Europeanising NATO: Keeping America Onside

The US does not need to be persuaded about the merits of Europe doing more for its own defence. Washington already supports a stronger Europe if that means burden-shifting within NATO: higher defence spending, more capability, and greater European responsibility for conventional defence, allowing the US to shift its focus to other theatres.

The challenge begins when the current rearmament agenda transforms into a quest for greater European strategic agency: the ability of a more capable Europe to act when the US is absent, unwilling, distracted, or opposed. The US cannot be persuaded to give up the leverage it holds by argument alone. But Europe can convince America of the merits of its more independent agency by making it materially credible, usable inside NATO, and consequential in the wider global strategic contest. The purpose of Europe’s efforts should not be a split with the US, but a rebalanced Alliance in which it can act alone when necessary and cooperate with America by choice rather than dependency.

There is now apparent consensus over building a stronger European pillar within NATO: both Washington and Europe accept that Europeans must assume greater responsibility for their own defence. The current US administration openly urges Europe to field more power and makes clear that this call goes beyond fairer burden-sharing, while NATO’s five percent defence spending commitment codifies a shift that Washington has demanded for years.^[1] The new US National Security Strategy (NSS) urges Europe to stand “on its own feet.”^[2] The National Defense Strategy (NDS) translates this into an operational bargain in which the European Allies assume primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defence, with the US providing critical but more limited support.^[3] Washington can then focus on the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific. Europe agrees and has embarked on its most ambitious rearmament effort in decades.

US-European conceptual convergence reaches its limit when greater European responsibility begins to imply greater European discretion.

Yet this conceptual convergence reaches a limit when greater European responsibility begins to imply greater European discretion. For Washington, Europeanising NATO is primarily about the cost-benefit balance—Europe should carry more of the conventional defence burden so that NATO becomes less demanding on US resources and better aligned with American global priorities. A stronger Europe is useful when it fills capability gaps, sustains Ukraine, creates procurement opportunities for the US defence industry, and frees the US to deal with other theatres. Europe thus becomes more capable, but within a division of labour still largely shaped by American strategic primacy.

For Europe, the meaning of Europeanisation will evolve as its capabilities grow, but it is unlikely to remain content with delegated responsibility. A Europe that spends more, produces more, and fields more forces will also seek a greater role in shaping strategy. Europeanising NATO will increasingly mean Europe not only assuming greater responsibility within a US-led Alliance framework, but also acquiring the strategic agency to define priorities, shape instruments, and act when Washington is not directly involved.

Recent transatlantic friction already indicates the lines along which this debate is likely to evolve. A more transactional US posture towards Russia makes Europeans question whether American commitment can remain central to their defence planning.^[4] The temporary suspension of critical intelligence support to Ukraine has reinforced concerns that dependence on US technologies and enablers could limit Europe’s freedom of action if Washington opposes a particular course.^[5] The Greenland crisis has demonstrated that legal status and Alliance habits may offer limited protection against unilateral US agenda-setting, while the Iran war has highlighted that the US relies on European bases, ports, and airspace to project power for operations that Europeans may not support politically or legally.^[6]

Dependence on US strategic enablers will give the US leverage over whether Europe can follow through on its own decisions.

These cases raise the questions of whether and how Europe can assume greater defence responsibility when political and operational conditions are largely shaped by Washington. The old transatlantic habit of translating dependence into trust is becoming harder to sustain. A Europeanised NATO capable of keeping both sides of the Atlantic strategically connected will require a new, harder bargain grounded in interests, incentives, and capabilities. For Europe, this means moving from persuasion to strategy. Its increased agency must be materially credible, usable inside NATO, and globally consequential in the strategic competition increasingly linking Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. For Washington, European agency will have to prove its value in practice: by containing Russia without absorbing US bandwidth, and by showing that Europe can add weight to the broader strategic contest where European and American interests remain intertwined.[7] US demands for European support in the Iran war suggest that this latter function matters more to Washington in practice than the formal division of labour set out in the NSS and NDS would imply.

Credible Capability

Europe’s strategic agency must first be materially credible. This will not come from rearmament alone. Europe will also need control over a defence-enabling ecosystem that allows military power to be generated, sustained, replenished, relocated, and connected. This must include secure and affordable energy supply, access to critical raw materials, industrial surge capacity, a strong logistics and intelligence backbone, cyber resilience, and technological depth. Weaknesses in this ecosystem will reinforce Europe’s dependence on US strategic enablers—intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, air-to-air refuelling, strategic airlift, command and control, and long-range strike capabilities—and give the US leverage over whether Europe can follow through on its own decisions.^[8] Unless Europe closes these gaps and becomes capable of sustaining its defence, it is not credible to speak of more independent European agency. A Europe that remains dependent on US enablers can ask for greater discretion but its political room for manoeuvre will still rely on American assets.

Redressing this, however, should not mean defence-industrial separation. Neither Europe nor the US has the industrial surge capacity to sustain long-term competition alone.[9] Cooperation across the defence-enabling ecosystem should aim to create controlled interdependence, rather than a renewed dependence on the US that preserves an informal US veto over European action. The goals should be co-production and licensed production on both sides of the Atlantic, diversified supply chains, sovereign-use rights, and European repair and sustainment capacity—preserving the industrial link, while reducing the chokepoints that turn cooperation into American leverage. 

At the same time, as it closes gaps, Europe can build distinctive strengths. Russia’s daily testing of European societies through sabotage, cyber operations, drone incursions, and pressure on infrastructure creates the conditions for Europe to develop hard-earned expertise in still-evolving domains such as critical infrastructure protection and counter-drone capabilities.^[10] If Europe turns its operational exposure into scalable capability, it will not only strengthen its own defence but also gain additional bargaining weight with Washington. It will become a source of scarce expertise in domains that already matter in the wider strategic competition.

