The second Trump administration has recentred the military within elite security discourse, upping the ante on defense spending. This trend spilled over into the NATO, with Trump’s increasing expectations for his European allies to broaden defense spending if they want to maintain America’s sizeable military support throughout the continent, especially amidst Russia’s continued Ukraine campaign and the threat of war spillover. While the member states committed to spending at least 5% of their individual GDPs in defense spending during the 2025 summit, some of them are finding the goal difficult to attain due to parliamentary and budgetary limits. The 24th June meeting between NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and US President Donald Trump was poised to balance America’s expectations against Europe’s limitations on defense expenditure. Trump’s caveats on maintaining American defense systems to help protect Europe against the Russia threat alongside below par defense spending by his European counterparts highlights this crucial debate: to what extent can Europe defend itself against Russia, without America?
Why does Europe need America’s military support?
The 2025 CSIS report titled “How Europe can Defend Itself with Less America” analyses the looming threat of Russia’s Ukraine campaign spillover into westward states. According to the report, different European intelligence points to a Russian rearming in approximately 5 years, under the right conditions (primarily ceasefire). In such a case, Russia may launch a regional offensive into Baltic states and even a full-scale offensive across Europe. Without American military support, European boots-on-the-ground would fall short due to a lack of sustained “munitions and frontline forces.” A Russian air offensive would also force the weakening of European air defense through its “preference for defensive mass,” or a military campaign focused on divesting resources in a mass attack to wear down opposing forces by attrition. In contrast, the presence of American troops, artillery, and air and naval forces would ensure that Russia would be more calculative over launching an offensive in Europe. In essence, America’s military presence acts as a security in deterring Russian war spillover in westward European states. The odds of actually fully engaging NATO’s military prowess to protect Europe from Russia are low, at least until the US maintains its presence geographically.
To what extent is Europe dependent on the US?
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The CSIS report details the extent of the American military presence across Europe. As of 2025, the US had approximately 80,000 soldiers stationed in different European outposts, to serve as a rapid reaction force in response to Russian aggression. It leads a section of Europe’s Forward Land Forces (FLF) in Poland, contributing to Europe’s initial forward deployment. In addition to this, there are reinforcement commands in reserve, if required to bolster the efforts of on-ground forces. In terms of air power, the US commandeers its extensive air inventory from its Ramstein Air Force Base, headquartering the NATO Allied Air Command. American naval power in crucial European maritime theatres, such as the Black Sea and around the Arctic, also acts as a reinforcing deterrent on NATO’s eastern flank.
Apart from these aspects of military presence and deterrence, Ruben Stewart of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) says that NATO’s organisational framework, spearheaded by American “operating systems”, provides a coherent connective network that allows all of NATO’s member states to act in a concerted response to external aggression. It is this network, he argues, comprising of extensive ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconaissance) alongside American “operating systems,” that enables the enforcement of NATO’s entire strategy. Without this network, the European states would not have a coherent framework within which to effectively act in circumstances of Russian aggression.
If US pulls away, what is Europe’s contingency plan?
While individual European states possess significant military capacities (some even nuclear), the issue of consensus between the states arises, especially during contentious military campaigns requiring quick decision-making capability. There is a marked lack of the connective tissue that Stewart qualifies American “operating systems” as providing within NATO, without the American presence. Outside of NATO, however, the European Plan for Defense Readiness by 2030 aims to effectively integrate separate defense capacities into a coherent supranational framework by enhancing “military mobility and infrastructure.” It will also domesticise arms production and procurement to avoid external supply leverage later on. Alongside this plan, the EU has more specific plans to boost its weapons capacities, such as the Eurodrone program that is set to strengthen the EU’s Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) and High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) capacities by 2030. These programs are ambitious in wording, but not as effective in reality. The inherent issue of European consensus and bureaucratic delays plagues the long term goal of achieving strategic autonomy.
Against the ever-present volatility of Trump’s decision-making, Europe needs to be prepared to confront its internal issues and build its own connecting tissue. In a tangible sense, the American military presence is a necessary condition in deterring Russian aggression. However, it may be time to confront the possibility that America’s securitising presence may not be as reliable as before. Europe needs to amp up its defense spending and tackle its consensus issues head on, if it truly wishes to deter the Russian threat and in the future, potentially be able to engage in symmetrical combat.
