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By Tom O'Connor
Deputy Editor, National Security and Foreign Policy
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French President Emmanuel Macron has long sought to position himself at the forefront of a major shift in Europe's security outlook, one that would see the continent invest significantly more in defense spending and assume greater autonomy from the United States.
Now, as President Donald Trump signals a dramatic geopolitical shift by aligning more closely with Russia after three years of growing U.S. military support for Ukraine in Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II, the French leader's repeated calls for a more powerful, integrated and independent European military appear to have been vindicated.
But even in light of newfound urgency, uncertainties remain as to how quickly a deeply bureaucratic and politically fractured European Union will move toward this long-stated goal. Failing to do so could have severe consequences for the fate of the continent.
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"The leadership, political cooperation, and management tasks are demanding," Barry Posen, political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has written extensively about U.S.-European security relations, told Newsweek. "Historically states mobilize and cooperate when they are pretty scared, and not until then. The Europeans seem presently more hurt than scared. When they get scared, they will probably do more. But perhaps not enough and perhaps too late."
"The risk they run are twofold," Posen said. "There is the very probable and imminent risk of losing much say over their own fate. There is the less probable and less imminent, but still extremely dangerous threat that they will need to fight, and fight largely on their own, and fight successfully."
Newsweek has reached out to the French Embassy to the U.S. for comment.
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Integration has been a core principle of the European Union since its foundation just two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unlike the single-state USSR largely led centrally by Moscow, the EU constitutes a supranational entity consisting of independent nations that adhere to a common set of laws drawn up and approved by participating representatives of member states.
The EU has made strides in achieving unity in currency, legal codes and other measures, but matters of security have largely been ceded to a separate entity, the U.S.-led NATO alliance. The Western defense pact established in 1949 to rival the Eastern Bloc not only survived the end of the Cold War but expanded east into the former Soviet sphere of influence, setting the stage for 21st century tensions that violently erupted with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a NATO aspirant, in February 2022.
In its powerful position at the helm of NATO, the U.S. has been widely viewed across Europe as the perennial guarantor of the continent's security. But even prior to the current fatigue over the substantial amount of aid provided to Ukraine, backlash to the present order of U.S.-Europe relations began to take form in Washington when Trump first took office eight years ago, calling the alliance "obsolete" and demanding European allies spend considerably more for their defense.
Trump's rhetoric at the time sparked a major debate over the future of European security. Macron, who also took office in 2017, began to propose the formation of a "true European army" as an alternative to NATO and famously warned of the "brain death" of the alliance in 2019.
Macron persisted on this quest even as the momentum began to wane with the election of then-President Joe Biden and apparent return to equilibrium in transatlantic relations. In 2022, following a visit to China, he appealed for European "strategic autonomy" or else risk resorting to the mindset of merely being "America's followers" on the world stage.
The French leader's comments drew controversy at the time in Washington and fellow European capitals. But the return this year of an emboldened Trump administration committed to quickly settling the Russia-Ukraine war that a number of EU states hope to continue toward a victory for Kyiv, and the White House's open skepticism of the U.S. role in Europe, have reignited the conversation.
At the Munich Security Conference last week, European leaders reacted with shock to the speeches delivered by Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Both chastised allies for their current defense spending levels among other issues, sparking an emergency session among European leaders in Paris on Monday.
"Yes, there is now greater urgency, but there should have been urgency since President Trump's first term," Posen said. "Europeans would rather do most anything than lose the American security blanket. Their principal problem is that the members and important nonmembers all have slightly different interests, which makes it hard to agree on how fast to proceed."
"Some probably believe that they can manage President Trump with gifts and flattery," Posen added. "The Europeans need to find some serious money. My own guess is that they need at least another half percent of GDP, if they can spend it wisely. Maybe a bit more. Most states would have to sacrifice bits of their welfare state, or borrow heavily, or tax even more heavily, to fund such an increase."
Sven Biscop, director of the Egmont Institute's Europe in the World Program and political science professor at Ghent University in Belgium, also spoke to the hesitance among a number of EU member states toward weaning off U.S. security assurances, noting how France has remained an outlier in this quest.
"They will need to align their defense planning and maybe to some extent, integrate their capabilities, but they are not willing to do that in a scheme that does not include the United States," Biscop, who has also lectured for years on European defense strategy, told Newsweek. "Because ultimately, until last week, I would say that if you travel around Europe and you ask, 'If Russia invades, who will save you?' The French will say, 'We will save ourselves.' Everybody else will say, 'the United States.' And if the United States shows up, the British will show up."
"That's, I think, the fundamental reason Europeans only trust the scheme for military alignment and integration if the U.S. is a part of the scheme," Biscop said. "But that's the paradox, because why do we need such an integrative scheme? Because actually, the U.S. might not come."
