But the era in which Europe could count on the United States may be nearing its end. No matter who wins the U.S. presidential election in November, Washington’s attention is shifting to Beijing and the Indo-Pacific. Should Donald Trump return to the White House, it’s conceivable that the United States could question its commitment to NATO—or even pull out of the alliance altogether, a scenario that will hang over the bloc’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington in July.
Europe could soon face its threats alone. Moscow has unleashed the first major land war in Europe since World War II with the goal of restoring its Cold War empire, which included countries that are now members of the European Union. If the war in the Middle East turns into a greater conflagration, it could send new waves of migrants into the EU. Europe has also turned into a theater of U.S.-Chinese rivalry, with the Russia-Ukraine war the first act in the contest between the Western-led order and the China-led bloc that seeks to revise or destroy it.
The problem for Europeans, as many of their leaders and thinkers will readily admit, is that they are mostly unprepared for a world of hard power. The EU was designed to banish war from the continent, and the absence of large-scale war in Europe between 1945 and 2022—a remarkably long peace, by historical standards—seemed to prove the project’s success. But somewhere along the way, Europeans also began to believe that war was disappearing elsewhere as well—and if not, the Americans would always keep them safe. As EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell told a Georgetown University audience in March: “It was almost as if Europeans were saying, ‘For war, please call the U.S.’”
In theory, the EU, with its 450 million citizens, is one of the world’s major power blocs. Its collective GDP is second only to the United States and about 10 times Russia’s. Many of its members, especially those geographically close to Russia, have a hard-nosed, strategic view on the world. But on the whole, Europe has not translated its economic resources into geopolitical power of the kind that could, for example, keep Moscow in check on its own.
The sense that Europe’s long holiday from history is over is palpable in European capitals. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz proclaimed a Zeitenwende—a change of eras. More dramatically, French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that Europe “could die” if it does not adapt quickly enough.
The question thus becomes: Can Europe ensure its own security and continued prosperity with less support from the United States—and learn how to navigate what Borrell called “the forgotten harshness of the world” on its own? We asked nine prominent thinkers for their views on whether Europe is ready for a post-American future. Read on below for their responses, or click on a name for the individual author.
—Stefan Theil, deputy editor
Doug Chayka illustration for Foreign Policy
A New EU Shaped by War
By Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations
The U.S. Congress gave Ukraine and its European allies crucial breathing room when it finally passed a $61 billion aid package in late April. But what happens after the U.S. presidential election in November is anyone’s guess. In the long run—no matter who wins—U.S. engagement in Europe is likely to have peaked. The upshot is that everything will soon hinge on whether Europe can step up to the plate as a geopolitical actor amid U.S. retrenchment.
Europe had many false starts since the end of the Cold War. During the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, the European Union confronted its own impotence in the face of war for the first time. For a while, it looked as if it might build up the institutions and capabilities necessary to transform itself into a bona fide geopolitical actor. It launched the Common Security and Defence Policy, set up the European Defence Agency, and launched the EU Military Staff. When nothing came of these efforts, Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 seemed like another moment of truth. The years afterward saw the birth of Permanent Structured Cooperation—another framework for security collaboration—and the European Defence Fund. At every turn, however, efforts to transform the EU from a peace project into one that embraced hard power were scuppered by a lack of buy-in from EU member states. Narrow national interests always trumped bigger strategic ones.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 changed everything by bringing home the idea that there could be a full-scale war on the European continent. This is not simply a security crisis but one that goes to the heart of the EU’s identity. The more than two years since have not just forced Europeans to think differently about policy, but they have also changed something more fundamental—how different states think about their identity and the purpose of the European project. For the last few decades, European integration had been conceived as a peace project with a focus on prosperity, trade, and quality of life, but now the impetus of integration is coming from war. And through these deeper changes to the identity of key European powers, the outlines of a truly geopolitical Europe are beginning to take shape for the very first time.
The EU’s passage from peace to war project has a number of dimensions.
The first crucial change is taking place in Paris. After the Cold War, the EU preferred a cooperative, universal, and unipolar idea of Europe to a multipolar Europe with actors competing for spheres of influence. France was traditionally the biggest obstacle when it came to removing ambiguity around the countries stuck on the outside. It opposed Ukraine’s and Georgia’s proposed accession to NATO in 2008 and vetoed EU entry talks with North Macedonia and Albania in 2019. But over the past two years, French President Emmanuel Macron has undergone a complete shift in his thinking and become an enthusiastic proponent of enlarging both NATO and the EU, starting with Kyiv. The result is that for the first time, there is a pan-European consensus on the continent’s strategic borders and the EU’s refounding along strategic lines.
