By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Beware the Europe You Wish For

For decades, the United States had asked its NATO allies in Europe to do more for their defense. And by the alliance’s 2024 summit in Washington, they had gotten the message. Twenty-three of NATO’s 32 members were spending two percent of their GDP on defense, the alliance target, up from six members in 2021.

In explaining this increase, many commentators cited a single factor: Donald Trump. It is true that the U.S. president’s rhetoric, broadly critical of European defense spending during his first presidential term and now his second, has played a role in the uptick. But the increase was underway before Trump entered politics. For over a decade, NATO allies have been focused on the elevated threat that Russia poses to European security, with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s naked aggression against Ukraine as a harbinger. They have also warily watched as Washington paid less attention to their region and more to Asia. Together, these factors prompted the steady increase in defense spending, procurement, and production that helped Europe build more capable militaries before Trump’s return to the presidency in 2025 - and that will continue after he leaves office. Trump’s reelection has only helped underscore the continent’s burgeoning independence: Europeans now see a fundamentally changed United States, and they are no longer confident that investing in U.S. leadership will secure their interests.

The fact that Europe is spending more on its defense is, in many ways, good news for Americans. Thanks to the continent’s increased strength, Washington can now focus on China first and Russia second. There is a reason why generations of U.S. presidents from both parties have pushed for Europe to spend more on defense.

But before American officials pat themselves on the back or take a victory lap, they must understand the downsides of their success. Growing European power means the era of comfortable U.S. leadership is over. Now that it provides more for itself, Europe will feel less pressure to defer to Washington’s interests. It is less likely to buy American-made weapons. It might deny the United States the right to use American military bases in Europe for operations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. And the continent is already holding up Washington’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine, restraining American officials in ways it previously wouldn’t.

The fact that Europe is spending more on its defense is, in many ways, good news for Americans. Thanks to the continent’s increased strength, Washington can now focus on China first and Russia second. There is a reason why generations of U.S. presidents from both parties have pushed for Europe to spend more on defense.

But before American officials pat themselves on the back or take a victory lap, they must understand the downsides of their success. Growing European power means the era of comfortable U.S. leadership is over. Now that it provides more for itself, Europe will feel less pressure to defer to Washington’s interests. It is less likely to buy American-made weapons. It might deny the United States the right to use American military bases in Europe for operations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. And the continent is already holding up Washington’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine, restraining American officials in ways it previously wouldn’t.

None of this means the transatlantic alliance is doomed, let alone already finished. Washington and Europe still have many shared interests, which will encourage them to keep working together. But the changing balance of power means that the United States now has to earn Europe’s partnership, just when that partnership is becoming more significant. The United States is facing challenges on multiple fronts across the globe in ways it hasn’t since the end of the Cold War. It will need its European friends, with their newfound strength, to help it handle aggressors in multiple regions. Washington, then, has to make a decision. It can forge a new transatlantic relationship that respects Europe’s interests. Or it can lose the world order to a triumvirate of autocracies: Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran.

 

Not-So-Free Riders

Ever since its 1949 founding, NATO has relied heavily on the United States. During the Cold War, in the 1970s, Europe’s NATO members spent an average of two to three percent of their GDP on defense. The United States, meanwhile, averaged seven percent. As a result, the most capable military force defending Europe was made up of American troops. With some exceptions, European NATO militaries were underfunded. Credible defense and deterrence against any Soviet attack depended on Washington.

This might seem odd, given that Europe - not North America - would suffer most immediately from Soviet conquest. But preventing Moscow from controlling Western Europe when it already occupied Eastern Europe was the necessary condition for American global security and prosperity. The Soviet Union’s ultimate goal was to defeat the United States, and control of western European economic and industrial power would fuel Moscow’s ability to strike against its real enemy: an America built on democracy, a market economy, and global trade. Washington, locked in competition with the only other power that came close to matching it, could thus not risk a third world war on the continent. European and American security were, in other words, indivisible. They constituted a collective good.

