FA: Europe goes its own way – Drifting from America, the Continent Is rearming and reordering itself

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, Foreign Affairs notes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

The road ahead

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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