Perhaps an even bigger challenge has been Europe’s reluctance to truly embrace hard power. Now, however, Europe’s biggest obstacle to robust defense—Germany—has turned its strategy upside down. Since German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared that Russia’s invasion marked a Zeitenwende—a change of eras—the result has been a paradigm shift not just in defense spending (Germany is set to become the fifth-biggest defense spender in the world after the United States, China, Russia, and India) but also in mentality. A tangible indication of this shift is that European NATO allies will collectively reach the target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense this year. This focus on hard power has also transformed how EU institutions in Brussels think about economic policy. Previously, the EU believed that building interdependence was the key to turning adversaries into friends. Now, the EU is looking at the nature of interdependence, is busy de-risking its economy, and sees economic power as a geopolitical tool.
Finally, the emergence of a geopolitical Europe was always caught between two competing conceptions of what it actually meant to be a geopolitical actor. On the one hand, France pushed for strategic autonomy but in doing so risked European unity. On the other hand, Britain and much of Central and Eastern Europe called for trans-Atlantic unity—but at the cost of European strategic independence. Now, the war in Ukraine has solved this conundrum by highlighting to the United States that its biggest problem is not an independent Europe but an overdependent one while simultaneously demonstrating to France that the United States is so critical to Ukraine’s war against Russia that it would be impossible to unite the EU against Washington. Finally, if Britain’s Labour Party comes to power this year as expected, London would be much likelier to band together with the EU in the event that Trump were elected. Ironically, despite the ominous consequences for Ukraine, Trump’s return could conceivably create a framework for greater European cooperation.
Success in all these areas is deeply contingent and hardly guaranteed. National politics in these countries could fundamentally change their trajectories—perhaps nowhere more so than in France, where Marine Le Pen is leading polls ahead of the next presidential election. And it bears reminding that the changes in Europe’s culture, mentality, and sense of identity set off by Russia’s war will take time and patience to mature. But there are reasons to believe that this time will finally be different.
Doug Chayka illustration for Foreign Policy
Europe in the Firestorm
By Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution
Germany’s domestic intelligence chief, Thomas Haldenwang, likes to say Russia’s war against Ukraine is the storm whereas China’s quest for global dominance is climate change. What Europe is facing today is nothing less than a geostrategic firestorm.
Russia is not only on the offensive in Ukraine but also waging a hybrid war on Europe through weaponized corruption, assassinations, cyberattacks, espionage, disinformation, election interference, communications jamming, and sabotage of critical infrastructure. China, too, sees Europe as a strategic prize: It is buying up physical and digital infrastructure, preparing to conduct economic warfare by flooding European markets with electric vehicles, and maintaining quasi-police stations on European soil to surveil and coerce dissidents. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s choice of France, Serbia, and Hungary for his European trip in May was the clearest signal yet of Beijing’s strategy for Europe: divide and rule.
For Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tehran, the war in Ukraine is merely the front line of a larger global conflict with the United States—with Europe and its environs a key theater in this conflict. In the Middle East, the Israel-Hamas war could yet explode into a larger regional conflagration, possibly setting off mass migration to Europe. Russia has opened another front in Africa, helping to push European and U.S. peacekeeping troops out of the Sahel region, stabilizing authoritarian regimes, and giving the Kremlin yet another vector for putting pressure on Europe.
All of this marks the end of Europe’s holiday from history and geopolitics. It is also a colossal failure of policymaking—above all, of Germany’s strategic bet on hyperglobalization, based on the assumption that trade and economic interdependence would ensure peace and cooperation.
Whether it is also the birth hour of a geopolitical Europe remains very much to be seen. The most tangible proof that Europeans have understood the gravity of the moment is that they have ransacked their budgets and weapons stores for Ukraine, are ramping up defense spending, and are upgrading territorial defense and regional deterrence for the first time since the Cold War. There have been drastic policy shifts in key capitals: Paris now wants European Union and NATO enlargement; Berlin says it wants to build the continent’s strongest conventional force; London wants to work with the EU; and after eight years of an anti-EU government, so does Warsaw. Neutral Finland and Sweden have joined NATO; even the Swiss are quietly weighing their options.
These shifts are real because they are driven by fear. And because the causes of that fear are real, the shifts are here to stay.