Because a collective good benefits all members of a group regardless of who steps up to provide it, there is little incentive for most members to pay. But for the most powerful player, one with a huge stake in ensuring that the collective good is secure, contributing the lion’s share is perfectly rational. After the disasters of two world wars and a global depression, the United States was the only country with the resources to ensure that Europe was defended from Soviet occupation, and so it did. The imbalance of defense spending was still a source of friction in the alliance, but U.S. leadership was ultimately in Washington’s interest.

The United States got more than just a stable world order in exchange for being Europe’s protector. It received a stockpile of military, political, economic, and diplomatic advantages. Some of these were explicit and negotiated. Others developed naturally from the structures and processes of the alliance, and still others arose from the determination of individual allies to support Washington one-on-one. (Each state gained unique benefits from its bilateral relationship with the superpower.) All of these advantages helped Americans.

Consider the most concrete benefit: the more than 30 military bases the United States has set up across Europe. The legal status of these bases is established in bilateral agreements that dictate how, when, and whether the U.S. military can operate from both the bases themselves and the airspace and waterways that allow access to them. These are called “access, basing, and overflight,” or ABO, agreements. Typically, the terms are quite generous, allowing the United States to use the bases not only to defend Europe but also to support American interests across the globe.

Washington has repeatedly availed itself of this ability. In 1973, for example, Portugal let the United States use an air base in the Azores to supply Israel during the Yom Kippur War despite the risk of economic retribution by Arab states. In 2001, multiple European allies granted Washington permission to use its bases for operations in Afghanistan, as well as the right to fly military planes through European airspace. Several NATO allies that opposed the 2003 U.S. war against Iraq nonetheless allowed Washington to use bases in Europe for the invasion, or at least permitted U.S. military aircraft to transit their territory. When France did not, it was criticized by some members for causing NATO disunity. This is the essence of the United States’ hegemonic advantage, built over 75 years of leadership: NATO allies often support American priorities, even when they disagree with them, to preserve U.S. leadership.

The benefits of the United States’ NATO hegemony continue to this day. Washington’s 2024 defense of Israel against Iranian air attacks depended on American military aircraft and ships based in Greece, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. European basing and overflight enabled the United States to destroy strike and command facilities operated by the Houthi rebels in Yemen. European bases support U.S. counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa.

These bases even help the United States protect itself. To reach the northern Atlantic Ocean, for example, Russian submarines must first travel from a naval and air base on the Arctic Ocean through a chokepoint known as the GIUK Gap (for Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom). If they succeed in evading detection there, they can move along the U.S. coastline unnoticed, ready to launch nuclear weapons against hundreds of American targets without warning. Such an attack would be extremely difficult to defend against. The Pentagon is typically able to track these submarines through the gap, but only because of the many U.S. naval and air assets it has stationed in Europe. Washington is helped in this task by patrols from Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and the United Kingdom.

 

One-Stop Shop

The United States benefits from NATO leadership in ways that go beyond basing. For the alliance to function properly, its members need to be able to jointly plan, patrol, and carry out operations. That means they must use similar sets of weapons. And although NATO states are free to purchase any systems that meet alliance interoperability and capability requirements, in practice, they very often buy U.S.-made ones.

The advantage of buying American is simple: European forces are more effective at operating alongside U.S. forces when they use American systems. Norwegian and U.S. NATO patrols in the GIUK Gap, for instance, train on the same systems, especially the Boeing P-8 Poseidon aircraft, so that they can seamlessly coordinate complex joint military operations. Poland and the Baltic states have prioritized the purchase of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, because when their units and U.S. units need to hand off patrol duties to each other to ensure round-the-clock coverage of NATO’s eastern frontline, operating with the same equipment makes the process relatively frictionless. The Polish government is more likely to get American soldiers patrolling and training with Polish soldiers every day if they are all working from the same weapons systems. American leaders, after all, will then have greater confidence that their soldiers will be effective and safe if the troops fighting alongside them are using the same technology. By equipping European forces with American weapons, eastern allies can encourage Washington to keep its military in the region.

