Europe accelerates defence planning as Trump's NATO stance creates security vacuum

European capitals are moving from anxiety to action. The catalyst is not a Russian missile strike or a NATO summit communiqué but the erratic conduct of the American president. Donald Trump's war in Iran and his repeated tirades against alliance partners have forced a reckoning that was unthinkable even two years ago: Europe must prepare to defend itself without the United States.

The shift is visible in three simultaneous developments. Germany has published its first military strategy since 1945, setting a goal of fielding the strongest conventional army in Europe by 2039. France has opened formal talks with seven non-nuclear states on extending its nuclear deterrent. And EU ambassadors have just completed a tabletop exercise on invoking Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty, the mutual assistance clause that is legally more binding than NATO's Article 5 but has been used only once, after the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks.

Germany breaks a post-war taboo

The German strategy document, approved by Chancellor Olaf Scholz's cabinet in April, marks a psychological rupture. For eight decades, German security policy was defined by restraint, multilateralism and the explicit rejection of national military ambition. The new strategy speaks of "credible deterrence" and "strategic enablers", code for the capabilities Berlin knows it lacks: long-range strike, integrated air and missile defence, strategic airlift and satellite reconnaissance. The 2039 target date is revealing. It is the earliest plausible moment at which a re-armed Germany could replace the American enablers that currently hold NATO's European pillar together.

Berlin's planners are under no illusion about the timeline. The Bundeswehr's ammunition stocks would last days in high-intensity combat. Its air defence relies on Patriot systems built in the United States. Its heavy lift capacity is a fraction of what a corps-level deployment requires. The strategy is a promise to build what does not yet exist, funded by the 100 billion euro special fund and a commitment to sustain defence spending above two percent of GDP. Whether the political consensus holds through a recession or a change of government is the unspoken question behind every paragraph.

France extends the nuclear conversation

Paris has moved in parallel. Emmanuel Macron announced in March that France would discuss nuclear deterrence with seven partners: Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic states. The talks are framed as a complement to the US umbrella, not a substitute. But the distinction is eroding. For countries that have relied entirely on American extended deterrence since 1949, a French alternative, however limited, changes the strategic calculus.

France possesses roughly 290 nuclear warheads, all sea- and air-launched. It has no land-based missiles, no nuclear-sharing arrangements comparable to NATO's, and no integrated command structure that includes non-nuclear allies. The talks are therefore about political signalling as much as military planning. A joint declaration with the United Kingdom last year deepened Franco-British nuclear cooperation, but London's deterrent remains operationally tied to the United States through the Trident missile pool. Paris is the only European capital with a fully sovereign nuclear chain.

The EU tests its dormant defence clause

On Monday, ambassadors of the 27 member states gathered in Brussels for a tabletop exercise on Article 42.7. The clause obliges "aid and assistance by all the means in their power" to a member state victim of armed aggression. It is, on paper, stronger than NATO's Article 5, which speaks of "such action as it deems necessary." Yet the only invocation came in November 2015, when France requested assistance after the Islamic State attacks. The response was police and intelligence cooperation. No troops moved. No ships sailed.

The exercise did not factor in NATO's role. That omission was deliberate, and controversial. Baltic diplomats privately warned that a visible EU defence track could give Washington a pretext to disengage. Their fear is not theoretical. Trump has repeatedly suggested that the United States would not defend allies who fail to meet spending targets. The tabletop drill was a stress test of procedures: who decides, who commands, who pays, how logistics flow across borders without NATO's integrated command structure. The answers remain largely unwritten.

Tusk breaks the silence on American reliability

Poland's prime minister, Donald Tusk, shattered a diplomatic taboo in an interview with the Financial Times. "Europe's 'biggest, most important question is if the United States is ready to be as loyal as it is described in our treaties'," he said. The words were measured but the implication was blunt: Warsaw, the most hawkish NATO member on Russia, no longer assumes American credibility. Tusk's intervention matters because Poland hosts US rotational forces, buys American weapons systems by the billion, and has staked its security on the transatlantic link. If Poland hedges, the hedge is real.

Capability gaps the Iran war has widened

The Iranian conflict has turned a planning problem into a procurement crisis. US defence contractors have informed European governments that deliveries of Patriot PAC-3 interceptors, GMLRS rockets, 155mm artillery shells and precision-guided munitions will slip by two to four years. American production lines are prioritising the Pentagon's own replenishment. European manufacturers, Rheinmetall, KNDS, Thales, Leonardo, BAE Systems, are already at full stretch fulfilling existing orders. The fragmentation of the European defence industrial base means no single company or consortium can surge production without years of capital investment and regulatory harmonisation.

This creates a paradox. The strategic imperative to buy European has never been stronger, but the industrial capacity to deliver does not exist. The European Defence Fund and the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP) are moving too slowly to close the gap. The result is a lengthening vulnerability window: less American support, political uncertainty in Washington, and yawning shortfalls in the enablers that make modern warfare possible, satellite intelligence, strategic airlift, command and control, integrated air defence.

Ankara summit and the command question

The next NATO summit in Ankara this July was meant to showcase alliance unity. European leaders now face a dilemma. Air their strategic vulnerabilities and risk provoking Trump into a dramatic withdrawal. Stay silent and forfeit the chance to shape the alliance's adaptation. The compromise taking shape in private is a gradual European assumption of NATO's command structures, defence planning and joint exercises, while retaining an American Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) as the symbolic and operational link to US nuclear and conventional forces.

That arrangement would be unprecedented. SACEUR has always been an American general. The post embodies the nuclear guarantee. A European deputy with real authority over day-to-day planning and crisis response would be a step toward autonomy without rupture. But it requires treaty changes, consensus among 32 allies, and a US president willing to cede control. None of those conditions are currently met.

Towards a European defence union outside the EU

The source text argues that any durable European defence union will not be centred on the EU. The unanimity requirement in foreign and security policy, the bloc's lack of military experience, and the absence of the United Kingdom, Norway, Turkey and Canada from EU membership make it an inadequate vehicle. The alternative sketched is a coalition of the willing and able: France, Germany and the United Kingdom at the core, backed by NATO and EU resources, with pivotal roles for Poland and Ukraine.

Ukraine's inclusion is the most striking element. After four years of war, Kyiv fields the most combat-experienced army in Europe, a defence industry that has innovated under fire, and a strategic rationale that aligns with the frontline states. Integrating Ukraine into a European security architecture, even before EU or NATO membership, would transform the continent's defensive depth. It would also require a political settlement with Russia that currently seems distant.