Yet many serious obstacles remain. National governments have not yet found ways to overcome ponderous institutional processes, budgetary constraints, and the increasing fragmentation of political decision-making; few are capable of articulating strategy and following through on it. Europe’s large powers are terrible at working with one another. The smaller ones resent their larger neighbors for being overbearing or selfish but rarely challenge them with proposals and coalition-building of their own. Overcoming deep north-south, east-west, and center-periphery divides would require ideas and leadership; both are currently in short supply.
When French President Emmanuel Macron gives yet another passionate speech about the future of Europe, other EU leaders may roll their eyes—but they do not offer an alternative vision. Very few politicians have the courage to say that steering the continent safely through this dangerous period will not be cost-neutral but will require sacrifices—not just in terms of resetting spending priorities but also very literally, in terms of increasing deterrence by getting ready to fight. As for Ukraine, its European supporters regularly congratulate themselves on what they are doing—but fear of escalation keeps them from doing what is necessary for Ukraine to push Russia back on Europe’s behalf. They know Ukraine’s defeat would be catastrophic for European security and require even greater efforts to deter Russia in the future, but they cannot bring themselves to follow through on what they know to be true.
These failures not only keep Europe from acting on its own without relying on massive support from the United States. They also risk a splintering and renationalization of European politics based on each country’s view of Russia and other threats. It would make the continent even more vulnerable to its enemies than it is now.
Meanwhile, Europe’s hard right dreams of a white, illiberal, Christian Fortress Europe; these movements are receiving support from Moscow and Beijing. This hard right is praying that a second Trump administration, run by committed and well-organized ideologues, will join forces with them—even though they are more likely to be treated as vassals. Liberal, democratic Europe can only hope to survive the continent’s worst geostrategic turn since 1945 with a combination of pragmatic integration, generous joint financing of defense and other costs, EU enlargement, and enlightened, unselfish leadership by a critical mass of the union’s most powerful states. Otherwise, a European firestorm may be upon us.
Sébastien Thibault illustration for Foreign Policy
Not Ready for Trump
By Nathalie Tocci, director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali
When Donald Trump was elected U.S. president in 2016, it unified Europe. The continent’s capitals were still reeling from the decision by British voters to leave the European Union a few months before, and leaders feared that Brexit would trigger a domino effect of other exits. The scars of the European debt crisis and bitter divisions over migration were still fresh.
Trump shook Europeans from their navel-gazing, reminding them what their union was all about: democracy, multilateralism, and the rules-based order. With Washington checked out of that order, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel—the undisputed leader of the EU at the time—became the voice of the free world. Europeans knew they couldn’t afford to be divided: Their continent was already on fire then, with Russia having annexed Crimea and nationalist populism on the rise. Faced with escalating threats and abandoned by Washington, Europeans understood they had to stick together.
The question haunting Europe today is whether it will be united once again if Trump returns to the White House. Of course, Trump is not the only reason Europe should be unified. Europe and its neighborhood are even more ablaze today than in 2016. Europe itself is at war, with Russian officials openly stating that their imperial appetites won’t be sated with the subjugation of Ukraine. To the southeast of Europe, the Israel-Hamas war is teetering on the brink of a wider conflict. In Africa’s vast Sahel region, European powers and the United States have been pushed out as Russia strengthens its grip—with all the options that gives the Kremlin to impact Europe, not least by weaponizing migration.
Turning farther east, Europe no longer harbors illusions that China will become a responsible stakeholder of the liberal order. Unlike in 2016, the EU is not as gullible to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s claims of championing multilateralism. As Xi’s visit to France, Serbia, and Hungary in May showed, Chinese divide-and-rule tactics have become blatant enough for the most naive European to see. Globally, whereas in 2016 we were wondering if a multipolar world was compatible with multilateralism and the liberal order, it’s clear today that the latter two are on life support. Given all the threats facing Europe, the unifying effect Trump had on the EU in 2016 should be exponentially stronger now.
This may be wishful thinking. Europe’s democracies are in the grip of similar political convulsions as the United States, with right-wing nationalism on the rise. High inflation and insufficient economic growth have blown wind in the hard right’s sails once again. What’s more, Europe’s nationalists have changed tack—they no longer seek to emulate Britain’s disastrous exit but to hollow out the EU from within. They dominate politics not only in a small number of Eastern European countries—such as Hungary and Slovakia—but have come to power in Italy and the Netherlands, and they may win in Austria later this year. And they are increasingly coordinating in Brussels, asserting their collective weight in EU affairs, and trying to drive a wedge into the broad majority of conservatives, socialists, liberals, and greens that has spearheaded European unity and integration for decades.
