This week’s NATO summit has made something increasingly clear about the transatlantic alliance: Europe is no longer debating whether it needs to assume substantially greater responsibility for its own defence, but how quickly it can convert that political commitment into actual military capability. European governments have spent the past year increasing defence budgets, expanding ammunition production and discussing a larger European role in guaranteeing Ukraine’s security, while Donald Trump continues to insist that the United States should not permanently carry a disproportionate share of Europe’s defence burden. The change is partly a response to Russia, but it is also a response to America itself. Trump’s confrontations with European allies over trade, Greenland and defence spending have made governments increasingly unwilling to base their security on the assumption that every future American administration will define US interests in exactly the same way. The alliance is therefore undergoing a transition that sounds contradictory but is actually quite rational: Europe is attempting to make itself less dependent on the United States partly so that its alliance with the United States can survive.
The distinction between alliance and dependency matters here. An alliance is a voluntary relationship in which states cooperate because cooperation advances their interests. Dependency exists when one partner lacks realistic alternatives if the other withdraws. For much of the post-war period, Europe accepted substantial dependence because American protection was extraordinarily valuable and appeared highly credible. The arrangement also benefited Washington: US bases, European allies and NATO gave America enormous influence over the security architecture of an economically powerful continent. It was therefore never simply American charity. Yet the asymmetry became politically difficult once European states remained wealthy while continuing to rely heavily on American intelligence, logistics, nuclear deterrence and military scale.
Trump’s pressure has altered the incentives because European governments now assign a larger probability to future American disengagement. This is the credibility-burden-sharing paradox: the more completely America guarantees European security regardless of European effort, the weaker Europe’s incentive to invest in additional capability. Introducing uncertainty increases European investment because governments begin insuring against abandonment. But uncertainty cannot increase indefinitely. If Europeans eventually conclude the American guarantee is unreliable altogether, they may stop thinking primarily about burden-sharing inside NATO and begin constructing substitutes for NATO itself. American pressure therefore works best when Washington remains credible enough that Europe wants to strengthen the alliance rather than replace it.
The central problem now is that spending is not capability. European governments can announce hundreds of billions of euros in additional defence budgets, but money does not immediately become trained soldiers, missile batteries or ammunition. Defence production contains long lead times, specialised supply chains and highly regulated procurement. A government can authorise money today for an air-defence system that becomes operational years later. Europe therefore faces a dangerous transition period in which political commitments have changed faster than military reality.
This is why procurement reform may matter more than another headline spending target. European militaries operate numerous different weapons platforms and often protect national defence industries through separate purchasing programmes. Politically, this preserves domestic employment and technological sovereignty. Militarily, it creates duplication, higher costs and complicated logistics. Twenty-seven countries each insisting on their own preferred system can collectively spend more while receiving less capability than a more integrated market would produce. National sovereignty over procurement can therefore reduce collective sovereignty over security if fragmentation leaves every state more dependent on American capabilities.
The solution is not one centralised European army replacing national forces. Political legitimacy for deploying soldiers remains overwhelmingly national, and asking governments to surrender that authority completely would be unrealistic. Europe instead needs greater standardisation, joint purchasing and specialisation. Countries can retain political control over their forces while agreeing that not every state needs an independent version of every weapons system. This resembles comparative advantage in economics: specialisation raises efficiency, provided the partners trust one another sufficiently that dependence inside the system does not become dangerous.
Ukraine provides the immediate test because European leaders increasingly argue that any eventual peace settlement requires strong long-term security guarantees. If Europe promises Ukraine protection but continues relying on Washington for the decisive capabilities behind that promise, European political autonomy remains incomplete. A guarantee is credible only when the guarantor can pay the cost it promises to impose if deterrence fails. This is why European defence production, rather than diplomatic declarations alone, determines whether Europe can shape the eventual settlement with Russia.
The nuclear question is harder. Britain and France possess nuclear weapons, but their deterrents were designed principally around national security rather than providing an explicit continental substitute for the American nuclear umbrella. If doubts about American extended deterrence persist, Europe will eventually need a more serious debate about whether and how French and British nuclear capabilities contribute to wider European security. This conversation is politically uncomfortable because nuclear deterrence forces societies to contemplate catastrophic violence. Avoiding the debate does not remove the strategic dependency.
There is a deeper philosophical issue underneath this. Political sovereignty is often described as a legal condition: a state possesses authority over its territory and citizens. But sovereignty also has a material dimension. A country unable to defend itself without another state’s permission possesses formal independence while some of its most important choices remain externally constrained. This does not mean every state needs military self-sufficiency. Small countries rationally pool security through alliances. It means the alliance should increase members’ agency rather than make independent political judgement prohibitively expensive.
Europe’s growing defence capacity could therefore change its relationship with America in ways Washington may not always welcome. A Europe less dependent on US protection will be more capable of disagreeing with Washington over China, trade, technology regulation or the Middle East. This is the unavoidable consequence of the burden-sharing America has demanded. Power and political agency are complements. Asking allies to become stronger while expecting them to remain equally deferential misunderstands why states seek power in the first place.
This does not need to weaken NATO. It could make the alliance healthier by replacing a paternal relationship with something closer to partnership. America would remain the most powerful member, but European states would contribute enough that the collapse of one country’s political commitment would not collapse the entire security architecture. An alliance containing several capable centres may be harder to coordinate, but it is also more resilient.
India should find this evolution familiar. Strategic autonomy has always rested on avoiding security dependence severe enough that another state acquires a veto over national policy. Europe’s emerging approach is moving towards a similar principle, though within an alliance rather than outside one. The lesson is not that alliances destroy sovereignty. It is that any relationship becomes dangerous when the cost of leaving or disagreeing becomes so large that consent is no longer meaningfully voluntary.
The success of NATO’s transformation therefore should not be measured simply by whether European members reach a particular percentage of GDP on defence. The meaningful indicators are physical: ammunition stockpiles, air-defence coverage, drones, military mobility, trained personnel, integrated command and the ability to sustain operations without immediate American reinforcement. Those capabilities determine whether additional expenditure has purchased actual strategic freedom.
Europe spent decades enjoying an extraordinary peace dividend because American power made large-scale defence expenditure less necessary. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended much of that assumption, and Trump’s foreign policy has accelerated the adjustment. The result may eventually be an alliance quite different from the one that existed after the Cold War: less comfortable, less asymmetric and potentially more durable because each side knows the other is participating by choice rather than necessity.
That would be the strongest outcome from the current rearmament. Europe does not need independence from America. It needs enough independence within the alliance that cooperation remains an expression of shared interest rather than structural dependence. A mature alliance should not require one side to remain weak in order for the relationship to remain strong.
