The US is seeking greater freedom of action and fewer international constraints, demanding more immediate returns from its alliances. But in doing so, it is undermining the institutions, partnerships, and credibility that enable it to wield influence far out of all proportion to its economic and military power.
Europe, meanwhile, is taking more responsibility for its own security, building up its defense capabilities, and developing the mechanisms to manage strategic dependencies. Progress is uneven, but Europe is maturing as a strategic power.
The paradox of American power
The shift in US policy should not be seen only as a turn inwards or traditional isolationism. The US is still willing to wield considerable economic, political, and military power. However, it is becoming more selective about how it does so.
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The 2025 US National Security Strategy explicitly rejected the idea that the US should continue to shoulder global responsibilities that are not necessarily related to national interest. It claimed that the era in which America largely underpinned the international order on its own is over and called for both burden-sharing and burden-shifting to allies.
This shift is increasingly visible in practice. Security commitments and tariffs, including access to the US market, are increasingly being used as bargaining chips in bilateral dealings, even with old allies. The distinction between burden-sharing and transactionalism is that the former seeks a fairer allocation of responsibilities within an alliance while the latter makes the commitment conditional on what each partner has to offer in return.
There is a strong argument for part of the agenda. Wealthier allies should contribute more to their own defense. European dependence on the US became excessive while years of underfunding eroded European military preparedness and industrial strength. Asking Europe to take more responsibility is not abdicating the transatlantic relationship.
But the confusion between burden-sharing and transactionalism, and the way alliances are being reinterpreted as liabilities rather than assets, is the key danger. Alliances do not merely impose obligations on the US. They also provide access, intelligence, capabilities, political support, and international legitimacy. Studies of American alliances describe them as a means of bolstering US power by combining it with partners’ national power. And the alliance system is one of America’s key advantages over China.
This is the paradox of the new American approach. Washington seeks greater freedom of action by loosening its commitments and dealing with other countries more transactionally. The strategy may well work at the margin, as countries that have become accustomed to operating in Washington’s orbit make concessions to avoid confrontation.
But in the longer term, that same approach will encourage them to reduce their reliance on America by diversifying their partnerships and strengthening their own capabilities. Even if they continue to cooperate with Washington, confidence in the durability of American commitments will erode as US policy changes across successive administrations.
America thus gains flexibility at the cost of some of its leverage. That is what it means to move forward by taking steps backwards.
Europe should not view the new American approach as a transitory episode that can be sidelined and endured. A future administration could return to prioritising alliances and multilateral institutions. But the European governments cannot take for granted that its approach will be consistent with the outcome of the next election. Once the risk of discontinuity has been shown, mitigating excessive reliance on the US is a risk-reduction measure rather than anti-American positioning.
Europe is no longer standing still.
For Europe, this is not a lesson that the transatlantic relationship has been rendered irrelevant. NATO remains at the heart of European collective defense, and the partnership with the US will continue to be vital in many fields. The lesson is that this partnership cannot be based any longer on permanent European reliance or on the belief that every US administration will share the same approach to alliances.
Fortunately, Europe is not beginning from zero. EU Member States spent EUR 418 billion on defense in 2025, 20% more than in 2024 and equivalent to 2.2% of their combined GDP. Expenditure is projected to reach EUR 454 billion in 2026. European NATO allies and Canada also increased their defense expenditure by approximately 20% in real terms during 2025.
Spending alone is not enough, but the EU is also beginning to build a more coherent framework around it. The EUR 150 billion Security Action for Europe instrument supports defense investment through loans and encourages common procurement. The European Defence White Paper and the Readiness 2030 agenda identify capability gaps, industrial constraints, and areas in which greater European coordination is required.
Europe is also rebuilding partnerships beyond the institutional boundaries of the EU. The EU-UK Security and Defence Partnership, agreed in May 2025, created a structured framework for cooperation in areas including maritime and space security, cyber threats, critical infrastructure, and crisis management. The EU signed a comparable partnership with Canada in June 2025, and Canada has since become the first non-European country whose companies can participate in procurement under SAFE.
The shift is not limited to defense. With investment screening, the Anti-Coercion Instrument, trade-defence measures, and policies to address critical raw materials, the EU has begun to develop instruments to reduce vulnerabilities while not abandoning the principles of an open economy.
These initiatives should be watched with some caution, however. Increased expenditure does not always translate into deployable capabilities. European defense markets are fragmented; common procurement is still the exception, and national industrial interests often impede consolidation. Europe continues to rely heavily on the US for a number of strategic enablers, including intelligence, command and control, strategic transport, and nuclear deterrence. The European Defence Agency continues to call for more collaborative investment, interoperability, and coordinated capability development. The shift has begun, but Europe has not yet developed the capacity to act autonomously where necessary.
Nevertheless, the shift is real. The continent is moving from a system in which being protected by the US predominates to one in which Europeans take on more responsibility, make more investment in their own capacity, and cooperate with a wider set of partners.
Strategic maturity, not separation
The aim should not be to encourage European dissociation from the US. The enhancement of the transatlantic relationship will be reinforced by enhancing Europe’s capabilities and remedying the political imbalance that has long been its characteristic feature. Strategic maturity means having the option to cooperate, rather than having no option but to cooperate.
Europe should not seek merely to restore the old relationship. If a new administration in Washington adopts a more traditional approach, European governments should not assume that a new reversal is impossible. Policies in Washington can change with each election, while repairing the damage to trust and capabilities takes far longer.
At the same time, the US may believe that it will benefit from breaking free of the restraints imposed by alliances and international institutions, but these are also sources of American power. Undermining them may create more flexibility for unilateral action in the present, at the cost of reduced partnership options in the future.
Europe is finally drawing the right conclusion. It is spending more, building capabilities, addressing strategic dependencies, and developing stronger partnerships. Its challenge now is to turn national expenditure into shared, interoperable capabilities, deepen cooperation with the UK, Canada, and other like-minded partners, and reduce vulnerabilities in defense, technology, energy, and financial infrastructure while remaining open to international trade, investment, and cooperation.
As the US seeks greater freedom of action at the risk of weakening its alliances, Europe is moving in the right direction. It is not yet standing fully on its own feet, but it is finally learning how to do so.