Trump 2.0 would enter the scene in this much more fraught and fractured Europe. This time, there is a bigger contingent of European governments that see eye to eye with Trump—and agree with his disparaging of the EU. Trump would have the same opportunity as Xi to play divide-and-rule with Europe.
The fractures extend to vast areas of European policy. With nationalists exerting their growing power—and possibly allying with Trump—it will be hard for the EU to agree on ambitious steps forward on defense, climate, energy, technology, and EU enlargement, even as the war in Ukraine and other crises make these policies increasingly urgent.
Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the EU, predicted that the continent’s union would develop through crisis. So far, his dictum has proved true, as various political and economic upheavals since 1945 have galvanized Europeans to build their ever closer union. Another Trump term—coupled with a genuine fraying of the trans-Atlantic bond in a time of growing threats to Europe—could be the crisis that breaks the EU’s back.
Doug Chayka illustration for Foreign Policy
What if Russia Wins?
By Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations and former prime minister of Sweden
If Ukraine and its Western supporters lose resolve, Europe may face a scenario where Russia subjugates the rest of Ukraine, installs a puppet regime, and gradually integrates most or all of the country into a new Russian empire.
In the long term, it would be a Pyrrhic victory for Moscow. The repressive empire would struggle to digest its occupied lands, subdue a restive population, and bear the burden of very high military expenditures in a new era of confrontation. Moscow would trade its medieval Mongol yoke for a 21st-century Chinese one—and be seriously left behind as the rest of the world enters a new green and digital age. Sooner or later, Russia would face its third state collapse in little more than a century.
A Russian victory and collapse of the Ukrainian state would have extremely grave consequences for Europe as well.
For starters, we can expect tens of millions of new refugees. In the Ukrainian territories Russia has occupied—first in 2014 and then since 2022—the population is now a fraction of what it was before. If a similar ratio applies to further Russian conquests, it would be realistic to count on 10 million to 15 million refugees, in addition to the slightly more than 4 million Europe is hosting already, flowing into nearby European states.
A Russian victory would transform European politics in several respects. Thoughts of an accommodation with this new Russia—something entertained until recently in Paris, Berlin, and some other European capitals—would be entirely unrealistic. A Ukrainian government-in-exile would operate from Warsaw or somewhere else in Central Europe. Defense expenditures—set to reach 4 percent of GDP in Poland this year and at least 2 percent across much of NATO—will need to double yet again in order to credibly deter threats from an increasingly desperate Russian regime.
New conflicts could be on the horizon. To which old borders would Russian President Vladimir Putin like to restore the Kremlin’s empire? Finland, Poland, and the Baltic states were all once ruled from Moscow, and anyone with access to Kremlin-approved television can find Russian imperialist dreamers talking in these terms.
Restoring the empire beyond Ukraine may be an unrealistic prospect for an overburdened, struggling regime, but who dares to take that for granted in Helsinki, Riga, or Warsaw? A new age of European confrontation is certain.
Putin is waging his war both to subjugate Ukraine and to rebalance the global order away from the West and what he considers U.S. domination. For his first aim, he has lukewarm Chinese support, but for the second, he has a strong ally in Beijing, which equally sees any Western weakening as buttressing its own position.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said before the U.S. Congress in April that Ukraine today could be East Asia tomorrow. Like the fall of Saigon and the fall of Kabul, a Russian victory in Ukraine would be seen across the world as an even more significant sign of the United States’ waning power. The appetite for adventurism from numerous actors is bound to increase.
The consequences of letting Russia win in Ukraine would be catastrophic for the Ukrainians, extremely serious for the security of Europe, and profoundly destabilizing for the rest of the world. In the end, it would probably lead to a collapse of Russia itself—which would present Europe with a whole other set of consequences to prepare for.
Sébastien Thibault illustration for Foreign Policy
Deterrence Is Cheaper Than War
By Radoslaw Sikorski, foreign minister of Poland
“We cannot continue to pay for the military protection of Europe while the NATO states are not paying their fair share,” U.S. President John F. Kennedy said to the U.S. National Security Council in 1963. Since then, similar calls from both Republican and Democratic administrations for Europe to take responsibility for its own defense too often have been ignored, especially since the end of the Cold War.
For far too long, Western Europeans believed that war on the continent was no longer possible. Even today, some European politicians still seem convinced that the destructive forces ravaging Ukraine will never reach their territories.
This year, at least 20 out of 32 NATO members will spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense—a move in the right direction at a frustratingly slow pace. Poland reached this threshold more than 20 years ago and now leads the alliance with close to 4 percent. Others should follow our example.
