Europeans have been humiliated, disparaged, and sidelined since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that Europe has become the president’s favorite punching bag. The continent is, his administration believes, militarily emaciated, economically irrelevant, politically unfit, and culturally doomed to civilizational erasure. Trump’s attempt to coerce Denmark into relinquishing Greenland in 2025 was symbolic of the administration’s dismissive attitude.
So set is Washington in its beliefs about Europe, however, that it has overlooked the profound changes that are taking place. For the first time in decades, Europeans recognize the dangers that surround them. They are, accordingly, willing to invest in military resources and serve in their countries’ armed forces. From these shifts a new grand strategy is slowly being forged, which signals a new European geopolitical and strategic trajectory. Europe has come to recognize that its old paradigm—wealth without military strength, influence without sacrifice, and protection without obligation—is no longer sustainable. To dismiss Europe as permanently irrelevant is to ignore the scale and depth of the changes that are now underway. For decades, European countries reflexively aligned themselves with Washington’s priorities. They were even willing to send their soldiers to fight in U.S.-led wars that many of their publics—and at times their governments—regarded as misguided, peripheral, or strategically costly. A Europe that invests seriously in its own defense will no longer do that—and Washington had better get ready.
EUROPE AWAKENS
After decades of complacency, Europeans have awakened to the reality that they live in a dangerous world. According to polling conducted for the European Commission, 77 percent of Europeans think that Russia’s war in Ukraine represents a direct threat to Europe’s survival. Concern is strongest in eastern and northern Europe, but 59 percent of respondents in Germany, 50 percent in France, and 49 percent in the United Kingdom also consider Russia the greatest threat to their country’s national security. These are Europe’s largest and most powerful states. The Russian threat is thus no longer a concern confined to Europe’s periphery. It has moved to the heart of the continent.
This sense of insecurity is increased by the fact that many Europeans now realize that they can no longer rely on the United States. According to a YouGov poll commissioned by the European Council on Foreign Relations in May, only 11 percent of Europeans across the 15 surveyed countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) viewed the United States as an ally—down sharply from 16 percent six months earlier and 22 percent in November 2024. While confidence in the United States has been steadily declining in most surveyed countries, it is a more recent development in Hungary and Poland. Majorities in every country surveyed expressed doubt that the United States would come to their defense in the event of an attack, while 25 percent of respondents now see the United States as either a rival or an adversary.
Given the Russian threat and U.S. unreliability, many Europeans now support military buildups. Majorities in Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom favor increasing national defense expenditures. Italy is the only country where a clear majority remains opposed. Remarkably, across the 15 countries surveyed, 47 percent of respondents now support collective EU borrowing to finance defense initiatives, with 59 percent in favor in Portugal, 56 percent in Denmark, and 55 percent in the Netherlands. Until very recently, this idea was politically unthinkable. Equally strikingly, majorities now also favor cutting Europe’s dependence on U.S. military hardware and turning instead to European alternatives. Support for buying European is especially pronounced in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
Finally, majorities in France, Germany, and Poland now support reinstating mandatory military service, which is already in place in countries such as Denmark, Estonia, and Switzerland. Poland and Germany ended compulsory conscription in 2010 and 2011, respectively, whereas France phased out mandatory military service in the late 1990s. Over the past 30 years, support for conscription in many European countries had become a minority position. Today, it is becoming increasingly mainstream.
GOING IT ALONE
European defense spending is going through the roof. In 2024, the 27 EU member states spent approximately $402 billion on defense, far surpassing Russia’s military outlays of $160 billion. Germany has taken a leading role, and Berlin now accounts for roughly a quarter of total EU defense spending, making it the world’s fourth-largest military spender. It is on track to spend $172 billion (or roughly 3.6 percent of its GDP) by 2029—an increase of almost 200 percent from 2022. In most European states, this increase has been welcomed as a necessary measure to deter Russia. As Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski put it in April: “As long as Germany is a member of the EU and NATO, I am more afraid of a German aversion to armament than I am of the German army.” France, meanwhile, worries that German rearmament threatens a long-standing division of labor: Germany as Europe’s economic power, France as its military-strategic power. Paris is adjusting to this new reality by trying to bind Germany to a system of Franco-German defense industrial cooperation—so far with mixed success.
