For decades, Europe’s security architecture rested on a false assumption: the United States would defend Europe under all circumstances. This assumption never constituted an unlimited and automatic security guarantee. European politicians nevertheless chose to present it as one. Entrusting the task of defense to Washington was less costly than assuming the financial burden of defending their own countries. Resources that should have been allocated to armed forces, ammunition reserves, and the defense industry could instead be directed toward expenditures designed to satisfy voters. Elections could therefore be won without requiring the electorate to bear the cost of national security.
Avoidance of defense responsibility gradually became state policy, while the comfort produced by that policy became a defining habit of European politics. First domestic politics and then diplomacy were left in the hands of mediocre and undistinguished cadres incapable of carrying the weight of statecraft.
This arrangement functioned throughout the Cold War. Faced with the Soviet threat, American troops were stationed across Europe, and American nuclear weapons provided the basis of European deterrence. NATO’s command, intelligence, communications, logistics, and strategic transportation systems were established largely by the United States. European governments, meanwhile, expanded their economies, increased social spending, and assured their citizens that security was no longer an unresolved matter.
In reality, nothing had been resolved. Rather than establish its own security system, Europe transferred the cost and responsibility of its defense to Washington in return for supporting the United States in almost every circumstance on international platforms. Europe paid for its military dependence with its political independence.
The defense problem confronting Europe today is not rooted in any shortage of money, technology, or human resources. Europe possesses more than sufficient economic capacity to establish powerful armed forces, produce adequate ammunition, develop an integrated air and missile defense system, create strategic transportation capabilities, and construct an independent command structure. What it lacks is the political will to convert these resources into military power.
That political will did not simply disappear. In Europe, leaders who regarded national defense as a fundamental duty of the state were gradually replaced by a political class seeking to remain in power by transferring security responsibilities to others. For this class, defense is no longer an obligation affecting the continued existence of the state. It is a politically dangerous file to be postponed for as long as possible because of the costs it imposes on the electorate.
Alongside this political class, Europe created an immense bureaucratic establishment that seeks to regulate almost every area of life without assuming responsibility for the consequences of its decisions. The European Union established a common currency, created a common market, and developed an extensive body of law extending across national borders. Brussels can determine thousands of matters, from product specifications and environmental standards to budget deficits and agricultural subsidies. Yet the same bureaucracy cannot answer a fundamental question: if a European state is attacked, whose soldiers will fight, under whose command, on which front, and for what purpose?
A bureaucracy can draft regulations, establish new institutions, expand its administrative staff, and convene an endless succession of summits. It cannot create the will to fight. A structure composed of bureaucrats bearing no defense responsibility and politicians who recognize no danger beyond losing the next election is not a security system. It is an institutionalized regime of irresponsibility.
Within this arrangement, the financial burden of security has been assigned to the United States, the risk of war to the countries on Europe’s eastern frontier, and responsibility for decisions to NATO. The remaining function of European politicians has been to issue joint declarations, manufacture new terminology, and speak of a European defense system that does not exist.
Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union provides that, if a member state becomes the victim of armed aggression, the other member states have an obligation to provide aid and assistance. Legal provisions, however, do not create military capabilities. Recording an obligation to assist a state is not the same as determining when that assistance will be provided, which forces will provide it, or what political costs the participating states are prepared to bear. Europe has no unified army, no binding military decision-making authority, and no political institution empowered to issue orders for war on behalf of all its members.
France will not transfer the authority to use its nuclear weapons to Brussels. Germany will not surrender command of its armed forces to Paris or any other European capital. Poland will not entrust its security to French assurances. Smaller states, meanwhile, can never be certain that the larger powers will actually enter a war to defend them.
Whenever a common European army is discussed, every government supports the idea of a common army, but none is prepared to accept a commander from another country. Every state speaks in favor of collective defense while insisting on retaining national control over military decisions. Governments attempt to align defense budgets, yet they cannot agree on a common definition of the threat. For Poland and the Baltic states, Russia is a direct and existential threat. For Germany, it is also an economic reality. For France, it remains a strategic actor that may be used to counterbalance American influence in Europe.
States that cannot define the same threat in the same terms, accept a common commander, or share military decision-making authority cannot produce a common defense policy.
Europe’s primary security problem, even before Russian military power is considered, is its inability to decide what Europe actually is. Is the European Union an economic union, a political federation, an association of sovereign states pursuing overlapping interests, or merely a prosperous but militarily dependent region operating within the American security system?
Because this question remains unanswered, the European bureaucracy covers reality with new terminology. Expressions such as “strategic autonomy,” “defense integration,” and “common security architecture” are repeated continuously, but they are not supported by a common army, an independent command system, or a political authority prepared to accept the possibility of war. European security has become an area governed not by military reality but by bureaucratic language.
The politicians who brought Europe to this point were not regarded as failures. On the contrary, they were repeatedly reelected. They postponed defense expenditure, reduced the size of national armed forces, allowed ammunition reserves to decline, and made the entire system dependent on American support. Yet they continued to assure their citizens that their security remained intact. Europe did not lose its defense capability. It was deliberately rendered defenseless by its own politicians in order to reduce the political cost of winning elections.
No state will defend another state forever and under all circumstances. Nor will the United States guarantee European security independently of its own national interests. If American and European interests continue to diverge, the provisions of the North Atlantic Treaty will not disappear. The political will required to activate them, however, will weaken. European governments will then confront, on their own, the question they have postponed for decades: what price are they prepared to pay for their own security?
There will be no common European answer to that question. States that have failed to establish a common defense cannot be expected to establish a common peace when danger approaches. Each major power will first seek to protect its own interests, construct its own security arrangement, and reach the negotiating table before the others.
Germany will seek a separate arrangement with Russia to protect its economic relations, industrial interests, and energy security. France, unwilling to fall behind Germany or surrender its influence in Europe, will establish its own negotiating channel. The remaining European states will attempt to secure a place in agreements negotiated without their knowledge. Capitals that speak today of collective defense will tomorrow pursue national agreements concealed from one another.
This will not be a temporary diplomatic deviation. It will be the inevitable outcome of the existing European order. States unwilling to share defense authority in peacetime cannot reasonably be expected to abandon their national interests during a crisis. A Europe that cannot establish a common army, appoint a common commander, or define a common enemy will also be incapable of establishing a common negotiating table for peace.
Europe’s security order may therefore collapse not on a major battlefield but at separate peace tables established without the knowledge of supposed allies. European states may lose confidence in one another before suffering any military defeat at the hands of Russia. National agreements concluded from within the alliance may destroy Europe’s collective defense order before an external attack ever does.
In the end, Russia will not be responsible for leaving Europe defenseless. Europe will have been left defenseless by its own politicians: by those who failed to establish adequate armed forces despite possessing immense economic resources; who spoke of unity while pursuing national calculations; and who considered reelection more important than the future security of their states.
Europe has the money, the technology, and the human resources. What it does not have is the political will to transform those assets into defensive power or a governing class capable of exercising that will. Until this reality changes, common European defense will remain not a genuine project, but a political phrase employed to evade responsibility.