Deterrence may be costly, but it is less costly than having to fight a war. The estimated cost of rebuilding Ukraine has reached almost half a trillion dollars and is growing by the day. The cost in human life and suffering is immeasurable. Spending more on defense, however, is only one part of what European NATO members need to do. We need to spend more effectively, and that means better coordination.
We should stop chasing the illusion of a joint European army. There is no political will among European Union member states to merge their national armed forces. We will not have one European army, but we can have better European armies. To start, we can set up a joint rapid reaction force—let’s call it the European Legion—of at least 5,000 troops, financed from the EU budget.
Second, we need to improve the mobility of military personnel and equipment. Since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, we have learned how important transportation and military logistics are.
Third, Europe must make full use of the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation, an instrument that allows member states to closely cooperate to raise defense production capacity, combine investments, and improve the operational readiness of our armed forces.
These are only three examples of what Europe can do to improve defense. None of it should come at the expense of our commitment to NATO and its unique role in the European security system. Instead of advocating for Europe’s “strategic autonomy,” as some EU leaders suggest, it is better to push for “strategic harmony” between the EU and NATO.
Widespread fears that changing political tides in Washington might severely strain trans-Atlantic relations are understandable. Influential U.S. politicians and commentators openly argue for Washington to focus primarily on its rivalry with Beijing, countering those who maintain that a global superpower can afford to be engaged in both Europe and East Asia.
If Washington truly believes that China is its “biggest geopolitical and intelligence rival” and “most significant long-term priority,” as CIA Director William Burns has said, then the United States’ network of alliances should be seen not as ballast needing to be cut but as an asset the main rival lacks and is only now trying to amass.
There is no shortage of evidence that Beijing has been the moving spirit behind a coalition of authoritarian countries long engaged in undermining the existing global order and those who stand for democratic values. China’s “limitless” partnership with Russia is one axis in a whole web of groupings. We know that Chinese exports of dual-use goods to Russia have increased significantly, that Russia has displaced Saudi Arabia as the main exporter of crude oil to China, and that Beijing is now an indispensable client for Russian gas. We see Iranian-made drones attacking Ukrainian cities, often assisted in the assault by North Korean artillery shells and ballistic missiles. Across Africa, South America, and other parts of the so-called global south, state-sponsored media based in China, Iran, and Russia freely spread their propaganda, often with the help of local regimes.
With the world on the brink of a global rivalry between two blocs—competing economically, militarily, and for humanity’s hearts and minds—even the mightiest superpower needs allies. For all its shortcomings, Europe remains the obvious one. Yes, Europe must invest more on security but not because of any imminent rupture in its relations with the United States. It must spend more so that the world’s democratic bloc can keep its influence and way of life.
Doug Chayka illustration for Foreign Policy
Britain Will Recommit
By Robin Niblett, distinguished fellow at Chatham House
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 overturned the strategic calculus behind Brexit. Then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson had promised to raise Britain’s sights beyond Europe—to the sunny uplands of closer trading and political relations with the United States and dynamic emerging markets in Asia. But the return of large-scale war to Europe has proved the adage that geography is destiny, bringing Britain’s strategic focus squarely back to its centuries-long priority of ensuring stability on the European continent.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal war does not merely threaten to erase Ukraine’s independence. Russian success—despite sincere European political commitment, military aid, and financial support to Ukraine—would shred the bonds that unite the European Union’s members. Combined with all the other pressures the EU already faces, this could not only collapse any emerging consensus on EU foreign policy and defense but also lead to the disintegration of the rules governing the bloc’s single market, border controls, and immigration.
This is not just a deep concern in Berlin, which wholeheartedly supports Ukraine over Russia. It is not just a concern in Paris, where French President Emmanuel Macron has described preventing Russia from winning the war as the “sine qua non” of European security and even is planning to deploy European troops to Ukraine. A potential Russian victory is also a profound concern in London.
A majority of Britons might have decided in 2016 to leave the EU. But that is not the same as wanting to see it implode. Even after Britain left the single market in 2021, the EU accounts for over half of imports and more than 40 percent of exports. A disintegrating European economy would thus carry severe repercussions for Britain. A loss of close coordination with the EU over migration, crime, terrorism, and political radicalism would have dangerous spillovers as well.
Moreover, if Europeans failed to uphold Ukraine’s sovereignty, many in the United States would conclude that Europe was a lost cause—and that it was time for the United States to turn its attention away. Washington might then sustain only a basic defensive deterrent in Europe and focus on the bigger strategic threat of a rising China, leaving Britain and its European neighbors to fend mainly for themselves in confronting Russia.
