still on spending. EU-27 defence expenditure has risen sharply since 2021, reaching €343 billion in 2024 (around 1.9% of GDP) and projected to rise further in 2025, with investment and procurement also increasing. At the EU level, the Commission’s “ReArm Europe/Readiness 2030” framework is designed to mobilize up to roughly €800 billion through a mix of fiscal flexibility, loans, and incentives, with SAFE positioned as a joint procurement lever.

But spending trajectories do not automatically translate into autonomy. The dirty secret is that money can be burned quickly in Europe’s fragmented defence-industrial landscape: too many national programs, too little standardization, and political protection of domestic champions that blocks economies of scale. This is not a moral failing; it is a structural outcome of sovereignty-driven procurement. Unless Europe treats industrial consolidation and interoperability as strategic necessities rather than optional “nice-to-haves,” autonomy will remain a press-release concept.

NATO–EU coordination is simultaneously advancing and blocked

Officially, NATO–EU cooperation is presented as complementary and increasingly operational, with a dense agenda spanning hybrid threats, military mobility, resilience, exercises, and capability development. Historically, “Berlin Plus” provided a mechanism for EU-led operations to draw on NATO assets under specific conditions, and NATO’s own institutional summaries still present it as a basis for crisis-management cooperation.

Yet the persistent NATO–EU problem is not lack of declared goodwill. It is institutional and political friction:

One source of friction is political veto dynamics rooted in unresolved disputes among member states and partners, which constrain information-sharing and practical cooperation. Analyses of NATO–EU cooperation repeatedly point to the Cyprus–Türkiye issue as a central blockage mechanism—an obstacle that does not disappear because officials reiterate “complementarity.”

A second source is institutional duplication risk: if the EU builds parallel command concepts or standards without alignment, it can create two chains of authority in crisis. Kallas’ rejection of a Europe-wide army is important precisely because she framed it as operationally dangerous—risking confusion through competing command structures rather than enhancing readiness. This is a rare case where the anti-slogan position is strategically stronger than the slogan.

A third source relates to defence industrial policy: EU efforts to build a more self-sustaining defence industrial base can collide with NATO’s need to keep key non-EU allies integrated. Even before the 2026 flare-up, Rutte warned against EU defence-industrial barriers that might exclude non-EU NATO partners such as the UK, the U.S., or Türkiye, arguing such exclusions could raise costs and degrade innovation. If Europe’s “autonomy” becomes code for protectionism, it risks weakening the very deterrence system it claims to strengthen.

Greenland, U.S. signalling, and the politics of dependence

The Greenland crisis matters less for the territory’s legal status—Europe has been unequivocal on sovereignty and territorial integrity—and more for what it revealed about coercion among allies. European leaders issued coordinated statements on Greenland’s sovereignty, and EU institutional leadership publicly reaffirmed those principles in response to Trump’s tariff threats and pressure campaign. Macron called the episode a strategic wake-up call for Europe, explicitly linking it to European sovereignty and the need to strengthen Europe’s posture, including in the Arctic.

Kallas’ “structural shift” claim should be read in this context: if Europe is not Washington’s primary strategic focus—and if U.S. policy can move from reassurance to coercion with electoral cycles—then Europe cannot treat U.S. protection as a substitute for European planning.

The optics of U.S. attendance and attention have reinforced this logic. Reuters reported that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would not attend the NATO defence ministers’ meeting on 12 February in Brussels, with Pentagon Policy UNDERSEC Elbridge Colby leading instead, following Marco Rubio skipping a prior NATO foreign ministers’ meeting—fuel for European perceptions that Washington is reprioritizing toward homeland defence and China. Whether or not one over-reads symbolism, allies do interpret patterns, and alliance cohesion is partly a function of credible signalling.

European political responses have been telling. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz argued for a stronger European role within NATO while preserving U.S. ties—an attempt to reconcile autonomy with alliance cohesion rather than choosing one against the other. He has also framed Europe’s situation in the language of power politics, implying that Europe must be able to deter and, if necessary, defend without assuming U.S. political benevolence. Meanwhile, former European Council President Charles Michel attacked Rutte personally as behaving like an American agent—an outburst that is politically theatrical but strategically symptomatic of a deeper European anxiety: that dependence is no longer merely a capability issue but a vulnerability that can be exploited.

Finally, the UK’s posture under Keir Starmer shows how the strategic autonomy debate is reshaping even post-Brexit relationships. Starmer has sought closer UK–EU defence cooperation and explored access to SAFE-related frameworks, despite political and financial hurdles—an acknowledgement that European security capacity increasingly depends on practical industrial and operational cooperation regardless of formal membership lines.

Conclusion

The strategic autonomy debate is finally shedding its rhetorical comfort and confronting its material limits. What emerges from this confrontation is not a choice between Europe and NATO, or between autonomy and alliance, but a harsher and less ideologically satisfying reality: Europe cannot escape dependence through declarations, and it cannot preserve credible deterrence by denying that dependence exists. Rutte’s intervention was politically abrasive, but it punctured a convenient illusion—that autonomy is primarily a question of resolve rather than a balance sheet of capabilities, institutions, and time.

Europe’s real dilemma is structural, not existential. Full-spectrum collective defence without the United States is not a medium-term option, and pretending otherwise risks strategic self-deception. At the same time, continued reliance on U.S. protection without hedging against American political volatility is no longer prudent. These two truths are not contradictory; they define the narrow corridor Europe must walk. Strategic autonomy, if it is to mean anything, must be reconceived as resilience within interdependence, not emancipation from it.

This requires abandoning some politically attractive but strategically hollow ideas. A “European army” without enabling architecture would weaken deterrence rather than strengthen it. Defence spending without consolidation will inflate costs without closing gaps. Industrial policy framed as autonomy but practiced as protectionism will erode NATO’s coherence rather than rebalance it. Europe’s problem is not insufficient ambition, but misdirected ambition—too focused on symbols of sovereignty and too reluctant to accept the institutional discipline required to generate power.

The uncomfortable implication is that Europe’s path forward is more demanding than either camp in the debate admits. It requires deeper integration in procurement, planning, and command; acceptance of painful trade-offs in national defence industries; and a sober recognition that autonomy is not a destination but a gradient. Europe can and should reduce its exposure to U.S. political swings—but only by doing the unglamorous work of capability integration inside the alliance structures that still underpin its security. Anything less is not strategy; it is denial.