To reduce its dependency on U.S. equipment, Europe is also ramping up its military-industrial capacity. In Berlin, startups such as Helsing and Stark Defense are competing for multibillion-euro drone contracts. Meanwhile, Quantum Frontline Industries, a German-Ukrainian defense venture, started industrial-scale drone production near Munich earlier this year. Although Berlin is still at the beginning of its endeavors to develop autonomous capabilities, it can draw on decades of experience in heavy equipment manufacturing. Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest defense contractor, is partnering with the Italian defense company Leonardo on the production of more than 1,000 new infantry fighting vehicles and up to 350 Panther KF51 main battle tanks for the Italian army.
Such developments are not confined to equipment. Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Sweden have reintroduced compulsory military service in response to Russian aggression. Germany, which suspended conscription in 2011, has decided to reactivate military service. Since it is initially relying on voluntary enlistment, policymakers including German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier questioned whether sufficient numbers of young men would sign up for the armed forces, or Bundeswehr. But their fears have proved unfounded. By the end of March 2026, 12,700 individuals were completing voluntary military service in the Bundeswehr, up 13.5 percent from the previous year, while around 22,700 people had applied for a military career, a gain of 20 percent. This development puts the German armed forces on track to approach the country’s medium-term target of 260,000 active soldiers and 200,000 reservists by the mid-2030s, advancing Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s stated goal of making the Bundeswehr once again “the strongest conventional army in Europe.” In Sweden, the shift is even more astounding: it has more qualified and motivated applicants to serve in its armed forces than it can absorb and accepts less than ten percent of the eligible young people who apply.
THE ROAD AHEAD
After the Cold War, most European countries made economic prosperity rather than national security the organizing principle of their grand strategy. At the heart of this vision lay a deep faith in global trade. Economic interdependence, their policymakers believed, would moderate political conflict and make war less likely. Where states remained unruly, Europe sought to discipline and transform them through aid, trade, law, regulation, and standards. This was the grand strategy: to govern geopolitics through markets, rules, and integration.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shattered this notion, and the search for a grand new design began. Merz has provided the most coherent account of it so far, articulating the concept of “principled realism” in an essay in Foreign Affairs. At its core, his grand strategic framework features a cold-eyed analysis. The international order, which was based on rights and rules, no longer exists, and we have entered an era that is instead governed by the naked exercise of power. Germany must adapt and reenter the realm of hard power—undertaking large-scale military rearmament, overhauling its armed forces and intelligence services, and sustaining support for Ukraine for as long as necessary.
Yet in this transformation, Germany must not lose sight of the principles of democracy, the rule of law, and international cooperation that have guided it since 1945. Although it cannot uphold the global rules-based order single-handedly, it can help shape a regional order—and perhaps even an order among like-minded states outside Europe—that preserves a minimum of stability and predictability. In this context, relations with the United States will be adjusted, not abandoned. A sentimental friendship will become a pragmatic partnership.
A renewed tendency toward European cooperation can be seen across the continent. Brexit has shown the economic costs of leaving the European single market, with a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research estimating that British GDP in 2025 was six to eight percent lower than it would have been had the United Kingdom not left the European Union. Meanwhile, Switzerland, which never joined the EU, has been engaged in difficult and costly negotiations with the United States over tariffs, underscoring the vulnerabilities of small states in bilateral power-based bargaining. The opposite approach was demonstrated when Trump pressured Denmark over Greenland. That clash proved that even a small state can withstand great-power coercion when backed by European partners—an outcome Copenhagen would have struggled to achieve alone. As a consequence, even Iceland is reconsidering its longstanding opposition to EU membership, and a majority of British citizens now favor rejoining the EU. European states recognize that collective action and alliances are essential, as few can effectively defend their interests in isolation.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
This strategic alignment can be put in jeopardy. Differences in national preferences persist, and Euroskeptic parties threaten the continent’s cohesion. Polls currently show France’s National Rally winning next year’s presidential election. Although the party has softened its earlier calls for the country to leave NATO and the EU, it remains committed to an agenda that would weaken French support for deeper European integration, constrain cooperation with Brussels, and complicate efforts to strengthen European security cooperation. Meanwhile, the Euroskeptic party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has emerged as a major force, polling at around 28 percent nationally. Although institutional barriers and coalition politics make it unlikely that the AfD will capture the German chancellorship in the near term, the party’s increasing power at the state level will limit the country’s dedication to European rearmament initiatives.