This long-term strategic view, shared by the major British political parties, is why Britain will remain one of Europe’s biggest military supporters of Ukraine. It also explains why London has been willing to give the Ukrainians weapons that the more cautious Biden administration had long withheld, such as long-range air-launched cruise missiles, which have been used against Russian targets to devastating effect.
It is also why, in January 2024, Britain was the first European country to sign a bilateral security agreement with Ukraine, which commits British military assistance for the next 10 years. Britain is also one of the most avid supporters of future NATO membership for Ukraine. And in the meantime, Britain is helping Ukraine’s forces and defense industry to become more interoperable with their NATO peers.
This view is why Britain now has 1,000 troops deployed continuously in Estonia, leading a multinational battlegroup as part of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence to deter future Russian aggression.
But like most countries in Europe, Britain is struggling to match resources with commitments. The size of its armed forces—around 130,000 regular, full-time forces across all services, as of April—has shrunk by almost one-third since 2000. Britain will need to help Europe develop more integrated approaches to security, combining each country’s specialties rather than continuing with today’s wasteful duplication. Britain’s defensive and offensive cyber-capabilities, as well as its world-leading electronic surveillance capabilities, will prove especially valuable.
Since Russia stopped most of its gas exports to Europe, Britain’s extensive regasification infrastructure and North Sea pipelines have enabled it to serve as a land bridge for liquefied natural gas exports from the United States and elsewhere to continental Europe. Britain is also woven into Europe’s increasingly important web of wind farms and subsea electricity interconnectors, which will need better protection from Russian sabotage. In January 2023, David Lammy, the Labour Party’s shadow foreign secretary, said the next Labour government would seek a formal security pact with the EU that would cement coordination across these areas, complementing NATO. With snap elections called for July 4, Labour will likely have that opportunity.
London’s return to focusing on European security, alongside its gentle tilt to the Indo-Pacific, aligns with Washington’s current policies. The question is what will happen after the November U.S. elections. Former U.S. President Donald Trump has made clear that the EU, which ran a surplus of more than $200 billion in its goods trade with the United States in 2023, will feel the full force of his retaliatory trade policy, of which Britain may be spared. While some in the Conservative Party may still favor a quixotic attempt to build a new bilateral partnership with the United States, don’t expect a Labour government—all but certain to be in power soon—to abandon the idea of a new strategic partnership with the EU.
Sébastien Thibault illustration for Foreign Policy
Europe’s Vulnerable Economy
By Guntram Wolff, senior fellow at Bruegel and professor at the University of Erfurt’s Willy Brandt School of Public Policy
The challenge of a more geopolitically turbulent world comes as Europe’s economic model is showing signs of stress. GDP growth has lagged that of the United States since the 2010 European debt crisis. Within the EU, markets fragmented along national lines, the lack of a well-functioning financial system, inadequate macroeconomic policies, and an underdeveloped high-tech industry have all meant subpar growth. Externally, the decoupling from Russian energy supplies and uncertain prospects for trade with China weigh on the highly globalized European economy as well. China’s economic model, with its high subsidies for the manufacturing industry—which then exports its growing overcapacity abroad—represents a particular challenge for many European economies, especially those, such as Germany’s, that compete with China in the same industries.
A more America First president in the White House and a more aggressive stance from China as it seeks to dominate Taiwan would further undermine the stability of global trade and hit Europe hard. That said, for all the talk of economic de-risking, both the United States’ and Europe’s trade with China remains strong. A decoupling is not visible in the data, still documenting the benefits of trade.
For Europe, the shift to more antagonistic, security-driven economic relations will not be easy—not least because the European Union has no tradition of incorporating security strategy into economic policy. Assessing security risks remains the domain of national governments with diverging views on what constitutes such risks, whereas economic policy is largely handled by the EU.
Despite these odds, Europe has made some progress in preparing for a new era of geopolitical conflict and increased weaponization of economic interdependence, including creating programs to build advanced semiconductors, promote domestic mining of critical minerals, and advance green supply chains. Still, the work of diversifying trade relations, including away from China, is progressing too slowly. Too often, vested interests in member states block critical policies. One such victim is the proposed trade agreement with the South American customs union Mercosur, which would greatly help the EU diversify trade but has been scuttled by opposition from French farmers and others.
