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Gnesotto, N. “Defence 25: thinking outside the box”, Policy Paper N°308, Jacques Delors Institute, January 2025

Europe is under more threat today than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Above and beyond the war in Ukraine, the greatest threat lies in the major uncertainty governing the policies of the two powers that will determine its future: the United States and Russia. No one knows what Donald Trump has in store for us, just as no one knows exactly what the weaknesses and strengths of Vladimir Putin’s Russia are. It is this double confusion that requires European states and institutions to give priority to strategic issues. But this double uncertainty also requires Europeans to think outside the box when it comes to European defence.

Putin and Trump: these two non-Europeans will decide the future of EU defence policy. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 had already convinced Europeans to take their defence policies very seriously. The spectacular election of Donald Trump in November 2024 could represent a second strategic boost for the EU. This was already the case in 2016, when the combination of Brexit and Trump’s first term in office had profoundly shaken Europeans’ atony in this area.

Yet there is a glaring paradox between a remarkable consensus on the need for a common defence policy and, over the last two years, an equally great stagnation in the policy in question.

The Europeans have made enormous progress on defence since 2022: they are rearming, they are arming Ukraine, they are rationalising their arms industry, they are providing financial support for industrial production, they are increasing their defence budget, they are all talking, albeit more or less loudly, about strategic autonomy, even France has rallied to the idea of a European pillar of Nato, but … nothing is really changing: the arms market remains largely an Atlantic market; the European pillar of NATO remains a magic formula with no real content; the war in Ukraine has not triggered any diplomatic innovation, or any EU defence doctrine. In short, if Donald Trump were to decide tomorrow to renege on American membership of NATO, or to make American protection very costly, we would be in the same position as in 2016: bereft, unprepared and powerless.

It is this paradox that we need to resolve through a two-pronged approach: strengthening the Euro-American alliance, and being ready to take its place if need be.