European defence has acquired an importance in recent years directly proportional to how much it is discussed. The problem is that it is now debated everywhere, often by people whose grasp of this extraordinarily complex subject is far from adequate. Conceptual confusion reigns, even as billions of euros earmarked for defence are already flowing from European taxpayers.
There is no question that the military sector — and defence more broadly — is enormously expensive and requires substantial resources, not merely financial ones. Precisely for this reason, at a time when public finances are severely constrained, Europe needs to be clear about what it wants, beginning with what it actually needs.
Such clarity is essential not only to define a credible project and the effort required to deliver it, but also to secure sufficient public consent. Unanimity is unrealistic; legitimacy is not. Yet this is something European leaders increasingly appear to overlook. Despite relentless technological progress, the human factor remains fundamental in every field. In defence, it is paramount: this is the one sphere in which policy ultimately means asking people to put their lives at risk.
Emmanuel Macron illustrated this political underestimation of public sentiment with a striking declaration in his July 14 address to the armed forces: “France and Europe are ready to defend freedom and the law at the cost of blood, if necessary.”
For ordinary citizens, the obvious response may be that France’s president can make such statements knowing that he himself will not be sent to the front. Those whose lives might actually be at stake appear less enthusiastic. Recent Gallup figures are unforgiving towards Europe’s aspiring Churchills: on average, only 32% of Europeans say they would be willing to take up arms to defend their country; 47% would not, while 21% remain undecided. Western Europe records the weakest numbers, with Italy bringing up the rear at just 14%.
That reality should encourage political leaders to exercise considerably more caution before indulging in the martial rhetoric that has lately become fashionable. More attention should instead be devoted to defining the conceptual foundations of a defence system that is credible and sustainable — above all in human terms. The implosion of the Soviet system, which ultimately cost the USSR both the Cold War and its existence, should serve as a powerful warning.
The first question, and the one that determines what sort of defence Europe needs, concerns the threat it is supposed to confront. Answering it requires a dispassionate assessment of the strategic environment in which Europe finds itself — and in which it wishes to become a genuine actor.
NATO offers one possible point of reference, provided that the “US factor” shaping the Alliance is kept firmly in mind. Its 2022 Strategic Concept, alongside the longstanding terrorist threat, established Russia as the principal adversary, with China following close behind. The rationale regarding Moscow is obvious: above all, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Regarding Beijing, NATO concluded that its “stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values.” Allies must therefore work together to address China’s “systemic challenges”, including its relationship with Russia and their attempt to undermine the rules-based international order.
Those principles, however, sit awkwardly alongside recent events involving the United States itself, NATO’s undisputed leader, which in the author’s view have severely undermined international law. Europe cannot simply overlook that contradiction without risking the principles and values on which it claims to have been built.
At the recent Ankara summit, NATO’s focus on Beijing escalated further. Member states endorsed the principle that the North Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres are strategically interconnected, potentially legitimising Alliance involvement in the region. Unsurprisingly, the so-called IP4 — Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand — welcomed the prospect of support from the world’s most powerful political and military alliance.
The real victor in Ankara, however, was Donald Trump. The summit offered him further confirmation that America’s European allies are hesitant and compliant, if not outright subordinate to Washington. They even endorsed the demand that Iran abandon its nuclear ambitions, effectively adding Tehran to the list of adversaries NATO is expected to monitor — or perhaps confront.
European leaders might therefore ask themselves how many of their citizens would be prepared to die for Israel’s regional ambitions, Taiwan, South Korea or Japan. Or how many regard Iran as such a direct enemy that they would take up arms against Tehran. That already troubling 32% would presumably shrink considerably. Beyond the lofty rhetoric of politicians, Europeans struggling with increasingly difficult economic conditions may have a rather pragmatic understanding of where their interests actually lie.
A genuinely realistic debate about European defence must therefore begin by thinking exclusively in terms of European interests, free from automatic transatlantic assumptions. That does not mean abandoning the United States. It means replacing Europe’s present dependence with a genuinely equal strategic relationship between the two sides of the Atlantic.
This matters because if an American-led West intends to continue imposing its rules internationally — whether those rules are justified or not — it may increasingly have to do so through force. Much of the rest of the world appears less willing than before to yield to threats alone and increasingly prepared to call the West’s bluff.
Europe must consequently recognise that its professional armed forces, although highly specialised, may simply be too small for such a world. The conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran has illustrated the problem. Despite overwhelming American military superiority, Tehran has not avoided confrontation. It has displayed unexpected resilience and pursued escalation across the Gulf, confronting Washington with strains on resources and operational endurance that it had neither experienced nor fully anticipated.
Europe’s first question should therefore be whether blindly following Washington’s strategic priorities remains either desirable or sustainable, particularly when American policy has repeatedly demonstrated little concern for the consequences imposed on Europe.
That dependency has already damaged European economic stability through the Russo-Ukrainian war and could inflict an even greater blow if the Middle East descends into wider conflict. Ukraine, despite being extensively financed by the EU, has itself entered this equation by striking an Iranian cargo vessel in the Caspian Sea, apparently in an effort to strengthen its standing with Washington. In doing so, Kyiv risked destabilising the Caspian region and therefore the Middle Corridor, one of the last relatively secure trade routes connecting Europe and China — a relationship which, whatever its difficulties, remains of enormous importance to the continent.