Europe needs to address its vulnerabilities with three major policy agendas. First, it needs to focus on growth. Advancing EU-wide capital markets and other ways to secure funding for growth will be crucial for Europe to catch up on technology and project economic power. Second, the bloc needs to address vulnerabilities in its digital infrastructure and services. Cloud computing, in particular, is extremely dependent on U.S. companies—a major vulnerability if a new U.S. president escalates the conflict over data privacy rules. Finally, and perhaps most existentially, Europe needs to strengthen its defense industry and improve the efficiency of military procurement. There is an acute scarcity of weapons and ammunition, and production still has not reached necessary levels after more than two years of war in Ukraine. A major EU push to boost the defense industry would not only help make Europe more secure but advance European technology as well.
Europe will remain dependent on the United States for security and strategic leadership for some time. But the EU will need to steer its own course instead of copying a U.S. protectionist agenda that will only hurt its citizens. Instead of leaving the profitable China market, it needs to incentivize firms to organize their business in such a way as to withstand possible geopolitically driven disruptions. Tariffs are part of the
toolbox and should be based on the EU’s own assessment of the harms caused by subsidies. Even more importantly, Europe needs to break taboos on debt financing to boost strategic industries and prioritize growth while sustaining its social model. Finally, it needs to partner with countries that share its interest in maintaining global trade openness while improving its capacity to project power to protect trade and the international rules-based order.
An illustration shows a road sign with a podium symbol becoming a series of arrows pointing in many directions against a red background with clouds gathering.Sébastien Thibault illustration for Foreign Policy
Asia Sees Confusion
By Bilahari Kausikan, chairman of the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and former Singaporean diplomat
Europe faces no greater strategic challenge than dealing with Russian aggression but remains incapable of dealing with it without the United States at its back. NATO without Washington is hollow—a prospect relished by countries around the world that wish to see a weaker West.
The problem for all U.S. allies—not only in Europe—is that the United States does not face an existential threat anywhere in the world. China has become a peer competitor, post-Cold War Russia is dangerous, and the ability of North Korea and Iran to disrupt should not be underestimated. But none of them is an existential threat.
That means there is no longer any vital reason for Americans to “pay any price, bear any burden,” as former U.S. President John F. Kennedy said, to uphold the international order. Consequently, every U.S. administration since the end of the Cold War has focused on domestic priorities, with the George W. Bush administration an exception forced by 9/11.
This is not the retreat from the world that some have claimed. But Washington has certainly become more discriminating about whether and how it will intervene abroad. It demands more of its allies, partners, and friends. U.S. President Joe Biden may be more consultative than his predecessor—he is, however, not consulting you to inquire after your health but to see what you are prepared to do to help further the United States’ strategic goals. And those priorities are now in the Indo-Pacific, where only a handful of European countries are marginal strategic players. When U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the United States would aid Ukraine to weaken Russia so that it could never invade another country, the message was directed as much at Beijing as at Moscow.
This misalignment of strategic priorities confronts Europe with a dilemma. French President Emmanuel Macron put his finger on a very fundamental issue when he pressed Europe to consider an independent nuclear deterrent. But will Paris—the only European Union member with such weapons—risk annihilation to save Berlin? Is Europe ready to consider a nuclear-armed Poland or Germany?
Despite what its boosters say, the EU is not a security actor. The bloc’s so-called common foreign and security policy is hardly taken seriously in Asian capitals—or, for that matter, in European ones. A European defense force is only talk, with no prospect of materializing for the foreseeable future.
Europe is now paying the price of decades of post-Cold War neglect of defense. Ukraine was a wake-up call, but has it really brought about the Zeitenwende, or change of eras, that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz claimed? The nuclear question aside, building the capacity to conventionally deter Russia will require much higher defense spending by all EU members sustained not just for a few years but for a decade or longer.
When considering whether Europe can provide its own security without the United States at its back, the continent’s core issue is that its social model is unsustainable—a simple matter of demographic certainty. For three decades, most EU members preferred to shrink defense spending rather than make politically risky cuts in social spending. This soft option is no longer possible: It is now unavoidable that some butter be relinquished for guns. For all the claims by European leaders of having heard the wake-up call, they have not even begun to seriously confront this decision, which cannot be postponed indefinitely.
The EU is in for a period of additional political turmoil as it collectively and nationally debates what and how much social spending needs to be sacrificed for defense and how the burdens are to be distributed between Northern and Central Europe—which feels the Russia threat most keenly—and Southern Europe. In theory, Europe could grow its way to affording both guns and butter. But given Europe’s aging population, growth will require immigration on a scale that will only add to political stresses.