Usability Inside NATO

European agency must also be executable inside NATO. A more Europeanised NATO will need to distinguish clearly between decisions that require full Alliance ownership and tasks that willing and capable Allies can carry forward within NATO’s political and military framework. This is the only realistic way to address the formal veto problem: where NATO consensus is required, the US will retain its voice, but not every European-led task needs to be treated as a full Alliance decision. Without such differentiation, Europe’s growing capability risks being underused, strengthening incentives to develop parallel structures outside the Alliance. The institutional task, therefore, is to create more room inside NATO for regional capability packages, reinforcement arrangements, and operational tasks led by those Allies most exposed, most capable, and most willing to act.

There are already several developments within NATO that set the preconditions for more independent European agency. Forward Land Forces, in which specific Allies assume regional responsibilities on the eastern flank, and the planned European leadership of all three Joint Force Commands both indicate room for a more differentiated Alliance in which capable European Allies carry greater responsibility for leadership, command, reinforcement, and execution.^[11] These developments may have started as an accommodation of US burden-shifting preferences but over time, they can generate the institutional basis for greater European discretion.

Global Strategic Weight

Finally, Europe’s agency should be globally consequential. A rebalanced transatlantic bargain cannot stop at the question of who defends Europe—that is the entry point for a discussion between Europe and the US, not the strategic end state. The larger question is whether a stronger Europe can add weight to the wider contest now linking Russia’s war against Ukraine, China’s systemic challenge, Iran’s regional destabilisation, and North Korea’s deepening military alignment with Moscow. In this broader systemic competition, the decisive variables are endurance, industrial surge capacity, technological resilience, control over dependencies, and political will.

For Europe, this means refraining from fixating on US prescriptions. The NDS may attempt to establish limits on Europe’s global ambition in stating that European “efforts and resources are best focused on Europe.”[12] But Europe should have the confidence to follow its own strategic interests rather than the letter of US documents. Demands by the US for NATO Allies to become involved in re-opening the Strait of Hormuz demonstrate that real-world events will anyway shape US views on Europe’s involvement in global affairs.[13] Eventually, Europe will be judged by its readiness and willingness to play a bigger role.

American support for Ukraine is easier to sustain when Kyiv is seen as an actor able to generate strategic value.

This will require a strategic adjustment on the European side. Russia will remain Europe’s most immediate military threat, but Europe’s security horizon cannot stop there. The emerging adversarial alignment is testing the west’s ability to sustain pressure across connected theatres, technologies, supply chains, and defence-industrial systems. Europe needs to move beyond the role of a protected theatre and become an actor able to read the wider contest, absorb risk, and shape outcomes that matter beyond its own defence. Ukraine demonstrates how this is important for the current US administration: American support is easier to sustain when Kyiv is seen not only as a victim of aggression, but as an actor able to impose costs on Russia, innovate under pressure, and generate strategic value. Europe will face the same test. Its quest for strategic agency will be taken seriously if it demonstrates that this agency changes outcomes beyond Europe.

A New Bargain

The bargain that Europe should offer to the US is therefore not less America in Europe, but less American indispensability in European defence in exchange for a Europe that carries more weight regionally and globally. For Europe, this could turn into greater freedom of action without strategic isolation. For the US, it would mean an ally that absorbs less bandwidth while adding weight against the Russia-China-Iran-North Korea alignment. A Europeanised NATO will be convincing only if Europe shifts from being a better burden-bearer to becoming a strategic counterpart: materially capable of acting alone when necessary and able to cooperate with the US from a position of shared weight rather than asymmetric dependence.

Endnotes

^[1] Valbona Zeneli and Philippe Dickinson, “Rethinking the NATO burden-sharing debate,” Atlantic Council, 20 June 2024; Department of War, “Remarks by Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby at the NATO Defense Ministerial (As Prepared),” 12 February 2026

^[2] The White House, “National Security Strategy of the US of America,” November 2025, 27.

^[3] Department of War, “National Defense Strategy of the US of America,” 23 January 2026, 11.

^[4] Angela Giuffrida, “Europe’s leaders raise pressure on Trump to involve Ukraine in Putin talks,” The Guardian, 10 August 2025.

^[5] Anna Desmarais, “Can the US turn off European weapons? Experts weigh in on ‘kill switch’ fears,” Euronews, 13 March 2025.

^[6] Justina Budginaite-Froehly, “Greenland is Europe’s strategic blind spot—and its responsibility,” Atlantic Council, 5 January 2026; Marcin Zaborowski, “Transatlantic Split Over Iran: The Alliance Under Strain,” GLOBSEC, 25 March 2026.

[7] NATO, “Deterrence and Defence,” 25 June 2026.

^[8] Sebastian Clapp, “EU joint defence capability development,” European Parliamentary Research Service, June 2026.

[9] Justina Budginaite-Froehly, “The US Arsenal Needs Allies, Not Customers in Europe,” The National Interest, 24 April 2026.

^[10] Justina Budginaite-Froehly, “Turning Baltic Vulnerability Into Strength,” CEPA, 27 May 2026.

^[11] NATO, “Strengthening NATO’s Eastern Flank,” 17 June 2026; NATO, “European Allies to take on new leadership roles in NATO’s Command Structure, 10 February, 2026.

[12] Department of War, “National Defense Strategy,”19.

[13] Maia Davies, “Trump urges UK and other nations to send warships to Strait of Hormuz,” BBC, 14 March 2026.

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The views and opinions contained in this paper are solely of its author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official position of the International Centre for Defence and Security or any other organisation.