It is therefore unlikely that the EU, with its 27 often unruly members, will be able to jointly adopt any new grand strategic framework—let alone the institutional adaptations required to implement it. For the bloc to truly turn into a defense institution, it would need to move toward a majority voting mechanism, which would require each member state to transfer sovereignty to Brussels. Even in the most pro-EU states, there is little appetite for such a profound overhaul. The likeliest development, then, is the emergence of overlapping European security institutions. NATO will remain fundamental, but Europeans will likely begin to slowly take over responsibility for the organization’s planning, leadership, and manpower.
Alongside NATO will be clusters of European states that seek deeper strategic integration. A successful recent example of this development is the Joint Expeditionary Force. This British-led military framework of ten northern European states is designed for rapid, flexible crisis response—especially in the Arctic, North Atlantic, and Baltic Sea regions. Another example is a French-led “advanced deterrence” initiative for which nine other European countries have signed up. Under this arrangement, the ten countries’ militaries will participate in exercises involving France’s air-launched nuclear forces and host air bases capable of accommodating French nuclear-capable aircraft. Participating countries will also contribute to the development of supporting capabilities, including space-based early warning systems, air defense to intercept drones and missiles, and long-range strike systems. The initiative is focused on the integration of nuclear and conventional weapons, as well as on finding a European response to Russian nuclear blackmail—the most plausible and immediate nuclear scenario Europe may face in the years ahead—and for which U.S. forces might not stand ready to help.
ACROSS THE WATER
Transatlantic tensions are nothing new. European relations with Washington suffered over the botched British, French, and Israeli attempt to seize the Suez Canal in 1956, over U.S. actions in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and over the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Yet the current level of conflict between Washington and European capitals is unprecedented. So, too, is the action that Europe is taking to ensure its own security. Russia may be a formidable nuclear power, but it lacks the economic and technological foundations of a superpower. As a result, Europe’s ambition to achieve its security goals is realistic in the medium term. A Europe responsible for its own security has not been seen for almost a century. During the Cold War, Europe depended on the United States; those days are gone.
It would be a mistake for Europe to simply wait out Trump and hope for a more sympathetic U.S. president. The war in Ukraine may be decided before the Trump presidency ends, and with it the future balance of power on the European continent. Europe, therefore, cannot defer the hard choices about its own defense in the hope that Washington will eventually return to form. Nor would Trump’s departure necessarily restore the old order. Many Europeans now suspect that even a future Democratic administration would be pulled inexorably toward the Indo-Pacific, where the United States increasingly sees China as its central strategic competitor. Finally, Trump’s assault on democratic institutions, combined with the broader erosion of governing capacity in Washington, has raised doubts about whether the United States will remain able—or be seen as able—to honor its commitments in a moment of crisis. If Moscow, Beijing, or any other adversary comes to believe that the United States is too fractured, distracted, or depleted to respond with force and speed, Europe cannot afford to be left improvising. It must have its own answer ready.
Although the Trump administration might applaud the changes in Europe, their downsides have already become apparent. As the United States initiated Operation Epic Fury in February, Spain would not allow U.S. warplanes access to its airspace, and the United Kingdom would not allow U.S. forces to use the Diego Garcia base. Later, Merz publicly criticized the ongoing war—much to Trump’s fury. New economic, political and social constituencies are emerging that will block any full restoration of the transatlantic bond. Future relations may be friendly and they may be close. But they will be different.
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