Project Syndicate - The Missing Linchpin of European Hard Power -- May 8, 2026 - Ana Palacio

 Project Syndicate

The Missing Linchpin of European Hard Power

May 8, 2026

Ana Palacio

Spurred by the Ukraine war and deepening doubts about America’s commitment to its NATO allies, Europe has begun building the financial and industrial foundations of military power. Unless it also establishes a clear political authority capable of directing that power, however, Europe could end up more vulnerable than ever.

MADRID—Europe is rearming, and not a moment too soon. Not only has the United States all but stopped supporting Ukraine in the face of continuing Russian aggression, but now President Donald Trump has announced the withdrawal of US troops from Germany. America’s commitment to European security has never seemed so fragile.

As governments across the continent sharply increase defense spending and bolster their military capabilities, the European Union is taking a sensible approach, constructing new mechanisms to coordinate investment and strengthen its defense industry. But financial, industrial, and military capabilities will mean little if Europe lacks the political authority to decide whether and how they are used.

There is nothing new about Europe’s struggle to make decisions quickly and, when necessary, change course nimbly. The EU’s cumbersomeness reflects an institutional design that pools capacity and clout in supranational institutions but leaves political power in the hands of member states. Rearmament does, however, compound this tension—and raises the stakes.

A New Strategy

For decades, the collective security question in Europe appeared to be answered. NATO, with the US at its heart, was the ultimate backstop for European security. As Henry Kissinger explained more than 60 years ago, the US—under both Republican and Democrat presidents—encouraged this dependence so as to assure unquestioned American leadership. A more militarily capable Europe would have been more assertive, and in the Cold War era, US policymakers wanted to retain control over decision-making.

Europe acquiesced in this strategy because it allowed funds to be redirected away from security toward domestic priorities. Even when the US—weighed down by costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and eager to shift its strategic focus to Asia—began encouraging Europe to take more responsibility for its own defense, Europe dragged its feet, with defense spending remaining well below the 2%-of-GDP threshold that all NATO members were supposed to meet. The result was under-resourced European armed forces with limited readiness, fragmented defense industries that struggled to achieve scale, and little capacity for sustained strategic action.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 threw these weaknesses into sharp relief, and then-US President Joe Biden’s conflicted response crystallized the risks of dependence on the US. With Biden’s predecessor, Trump, having spent his first term lambasting NATO for that dependence—a mantle that he has taken up even more aggressively during his second term—there could no longer be any doubt: Europe needed to get its strategic house in order.

Just three days after the Russian invasion, the then-German Chancellor Olaf Scholz delivered his famous Zeitenwende (historic turning point) speech, in which he committed to a massive increase in his country’s defense spending. Governments across the continent, from Spain to Poland, subsequently followed suit with increases of their own. At the same time, Europe overcame 25 years of reluctance to confront Russia and spearheaded the strengthening of NATO’s eastern flank.

More broadly, the EU began taking an increasingly prominent role in international foreign- and security-policy discussions, projecting the image of a more integrated European strategic leadership. But what really stands out are the actions of the European Commission, which, under President Ursula von der Leyen’s leadership, has begun making policy in areas well outside its remit.

In particular, the Commission began constructing a framework for coordinating defense investment among EU member governments and strengthening Europe’s industrial base. The European Defence Fund, for example, will direct nearly €7.3 billion ($8.6 billion) to promote collaborative research, development, and procurement across critical areas like space, cyber, and defense systems in 2021–27.

Moreover, the Security Action for Europe initiative, launched last year, will provide up to €150 billion in competitively priced, long-maturity loans to member states for investments in defense capabilities. The European Defence Industrial Strategy provides a blueprint for such efforts.

In a sense, these instruments build on the EU’s past use of workarounds to bridge gaps in its authority, exemplified by initiatives like NextGenerationEU, which emerged as a means of helping Europe’s economy recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Commission’s innovations reflect a recognition that the EU is uniquely positioned to facilitate highly beneficial coordination in critical areas. When it comes to defense, this includes joint procurement and industrial cooperation to improve efficiency, reduce duplication, and enhance interoperability.

A Chink in Europe’s (Re)armor

But even as the EU assumes a leading role in the financing, coordination, and regulation of Europe’s defense sector, the EU treaties put decisions about defense policy and the use of force almost exclusively in the hands of member states. Moreover, military planning, command structures, operational doctrine, and interoperability remain overwhelmingly NATO-oriented. European militaries still speak the operational language of the Atlantic Alliance, rather than that of EU institutions.

So, while the EU is seeking to build up the machinery of European collective defense—increasing financial resources, deepening industrial coordination, and expanding technological capabilities—it has no collective strategy and little capacity to create one. Europe is gradually constructing the financial and industrial foundations of military power without establishing a clear political authority capable of directing it.