The reliability of the U.S. defense industrial base and the scale of the Pentagon’s long-term contracts offer additional incentives to use American weapons. The American Foreign Military Sales system is notoriously inefficient, with years-long processes to finalize contracts and last-minute price increases. But European countries still choose U.S. military equipment over their own, partly because American defense contractors, accustomed to servicing the enormous U.S. armed forces, are typically capable of providing decades’ worth of maintenance, parts, and upgrades. This reliability is one reason why European countries have inked contracts for fifth-generation F-35 aircraft despite the high prices and torturous timelines.

Europe’s purchases help the United States maintain a strong defense industrial base. From 2022 to 2024, European countries purchased $61 billion worth of U.S. defense systems, accounting for 34 percent of all their defense contract procurement, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The F-35 alone is worth billions of dollars to U.S. defense companies. And these deals are growing in size and scale: since 2020, European NATO allies have more than doubled the number of weapons they import and increased the proportion they buy from the United States from 54 percent to 64 percent. U.S. military contractors are not just exporting more to European allies but also getting a larger share of the continent’s defense spending pie. Yes, Washington pays more for defense than Europe does. But the United States has long enjoyed its benefits from this predominance.

 

Mind The Gap

As European defense spending grows, however, the two sides are becoming more equal. In 2014, European NATO members spent an average of 1.5 percent of their GDP on defense, procurement included, compared with 3.7 for the United States. In 2024, however, European members spent an average of 2.2 percent of GDP on defense, whereas the United States spent just under 3.4 percent. Two EU countries, Estonia and Poland, spent a greater percentage than Washington: 3.43 percent and 4.12 percent, respectively. If the United States’ share of global GDP were significantly larger than Europe’s, Washington might still be spending far more on NATO than its transatlantic counterparts do, even as Europe begins to spend a similar share of GDP on defense. But by 2025, the United States made up 14.8 percent of global GDP, whereas European countries (the EU, along with Norway and the United Kingdom) made up 17.5 percent. European NATO allies allocated the vast majority of their defense spending to the continent. The United States, by contrast, has military forces spanning the globe.

The move toward parity in relative expenditures has been years in the making. Europe’s increase in defense spending began after Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Rattled by Moscow’s assault and under mounting American pressure, nearly all NATO countries began to allocate larger shares of their spending to defense, even as U.S. outlays slipped. Europe also began spending more on buying and maintaining military equipment. In 2024 alone, for instance, NATO’s non-U.S. members increased their expenditures on equipment by 37 percent, while U.S. spending for equipment grew 15 percent.

Europe seems poised to go even further in the years ahead. The EU, for example, is making changes in procurement and in overall military spending to expand defense industrial production. The union recently changed its stringent deficit spending restrictions so that members can budget up to 1.5 percent more of individual GDP on defense. If EU countries take advantage of this provision, they could spend more than $700 billion more on defense through 2030 than is currently earmarked. The EU has also proposed setting aside a $163.5 billion pool of money for long-term low-interest loans for procuring military goods.

Above: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Berlin, May 2025.

EU member governments seem similarly committed to increasing spending. Belgium, Italy, and Spain have all announced that they will reach NATO’s two percent goal in 2025. Other European countries have announced defense budget increases, as well. Most strikingly, Germany - long highly averse to both defense and deficit spending - changed its constitution so it could borrow money for military purposes. The country’s new government, led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, has signaled plans to expand defense procurement through at least 2030. Should all these trends continue, Europe will not only match U.S. regional defense spending but also exceed it.

The continent has also taken steps to make sure this new money is not wasted. Right now, Europe is plagued by redundancy and poor interoperability, largely because each state is responsible for its procurement. But the EU is adopting new rules to standardize planning and purchasing, including a 2023 provision that incentivizes and facilitates joint defense procurement and production. This change resulted in the signing last year of a $5.6 billion contract by Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, and Sweden to procure Patriot missiles.

European states are not just stepping up monetarily. They are also stepping up in terms of leadership. Since 2017, for example, NATO has established nine battle groups, one for each of its nine frontline countries. Rather than expecting Washington to carry the burden, the alliance has adopted a distributed leadership approach for these groups; only in Poland does the United States lead. In Finland, Sweden is the leader. In Estonia, it is the United Kingdom. Germany leads in Lithuania, Spain in Slovakia, France in Romania, and Italy in Bulgaria. Hungary has taken leadership of its battle group. Canada is leading in Latvia.

