This week Special Edition 50 of Security & Defense magazine will be published, where I wrote an extensive article dedicated to the strategic diagnosis of Europe and the imperative need for the continent to rediscover the strength, ambition and maturity that will allow it to face an international environment undergoing rapid transformation. This text was written at a time when the new United States National Security Strategy was not yet public.
The reading of the NSS now released confirms the relevance of the issues I sought to analyze and demonstrates that the structural challenges I identified do not result from transitory circumstances, but correspond to clear trends that have now become impossible to ignore. This is not about any prophetic anticipation on my part, but simply about recognizing that strategic reality reveals its own logic when observed carefully and without illusions.
The European reaction to the new American Strategy oscillated between perplexity and concern, as if the continent had been faced with a sudden change of orientation on the part of an ally to whom we have become accustomed to attributing ultimate responsibility for the stability of the Euro-Atlantic space. However, for those who closely follow North American strategic thinking, nothing that has now been formalized constitutes significant news. The shift of priorities to the Indo-Pacific, the centrality of systemic competition with China, the demand for a more balanced distribution of burdens within NATO and the affirmation that Europe must assume its share of responsibility are ideas that were being reiterated by different administrations, regardless of political color.
The surprise does not lie in the American Strategy. The surprise lies in Europe’s difficulty in accepting that the world has changed, and it has changed structurally. We persist in an almost ritualized understanding of security, as if peace were a natural and inexhaustible condition, and as if economic prosperity could replace the force that sustains international stability. Europe became accustomed to living in a protected strategic environment, believing that economic integration was enough to prevent conflicts and that military deterrence was a residue of history. This illusion has weakened us and prevented us from recognizing that international politics continues to be shaped by the inevitable combination of power, will and vision.
The new United States Strategy clearly recalls that the transatlantic bond remains essential, but that any alliance only remains robust when there is a balance between responsibilities and means. Washington has not distanced itself from Europe nor renounced its role as a pillar of Euro-Atlantic security. What it did was clarify the limits of its ability to assume, alone, responsibilities that belong to the European continent at a time when it is facing simultaneous challenges in Asia, the Middle East, the Arctic and the cyber domain. This clarification, far from constituting a threat, represents an invitation for Europe to regain the strategic maturity that, for decades, it abdicated from exercising.
In my article for Security & Defense I sought to demonstrate that European fragility does not derive from material insufficiency. It derives rather from the lack of political will, the difficulty in transforming ambition into real capacity, the tendency to postpone structuring decisions and the deeply rooted habit of turning to the United States whenever crises arise that require decisive means. The new American Strategy confirms this diagnosis. Europe cannot continue to wait for others to replace its own responsibility in defending the continent. This expectation is incompatible with the current strategic reality and constitutes, in itself, a risk.
The reference made by the NSS to the need to seek stabilization of the conflict in Ukraine generated concern in some European sectors, but this concern is based on an incomplete reading. The United States has not abandoned Ukraine or watered down its understanding of the threat Russia poses to European security. The question posed by the Strategy is different. It is about recognizing that a war taking place on European territory requires Europe to assume reinforced responsibility in defining the means and objectives necessary to protect the continental order. This clarification is not a sign of American weakness. It is a sign of demand towards Europeans.
It is not surprising that the most considered reactions came from Helsinki or Tallinn, capitals that know from experience the nature of the strategic pressure that hangs over Eastern Europe. Their reading of the American document is simple and lucid. Europe’s security depends on Europe, and protecting the Euro-Atlantic order requires all NATO members to make a serious and proportionate contribution to its defense. This lucidity contrasts with the tendency, still present in some capitals, to interpret each American clarification as a threat, instead of recognizing it as an opportunity to assume responsibilities and reinforce the coherence of the Alliance.
For decades, Europe has had an extraordinarily favorable security environment. This environment allowed many States to postpone investments, neglect critical capabilities and become accustomed to treating defense as a secondary dimension of public policies. That time is over. The world has entered a prolonged period of strategic competition and European defense can no longer be treated as a residual variable. The American Strategy does not create this reality. It just shows it.
Nothing I write diminishes the decisive importance of the United States for European security. NATO continues to be the indispensable structure for the continent’s defense and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. But the Alliance will only remain credible if Europeans accept their share of responsibility and invest, in a sustained manner, in the construction of a military power that complements, and does not replace, North American power. Sovereignty and freedom are not abstract guarantees that are proclaimed. These are concrete realities that are constructed daily.
The document now released by Washington does not diminish Europe. It demands that Europe grows. It invites us to abandon hesitation and assume, with maturity, our role in preserving the Euro-Atlantic order. History calls again for the continent. The response can no longer be delayed. Europe will have to decide whether it wants to continue living in a state of comfortable dependence or whether it wants to assert itself as a strategic actor capable of guaranteeing its own future. The time for that decision is now.