Made for Each Other?

Europeans appear to have accepted the idea that the nature of U.S. engagement is shifting. The question hanging over the continent today is what American power in Europe now comprises and how much of it Europe can replace.

A year ago NATO's leaders largely satisfied Donald Trump. They promised to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense and reaffirmed the Article 5 mutual defense pledge. Trump claimed a victory his predecessors never managed: the ‘freeloaders’, at last, would pay.

The current European-U.S. security and defense relationship was examined by researcher Tara Varma and Sophia Besch, senior fellow in the Europe program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Their article first appeared in the French Le Figaro newspaper and was then published by The German Marshall Fund of the United States.

The bargain did not last a year. Higher spending did not stop Trump from coveting Greenland, nor keep Washington from trying to pull Europe into a war with Iran, nor stop the Pentagon withdrawing forces from the continent.

Then Europeans’ eyes began to open. They gradually stopped answering Washington’s intimidation with accommodation. The turn came in January 2026, when Trump pressed his claim to Greenland and the EU threatened, for the first time, to use its new anti-coercion instrument. Washington relented.

After Europe proved ready for a tough answer, the continent faced the principal question of what American power in Europe now comprises and how much of it Europe can replace.

For most of the postwar era, that power rested on Europe’s military, economic, and technological dependencies, and on Europeans’ trust – their readiness to align with Washington and lend it political legitimacy.

The trust is draining away fast. A liberal America of the past and a revisionist MAGA America increasingly pull against each other. As a result, US favorability has fallen by 20 percentage points or more in a single year across much of Europe.

But to become more independent in military, economic, energy, and technology terms, Europe has only two escape routes: build at home or find another supplier in China. There is essentially no third option.

In the military domain, building at home is beginning to work. America's military leverage holds for now but gradually erodes. Procurement is shifting away from U.S. to European systems, regional defense-industrial cooperation is gathering pace, and Europeans are rethinking their nuclear options. The sea change is unmistakable.

A year ago, Europeans were still trying to talk this U.S. administration out of shrinking its role on the continent. Now they set a humbler aim: to work alongside Washington and make the transition to a Europe with less America more managed.

Europeans have made their peace with the fact that the American commitment is changing. What they are asking for is an orderly version of it. They are likely to be disappointed.

The best Europe can hope for is that Trump, satisfied that his officials have frightened the allies enough, tempers his wrath with mercy.

But the sui generis nature of the Trump administration should not distract from deeper changes going on in the transatlantic relationship. Future U.S. presidents will eventually offer Europeans a clearer account of American interests. European dependencies will still be there when they do. The trust will not. Nor will the deference that has stood in for trust since Trump's return.

Pragmatists’ time is coming.

Original publication: https://www.gmfus.org/news/europe-can-step-defence-escaping-america-will-be-far-harder