Washington, of course, still has a vital role to play in the defense of all these countries. No one expects that European forces can match the scale and global reach of the U.S. military. But they are now much closer in strength to the United States within the NATO alliance, even in comparison with five years ago. With Finland and Sweden as NATO members, the continent has forces that can better manage challenges from China and Russia in the Arctic. To counter Russia’s use of the Black Sea as a platform for striking Ukraine, NATO’s European members are developing new coastal defense forces and autonomous vehicles that can enhance U.S. operations in the Mediterranean. European defense companies are at the forefront of developing uncrewed vehicles, and the continent is no longer dependent on the United States’ surveillance aircraft. The heavy burden that Washington bore for collective defense is being lightened by Europe’s response to Russia.

 

Buyer’s Remorse

For the United States, the upside of Europe’s rise is easy to grasp. Beijing is the primary challenge to American security, so U.S. officials want to prioritize it over Moscow. Now, they can.

But Americans may find that they overcorrected in their quest to get Europe to do more. Consider, for example, the manufacturing implications. With Washington retrenching from the continent, Europe has seemingly decided to buy fewer goods from American defense manufacturers. Countries drawing from the EU’s new $163.5 billion defense procurement loan pool must spend the funds only for purchases from European defense companies. A senior EU official told me that purchases from U.S. defense companies might qualify if their products are manufactured in Europe. Yet the contracts will require employing European workers and paying European taxes. Such agreements could help American production by creating more resilient supply chains, but not if tariffs and trade barriers create obstacles for U.S. companies in Europe. For example, American companies have been scouring the globe for sources of ammunition fuses and explosives, many of which European companies have been able to source. But ironically, that potential benefit could be undermined if new tariff rules label these products as European imports, even if they are ultimately produced by American companies on the continent.

Europe’s newfound autonomy is also causing strategic difficulties. For instance, the United States wants to put a quick stop to the war in Ukraine, and it has therefore argued for lifting sanctions on Russia in step-by-step peace negotiations. Europe, however, does not want to pressure Kyiv into an unwanted settlement. In the past, Europe might have gone along with Washington’s plans anyway, lest the bloc lose American support. But this time around, the continent has declared that it will not lift sanctions until Ukraine is ready to settle.

This has severely restricted the amount of relief American officials can provide to Russia. Europe holds two-thirds of the $330 billion of the Russian assets that U.S. allies agreed to freeze in 2022 to deny Moscow access to financing for its war in Ukraine. This means that the White House cannot dangle this carrot before Putin without European permission. Europe is also home to SWIFT, the payments mechanism that is keeping Russian banks from gaining access to the global financial system. The United States could loosen sanctions on the Russian energy sector, but since it is Europe that buys Russian natural gas through the now-shuttered Nord Stream pipelines, a change in U.S. energy policy alone has little impact on the Kremlin’s purse strings. And Europe has significant sanctions on Russian shipping and Russian access to dual-use technology goods, which the United States can do nothing about.

Other parts of the United States’ Russia policy also depend on European acquiescence. Washington, for example, wants European countries to pledge to put troops on the ground in Ukraine to enforce an eventual peace settlement. But Europeans have demonstrated little interest in doing so as long as Washington entertains Russia’s demands. Unlike the United States, for example, the vast majority of European countries will not concede that Russia should be able to dictate whether Ukraine can be a member of NATO, not least because Putin has stated that a peace settlement with Kyiv should also revisit previous rounds of NATO’s enlargement.

If a sense of a common transatlantic purpose continues to fray, Europe might wind up undermining Washington’s objectives elsewhere in the world. Should the United States decide to conduct a major military campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities, for example, it will want to use its military bases in Europe. This would require seeking permission from European countries. Those governments will know that granting Washington’s request will guarantee massive protests all over the continent. But in contrast to their actions in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, many European countries might refuse. Washington would then either have to start its offensive from far-off bases in the United States or from partner bases in the Middle East, which are easier for Iran to hit than bases in Europe.