That alone should prompt a more objective reassessment of Ukraine both as a current ally and as a prospective member of the European Union. Even after peace is achieved, Ukraine will continue to require enormous resources, while recent revelations suggest that corruption remains a persistent threat to their effective use.
What seems increasingly clear is that, whatever the eventual outcome of the war, Kyiv intends to emerge as an autonomous regional power, capable of influencing crises well beyond its borders. Europe may therefore find itself facing, after the conflict, one of the continent’s largest and most battle-hardened armed forces — built in significant part with European financing.
But reassessing relations with Ukraine does not mean rehabilitating Russia. Russia remains one of the world’s two great nuclear powers, the largest country on Earth, spanning 11 time zones and possessing immense natural resources that give it global influence. History also suggests that attempts to defeat Russia conclusively rarely succeed. Even the United States did not achieve that outcome during the Cold War. Russia faltered, suffered and came close to collapse, but eventually returned as a major international actor.
It would therefore be a serious strategic mistake to assume that Russia must indefinitely remain an enemy to be fought. Such an approach runs counter to the history of Europe itself, a continent built through devastating wars that eventually ended in negotiated settlements. The longer governments remain trapped in absolute intransigence and postpone the construction of a new equilibrium, the longer ordinary people will bear the consequences.
And are we really certain that Moscow intends to attack Europe? It is difficult to see what Russia would gain from invading — and then having to control — territory that until relatively recently constituted one of its most important trading partners. Diplomacy may therefore offer a more rational route towards defining a new relationship with Moscow, based not on American priorities but on Europe’s own strategic requirements.
Until 2012, after all, Moscow participated in NATO’s Partnership for Peace framework and maintained extensive commercial and energy ties with Europe that benefited both sides. Those relations also disadvantaged American interests, and from the Obama administration onwards Washington increasingly sought to weaken them, including, in the author’s interpretation, through what he calls the “Ukrainian lever.”
The underlying question is therefore straightforward. Would Europe have been better served by a neutral Ukraine, maintaining relations with both East and West, with an autonomous but still Ukrainian Donbas, as Russia demanded? Or by the war Europe ultimately got — one that failed to bring Kyiv into NATO and now pursues EU membership at an economic cost that could prove even more painful, potentially fuelling resentment towards Ukrainians among European citizens themselves?
The same realism should guide Europe’s approach to its southern flank, particularly its relations with Israel and Iran, the two regional powers that currently exert the greatest influence over the Middle Eastern balance.
Israel still appears to assume that the historical burden of European guilt over the Second World War grants it exceptional latitude internationally. But what exactly is Israel’s strategic objective today? Is it still fundamentally the “right to survival” that has traditionally justified its actions? Or is Israeli policy now pursuing ambitions that extend considerably beyond the familiar narrative of “one against all”?
Israel is the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed regional power, itself a significant source of strategic imbalance. This becomes particularly important in light of recent events in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, as well as growing tensions with Turkey, which Israeli leaders have repeatedly described as a potential “future Iran” — with the crucial difference that Turkey is a NATO member.
Combined with Israel’s repeated willingness to act without apparent limits, sometimes disregarding even the interests of allies and partners including the United States, this should encourage Europe to reassess its relationship with Israel with greater objectivity and strategic caution. Israel remains an important partner, but it must also be recognised as a potentially destabilising force on Europe’s southern and Mediterranean flank.
Iran presents a different challenge. For years, the European Union has dealt with Tehran largely through economic sanctions, following measures imposed by the United States since 1979 and by the United Nations Security Council. Today Iran is virtually invisible in Europe’s trade balance: imports and exports are close to zero.
It was not always so. In the mid-2000s, EU-Iran trade approached €20 billion and later exceeded that figure considerably — remarkable for a country already labelled a “rogue state”, an “outlaw state” and part of the “Axis of Evil”, and which is not even a member of the World Trade Organisation. For comparison, EU trade with its ally Israel amounted to slightly more than €40 billion in 2024, despite Gaza and the West Bank — and, now, the attack on Iran.
EU-Iran trade collapsed in 2019-20, following the confrontation between Washington and Tehran that included the killing of General Qasem Soleimani and Iran’s missile attacks on two American bases in Iraq. Once again responding to events driven by Washington, Europe adopted successive waves of sanctions that, in the author’s view, damaged its own economic interests.
The same pattern is now repeating itself on a potentially far more destructive scale, after Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu unilaterally decided, without even warning allies and partners, to attack Iran, triggering one of the gravest global energy, economic and financial crises of the post-war era.
One fact alone should encourage the European Union to rethink its regional policy. Before the Israeli-American attack on Tehran, passage through the Strait of Hormuz was open and free. Today it is blocked, while future transit charges are being discussed not only by Iran but even by the United States.
And whoever collects the toll, Europe pays it.
From this starting point, the next stage of the debate must ask what a genuinely European defence system should look like: which threats it should confront and, ultimately, what model can best serve the strategic interests of the continent.
End of part one.