This dynamic has been apparent in the Ukraine war. To be sure, the EU has shown remarkable cohesion on this front, introducing successive rounds of sanctions on Russia, mobilizing large-scale financial assistance for Ukraine, and financing the delivery of military equipment to Ukraine through mechanisms like the European Peace Facility. But this reflects the strong political alignment among European governments, as well as the remnants of American leadership within NATO, not EU strategic leadership.

In fact, the war effort’s strategic direction has been decided largely outside EU frameworks. Military planning occurs primarily through NATO or through informal coalitions of allied governments. Decisions about major weapons systems—from air-defense platforms to long-range strike capabilities—are negotiated among national capitals, rather than through EU structures. The mismatch is glaring. Europe’s most important security policy in decades is being partly financed through European instruments but not directed by European institutions.

A coherent EU strategic framework is also missing in its approach to the war in Iran. Member states broadly share the objective of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons as well as an interest in avoiding a wider Middle East war that could further destabilize energy markets and exacerbate security risks along Europe’s southern flank. And they are particularly mindful of preventing any repetition of the massive influx of immigrants that followed the outbreak of civil war in Syria.

More broadly, Europe’s Middle East diplomacy has long operated largely through national channels. Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, for example, have been handled by the “E3”: France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. (Nowadays, not even these countries are included: Trump has sidelined all of Europe, while giving Pakistan and Turkey a walk-on role in negotiations.)

Even when EU institutions participate in diplomatic processes, political authority lies with member states. This pattern has held since the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran, with national diplomacy and ad hoc coalitions shaping the European response.

Building a single European strategic framework is a matter not only of institutional design, but also of navigating distinct national strategic cultures. Consider Germany, which is now expanding its defense industrial base at a pace unseen since the early 1960s. Backed by a surprisingly broad national consensus, the government is pursuing unprecedented borrowing—facilitated by the easing of its constitutionally mandated Schuldenbremse (the “debt brake,” which puts a cap on annual deficits)—and developing closer ties with the defense industry. Under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Germany has also set up a €500 billion special fund for infrastructure over the next 12 years.

But precisely how this rearmament fits within a European framework remains unclear. Despite recognizing the critical importance of European strategic capacity, Germany’s leaders have yet to shake their transatlantic reflexes, though Trump’s scarcely thought-through war with Iran and growing personal antipathy toward Merz is calling into question habitual acceptance of US decision-making. The result is a persistent tension between Germany’s sense of European responsibility and its urge to assert national leadership—an ambivalence deeply rooted in the political culture of modern Germany.

France, thanks to the legacy of independent foreign and security policy left by General Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s, appears more surefooted. Under President Emmanuel Macron, the EU’s only nuclear power has shared a plan to expand its nuclear umbrella to cover Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden, as well as the UK. But the terms of this arrangement remain hazy—perhaps deliberately so—and the decision-making framework that would guide it remains undefined.

Spain is subject to its own tensions. The country remains firmly anchored in NATO, supportive of European defense initiatives, and bound by its strategic commitments. But Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s rhetoric on security is often shaped by internal pre-electoral interests and the weakness of the coalition government. It thus reflects a public opinion that is critical of Trump (owing not least to broader anti-US and anti-Israel sentiment) and feels far removed from the Ukraine war and the security concerns of Central and Northern Europe. There is also a sense that the threat of instability in North Africa is given short shrift within both NATO and the EU.

Spain’s response to the Iran war illustrates this diffident attitude. Although Sánchez’s government has bluntly condemned the war, it has participated in allied deployments, such as the dispatch of the frigate Cristóbal Colón to the eastern Mediterranean as part of a makeshift shield to protect the eastern members of NATO and the EU.

The Danger of Success

The risk for Europe is not so much that EU defense initiatives will fail. On the contrary, it appears likely that many will succeed, with the continent gradually developing more robust defense industries and improved military capabilities. But there is a very real danger that Europe will end up with a kind of defense union—a system for financing and building military power—without a political authority capable of making strategic decisions about when and how to use it.

Such an ambiguous strategic position could leave Europe more vulnerable than dependence on the US ever did. At least the pre-Trump US was fully committed to maintaining European stability and security. The external actors that Europe might find itself depending on to translate its newfound capabilities into strategic action might not be. And ad hoc coalitions of member states could prove unruly and unable to harness the EU’s collective capacity fully.

Whereas rearmament is ultimately a technical challenge, strategic decision-making is a political one. In an increasingly unstable international environment—defined by war in Ukraine, persistent crises in the Middle East, and intensifying great-power competition—Europe may soon discover that having the right tools is not enough.

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Ana Palacio

Writing for PS since 2011

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Ana Palacio, a former minister of foreign affairs of Spain and former senior vice president and general counsel of the World Bank Group, is a visiting lecturer at Georgetown University.

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