Europe should defend itself

The Pentagon recently confirmed it will not deploy Tomahawk missile forces to Germany, leaving Berlin with what its own officials call a missile gap. Within days, Spain called for the European Union to build its own army as their Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares openly worried about whether America could be counted on in a crisis. Albares declared, “This is the moment of the sovereignty and independence of Europe. The Americans are inviting us to that.”

Madrid is right, and Washington should welcome European defence autonomy while stepping back from the continent, rhetorically and materially, as American forces and dollars further shift to higher priorities. We are still at war with Iran after all. And with Russia bogged down in Ukraine, and China remaining the looming threat, Washington needs to refocus from Europe, where the conventional threat is lower.

The decision not to send scarce Tomahawk missiles exposes deficiencies that European capitals had decades to address but did not. Washington’s pullback did not create Germany’s shortfall in land-based missiles that could strike deep into Russia. Berlin’s own choices did. Nearly four years after Berlin approved a special €100 billion “Zeitenwende” defence fund, Germany still struggles with shortages of munitions, drones, air defense, and deployment-ready units. In fact, the German army is today less battle-ready than when the war in Ukraine began.

The same pattern holds across much of the continent: underinvestment in industrial production, hollow ground forces, and lopsided reliance on American logistics and intelligence. If deterrence in Europe fails, it will fail because European governments passed the buck and ignored the defense gaps they have long known about. True, it does not help that America launched another war of choice in the Middle East. But the fact is we live in a world where every country is responsible for their own defence first and foremost.

American retrenchment is real and accelerating, driven by budget pressures and a strategic shift toward priorities including dealing with lower-tier international concerns in the Western Hemisphere.

All of this should make our European allies take responsibility for their own defence needs more seriously. At least Eastern European allies such as Finland, Poland, and the Baltics understand this problem and are mostly acting accordingly. The rest of Europe is still coming out of its holiday from history and should treat this combination of American retrenchment and Russia’s quagmire in Ukraine as yet another chance to get their houses in order.

Credible European defence requires more than nominally meeting any defence spending threshold. It requires a continent-wide industrial base that can produce artillery shells, missiles, drones, and integrated air defence at scale. For seventy-seven years, European militaries have outsourced much of their defence to American taxpayers and servicemembers. But they also once did their part with large standing militaries and a readiness to match the then-Soviet threat. But as the U.S. rightly pivots away from Europe, our allies will need to take on more of the burden for their own defence.

It is unfortunate that it has taken a war of aggression by Moscow and increasingly impatient voters in America to start to force Europe’s hand. Whether nationally, or through the European Union, they could have been fully autonomous by now.

Washington has spent decades insisting Europe meet its NATO defence spending obligations while resisting European independence

Some in Washington will still resist this idea. A more autonomous Europe could buy fewer American weapons and would be less likely to follow Washington on foreign policy. But the status quo is worse. NATO has not produced an equally capable European fighting force that Washington can call on. Instead, it has produced complacency and revealed America’s defence commitments as being too costly, especially when deterring China is a higher priority.

America needs to get out of the way. Washington has spent decades insisting Europe meet its NATO defence spending obligations while resisting European independence. That policy must end. While Russia is stuck in Ukraine, and before it has an opportunity to reconstitute and bolster its forces, there is still time for serious burden-shifting on the continent.