But Biscop also noted that spending was only part of the issue, and that many EU member states have already ramped up their defense budgets in recent years. European militaries continue to rely on the U.S. for "big-ticket items" such as satellite-driven intelligence-gathering, deep-strike capabilities and air defense, he said, all of which would prove crucial if the EU decides to go it alone in support of Ukraine.
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France has a history of diverging with NATO allies over concerns of U.S. dominance. In 1966, then-French President Charles de Gaulle unilaterally withdrew from NATO's integrated command structure and expelled allied troops from its territory, citing frustrations over perceived unequal treatment. Paris only rejoined in 2009, six years after another spat with Washington over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
While the U.S. maintains nuclear weapons across several European nations in line with the NATO nuclear sharing strategy, France is the only EU member state with its own strategic arsenal. The United Kingdom, which officially left the EU in 2020, also maintains its own nuclear capabilities.
Biscop described France and the U.K. as likely to constitute the "core group" of a more integrated, independent European military posture, both for their weapons of mass destruction as well as their "comprehensive strategic vision" on defense. Also key to this project, however, would be Poland, "which now has the largest armed force in Europe," and Germany, for the "political weight" it holds, he said.
Today, all four nations, and many others in Europe, mutually view the war in Ukraine and the potential for further Russian operations as the most immediate threat to continental security. But there is another underlying concern fueled by the Trump administration's embrace of right-wing, nationalist populist movements that have challenged the very idea of the EU.
Trump, Vance and Elon Musk, tech billionaire-turned-director of the new administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force, have endorsed France's National Rally and Germany's Alternative for Deutschland (AfD). Both parties, considered by the leaderships of their respective countries to be far-right, have gained electoral ground in recent years, with the National Rally taking first place in France's European Parliament elections last year and AfD poised for a major showing when Germany holds its federal election this weekend.
Vance, who met with AfD leadership in Munich, called for greater inclusivity in EU politics. The administration's exposé of USAID programs has also sought to demonstrate the level of U.S. funding under past administrations toward promoting values aligned with the social democratic and liberal consensus among most EU states.
Biscop argued that a potential coalition between Trump's ruling "Make America Great Again" movement and like-minded forces in Europe could further complicate efforts to establish a common outlook on military reform, among other initiatives.
"We have some extreme right parties already in government, and it makes it sometimes very difficult to reach consensus in the EU," Biscop said. "I think there is a fear that if they will sort of coalesce around the Trump administration it will become even more difficult."
"You get the distinct feeling that you have a president who is anti-EU, who is ideologically anti-EU," he added. "If you study the history of strategy, ideology and strategy really don't mix. So, if you let your ideology drive the substance of your strategy, it really doesn't end very well. This could become quite problematic."
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The ideological fissures in Europe have already become apparent, with leaders such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán aligning themselves with some of the Trump administration's talking points on Ukraine and European politics.
"Apart from the countries governed by the extreme right and extreme right-wing parties, the other countries were shocked by the comments made by the American leaders, President Donald Trump and his Vice-President J.D. Vance," Jean-Pierre Maulny, deputy director of the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, told Newsweek, "both in terms of their attack against European democracies and the failure to recognize that Putin's Russia had violated international law by attacking another country, leading to a reaction of support from Europeans for Ukraine in accordance with the United Nations Charter and Article 51 thereof."
"Europeans are gradually becoming aware of their solitude," Maulny, a leading security expert who previously served as adviser to the French National Assembly's Defense and Armed Forces Committee, added.
Echoing Posen, Maulny noted that further rifts exist among nations debating how exactly to approach the problem, some driven by a desire to appease Trump and others believing it may already be too late for Europe to take charge of its own defense absent the U.S. guarantee.
"Some do not wish to displease Donald Trump for the moment, considering that the United States is a member of NATO, bound by Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and its mutual assistance clause, and that we should not displease him either," he said. "Others believe that it is too late, that a point of no return has been reached and that it is up to Europeans to take responsibility for their own security."
"But whether you are in one camp or the other has no impact on the fact that both camps believe that Europeans should increase their defense budgets in order to face current European security challenges," he said.
And even as European nations begin to ramp up defense spending and have just this year achieved their February 2023 goal of delivering a rate of million shells per year to Ukraine, larger questions surround what comes next for the transatlantic relationship long viewed as the cornerstone for European security.
"The real question is whether an agreement between the United States and Russia on Ukraine will be to the detriment of Europeans' security interests, which is what we fear today," Maulny said. "The other question is that of the future relationship between Europe and the United States: friend or enemy?"
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