Will European unity and resolve hold, particularly if right-wing movements use the coming turmoil to make further political gains? Russian President Vladimir Putin probably does not think so, as he prepares to fight a long war of attrition in Ukraine. It is difficult to dismiss his calculation.
The fallout for Asia is that Europe’s strategic dependence on the United States will limit its ability to chart an independent course on China. With the partial exception of Britain and France, Europe’s ability to contribute in any way but ad hoc and symbolically to the Indo-Pacific strategic balance will remain similarly constrained. For Europe to contribute meaningfully to Indo-Pacific security, to which its economic security is intimately tied, it needs to pull its own weight defending itself and free U.S. military assets for redeployment. But even this modest contribution will take many more years to materialize—if it ever does.
Sébastien Thibault illustration for Foreign Policy
Who Will Fight for Europe?
By Ivan Krastev, chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies
In December 1989, standing in Vienna’s main railway terminus and looking at the trains full of people arriving from the collapsing communist states to the east, the British American historian Tony Judt decided that a new history of 20th-century Europe needed to be written. He called his opus Postwar—not simply to show how the European present was still shaped by the memories and legacies of World War II but also to demonstrate that Europe had become a place where, for most people, a major war on their continent had become unthinkable.
A book on Europe’s 21st century, unfortunately, will require a different title. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has woken Europeans up to the reality that they are living in a prewar world, not a postwar one. Their long-held assumptions about war and peace in Europe are now a smoldering ruin, like so many Ukrainian cities.
Take the German political class under the 16-year chancellorship of Angela Merkel. Unable to imagine anything but the continued success of Europe’s post-World War II integration, it believed that Europe buying most of its gas from Russia would guarantee a peaceful and cooperative Moscow. In reality, of course, Europe’s economic interdependence with Russia did not curb the Kremlin’s imperial ambitions; on the contrary, German energy dependence, in particular, allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to believe he had a free hand for war. What many Western Europeans thought was a source of security brought vulnerability instead.
Faced with Russia’s aggression, Europeans have also been forced to realize that their long-standing unwillingness to invest in their military capabilities has imperiled them—and that Europe is totally dependent on the United States for its security at the very moment when the U.S. security umbrella can no longer be taken for granted. Washington’s rising economic protectionism, born out of its growing confrontation with Beijing, feels like an attack on European prosperity. The reality is that even if Europeans take the current security threats seriously—and it is not yet entirely clear that the major countries do—the European Union and its member states will need a decade to restructure their defense industries and build a continent-size war economy.
What’s more, Ukraine’s heroic resistance to a brutal invasion reminiscent of the continent’s bloody past has shattered Europeans’ romantic belief in the notion of a post-heroic society—where war was uncivilized, conflicts could be negotiated away, and the only dispute was over who gets which share of the growing economic pie. By the end of the 20th century, “death was no longer seen as being part of the social contract,” as the great English military historian Michael Howard wrote. Now, as Europeans face the reality of a much more hostile and volatile world, it is dawning on them that the old social contract may no longer be valid.
The war has also exposed deep divides in Europe, based largely on collective memory. In February 2022, while the Germans and French were shocked by Russia’s invasion, Eastern Europeans were shocked by Western naivety. While Paris and Berlin were afraid of nuclear escalation, Poles and Balts feared renewed occupation. But with the passing of time, even the EU’s east is no longer unified. While Poland opened its borders for millions of Ukrainian refugees, Hungary ended up being Putin’s closest EU ally. While Poles, Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians are among Ukraine’s most ardent supporters, other Eastern Europeans—Bulgarians, Hungarians, Romanians, and Slovaks—are more reluctant. The war has divided the east from the west—as well as the east itself.
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have also forced Europeans to rethink their relations with the non-Western world. The hope that Russia’s aggression would make the so-called global south stand in defense of the liberal order turned out to be an illusion. Instead, non-Western countries chose to follow their economic interests instead of joining a new cold war between the free world and the world of rising authoritarianism. In making sense of international relations, the postcolonial narrative has replaced the cold war framing; as a result, many non-Western societies view the EU less as a laboratory of the world to come and more as a collection of the old colonial powers.
A decade ago, Europeans considered the fact that war had become unthinkable a major success of the European project. Historians were asking, “Where have all the soldiers gone?” and celebrated Europeans’ unwillingness to fight wars. Now, as Europe’s new reality of war and rearmament sets in, the question becomes: Where will all the soldiers come from, given Europe’s aging population and decades-long demilitarization? After centuries of horrific wars, the pacification of the European mind was the major political achievement of the post-World War II period. Now, it has become a security vulnerability.