NATO and the European Security Question

The debate about European strategic autonomy has been ongoing for thirty years and has not produced strategic autonomy. The gap between the declared intention and the actual capability is explained by a structural problem: the countries most vocal about autonomy are also the most dependent on American security guarantees, and the countries least dependent on American guarantees — Poland, the Baltic states — are the least interested in autonomy because they want more American commitment, not less.

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine changed the conversation without resolving the structural problem. Defense spending increased across the alliance. Germany's Zeitenwende produced announcements that have since been partially walked back. The UK and France remain the only European states with meaningful power projection capability, and neither is interested in subordinating that capability to an EU command structure.

What has actually changed is the threat perception in the eastern members. The countries that spent thirty years being told they were alarmist about Russian intentions now have standing in alliance debates they did not previously have. This is not nothing. It has shifted the internal NATO conversation toward the eastern flank in ways that are likely durable regardless of what happens in Washington.

The American commitment question is the one nobody can answer with confidence. The institutional mechanisms — Article 5, the force posture, the nuclear umbrella — remain intact. The political reliability of those mechanisms depends on variables that are not institutionally determined. Europe has not solved this problem. It has become more aware of it.