As long as NATO remains strong, the United States will probably be able to keep using its bases in Europe for self-defense. Protecting North America is written into the alliance’s charter. But European countries may no longer trust that Washington will defend them should the need arise. As a result, European leaders are seriously discussing whether the continent should acquire its credible nuclear deterrent. France and the United Kingdom both have nuclear weapons, but neither currently has the number of warheads and the variety in delivery vehicles that the U.S. arsenal does, or the strategic depth. (Washington, for example, is separated from its competitors by vast oceans.) The United States claims it has no intention of pulling its nuclear umbrella from Europe or ignoring Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which states that an attack on one member of the alliance is an attack on all. But Washington’s NATO policy seems to change every day, and Europe does not have the time to wait and see if the Americans will uphold their commitments.

At a NATO military exercise in Babaj i Bokes, Kosovo, June 2025

European officials, for their part, now speak of relations with the United States using a term that they once reserved for China: “de-risking.” Over the past decade, European countries have erected barriers to Chinese investment in critical national infrastructure on the assumption, pushed by Washington, that doing so was necessary to reduce the risk that Beijing could acquire leverage over their political systems and economies. Now, the script has flipped: European countries are considering enhanced trade with China to mitigate their vulnerability to the United States. They became particularly interested in doing so after Trump slapped sudden, massive tariffs on almost all the continent’s exports.

In 2028, Americans might be able to slow Europe’s flight from Washington by replacing Trump with a more traditional leader. But it will take more than one election to persuade Europeans that the United States can be trusted again. Even if Trump is followed by a string of committed transatlanticist presidents, U.S.-European relations will probably never return to what they were. Europe is moving away from Washington, not just because of Trump but also because its priorities are different from the United States’, its capabilities have improved, and Europeans are no longer certain that America is an unshakable ally.

But that doesn’t mean the United States and Europe are headed for divorce. The two parties may give different weight to their respective concerns, but those concerns are still mutual. China remains a threat to Europe. Russia is still a threat to the United States. The world is changing, and not for the better, and the two sides need each other to cope with a challenging Beijing, a destructive Moscow, a dangerous Tehran, and a wildcard Pyongyang.

To repair relations, however, Washington will have to recalibrate its approach to Europe. This means accepting, first and foremost, that the world now has multiple poles and that the continent is one of them. The key will be returning to the fundamentals of defense diplomacy: accommodating power, recognizing interests, and allowing for a give and take that unlocks mutually beneficial agreements. Over eight decades of leadership born of gratitude from a destroyed Europe, generations of American officials have gotten used to European concessions to U.S. priorities. Now, they will have to get better at dealmaking and compromise. As Washington considers reducing its military posture in Europe, it will need to spend more to compete for the continent’s defense contracts. The United States will likely have to listen to European arguments about balancing the continent’s wariness of Chinese influence with the need for Chinese trade, investment, and technology - just as the United States heeds the needs of its partners in the Middle East, who are developing strong ties with China out of economic necessity. The United States will also have to accept that NATO allies hosting U.S. military bases might have strong views on how Washington can prevent Iranian nuclear proliferation. It certainly will have to acknowledge that the European Union is a powerful economic force essential to NATO’s success.

If the United States can maintain its partnership with Europe, it will have an advantage not available to China or Russia in a multipolar world. Neither Beijing nor Moscow has an alliance of such economic heft, diplomatic might, and global reach. They cannot muster the kind of power wielded by NATO. Europe may give Americans headaches, but it always has; there is a reason why Washington has long wanted the continent to give the United States freedom to focus on other issues.

But having achieved what they wanted, U.S. officials now have to make a choice. They can spurn Europe and face a more dangerous world alone and depleted. Or they can forge a new, more accommodating transatlantic relationship. They will face obstacles in attempting the latter, given all that has changed. But the two parties have nearly a century of shared experience. Their friendship can prevail.

 

 

For updates click hompage here