By Jean-Claude Galli
American military disengagement and the uncertain future of NATO are forcing the European Union to become a strategic actor in its own right. The success of such a transformation will depend on the ability of its members to turn national anxieties into a shared political vision.
Strategic autonomy, a concept of French diplomacy promoted by Emmanuel Macron as early as 2017, is becoming the European Union's political mantra.
Bruised by the Trump administration's outbursts - and threats - against it, challenged on its borders by the stalemate of the war in Ukraine, and worried about being marginalised by a US-China G2, the EU has no choice but to build muscle and show the rest of the world that it is not merely an economic power. While a consensus now seems established on the need to reduce critical dependencies in digital technology, energy and semiconductors, the defence and security component remains one of the most complex political equations to solve.
For good reason. If you live in Warsaw or Vilnius today, your problem is the Russian tank stationed 300 kilometres from your door, in Kaliningrad. If you live in Athens, your concern is Turkey's appetite in the Mediterranean Sea, a short distance from your beaches. If you are in Copenhagen, however, your immediate concern lies more than 3,000 kilometres from your shores, beyond the Arctic Circle, where Greenland sits as an object of American covetousness.
Although this assessment of diffuse and growing threats is shared by all EU member states, the firm and common political response it calls for divides them. Three groups of states and one "new" actor currently stand out on Europe's grand geostrategic chessboard.
The "Europe as a Power" group: France and the southern flank
For France, "power is a duty for Europeans" (1). This vision advocates an ideally independent military and industrial capacity for action. Paris is pushing for European preference in defence-equipment procurement and for a massive strengthening of the Union's industrial capabilities. "A Europe that depends on a rival's components and an ally's shield is not a sovereign Europe; it is a Europe on borrowed time." (2)
Long isolated because it was suspected of wanting to favour its own defence ecosystem, France has managed to rally countries such as Italy, Spain and Greece to its view. This is not an ideological endorsement of Europe as a power, but an alignment of strategic and industrial interests.
Rome, Madrid and Athens see European autonomy as a way to stabilise the EU's southern flank, particularly in the event of US withdrawal. If the United States disengages, the Union must have the military means to intervene alone in its immediate Mediterranean neighbourhood, in the Maghreb or Libya for example.
Italy also has one of Europe's most powerful defence industries and does not intend strategic autonomy to become an exclusively Franco-German project. By aligning with Paris on European preference and the strengthening of the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB), it secures a seat at the table for major future EU armament programmes. Finally, Paris and Rome signed a strengthened-cooperation treaty in 2021, the Quirinal Treaty, which establishes the principle of mutual assistance in the event of armed aggression.
Greece's alignment with the French vision of autonomy is a matter of national security. Athens doubts that NATO would intervene in the event of conflict with Turkey. Europe as a power is therefore an additional life insurance policy for Greece, which also has a strategic partnership with France that includes a mutual-assistance clause in the event of aggression by a third country.
The "Existential Distrust" group: Poland and the Baltic states
In Warsaw, Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius, the French concept of strategic autonomy was until recently viewed with scepticism, if not suspicion. For these capitals, the debate is not technical; it is existential. The Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) thus considers that, despite uncertainties weighing on the Euro-Atlantic link, in the short and medium term Europe's defence effort cannot replace either American guarantees under Article 5 of the Atlantic Alliance treaty or the US military presence on the Old Continent (3).
In Estonia, the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS) stresses that the urgent requirement is immediate combat capability, not promises of industrial autonomy by 2030. Yet the Trump administration's apparent rapprochement with Russia, Vice-President J.D. Vance's frontal attack on European policies and values, and President Trump's aggressive tariffs on Europe have sown doubt. "Strategic autonomy is no longer just a French fantasy. The term is now being heard in London, Berlin and Warsaw. That is a radical change." (4)
The "Transatlantic Caution" group: Germany, the Netherlands and the Nordics
Germany occupies a pivotal position, marked by a structural and historical reluctance to emancipate itself from the American framework. Despite the Zeitenwende, Chancellor Friedrich Merz refuses to choose between Paris and Washington.
The Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), Berlin's influential think tank, cautiously supports a realistic, à la carte strategic autonomy: "The question of whether to act with, without or against Washington must be examined for each policy area" (5). For the SWP, Europe will not decide the future of the transatlantic community alone, but its behaviour will influence the outcome.
Berlin, like the "frugal" and Nordic countries, also sees French-style autonomy as a Trojan horse for French protectionism and Paris's repeated demands for a large common EU borrowing programme to finance European rearmament. Yet mindsets are changing east of the Rhine as well. The younger German generation appears less and less convinced that Europe can define its future on the basis of American assurances. By the end of 2025, 73% of Germans described relations with the United States as "bad", and nearly 40% saw Washington as a threat to the German economy (6).
The European Commission: the opportunistic facilitator
Is Europe ready for an unprecedented political assertion in its history - ready to inspire fear, to strike back independently if necessary? The debate will continue to occupy its members, whose positions evolve with Russian, Chinese and American assertions of power. The internal balance of EU institutions is already being transformed. Pressed by Russian aggression in Ukraine, European leaders quickly turned to Brussels and decided to circumvent the Union Treaty, which states that defence questions fall under the exclusive competence of the member states. That is no longer the case.
Mandated by the member states after the Versailles summit in March 2022, the European Commission did not hesitate. It appointed a Commissioner for Defence and now plays, through different programmes and initiatives, notably SAFE (Security Action for Europe), a leading role in strengthening and financing the EDTIB. "The Commission is pushing the walls out while making sure not to step too openly on the member states' toes," a French representative in Brussels notes with concern.
The position of the Commission and of its ambitious president, Ursula von der Leyen, amounts to a pragmatic synthesis. It uses the French grammar of Europe as a power to push the 27 towards unprecedented industrial integration through its plan to create a single defence market, while anchoring its approach within NATO to reassure the eastern-flank countries and Germany.
What do we still have to say to one another politically?
Now that Donald Trump has announced the withdrawal of 5,000 American soldiers based in Germany, the EU, on pain of disappearance, is being invited by History to become a strategic actor in its own right. To get there, it must change its institutional shape, amend its neighbourhood policy and, inevitably, change its political nature.
In the absence of "decision-making autonomy", some speak of "autonomy of means"; others of "political interoperability" modelled on the "operational interoperability" cherished by military circles, which nevertheless remains wishful thinking at European scale.
"As for who will lead Europe, there is no alternative to Germany and France. The two strongest European powers must mobilise to fill the vacuum" left by the United States, former German foreign minister and vice-chancellor Joschka Fischer recently wrote in Le Monde (7).
In Paris, on January 22, 1963, at the signing of the Franco-German friendship treaty, Charles de Gaulle - hardly suspected of federalist ambition - commented on the agreement reached with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in these terms: "Everything that we, French and Germans, manage to create in the field of defence will help unite us and make us progress. If we were to do nothing in this field, we would soon have politically nothing left to say to one another."
- Speech on the conflict in Ukraine and European construction, delivered by Emmanuel Macron on October 3, 2025 in Saarbrucken.
- Speech delivered on May 4, 2026 by Emmanuel Macron in Yerevan, at the 8th summit of the European Political Community.
- Marcin Terlikowski, La (longue) route de l'Union europeenne vers le rearmement, PISM, March 2025.
- Karsten Friis, Nordic-Baltic security without the United States, ICDS, July 2025.
- Sascha Lohmann & Johannes Thimm, With, Without, or Against Washington, SWP, March 2026.
- Vincent Tadday, Is this the end of automatic Atlanticism in Germany?, ELN, May 2026.
- J. Fischer, "La dissolution de l'OTAN a deja commence", Le Monde, May 1, 2026.