The erosion of US commitment is forcing Europe to take up its own defense in an increasingly unstable world.

By Gustavo de Arístegui, as published by La Razón, 31 May, 2026

Eighty-one years of peace in Western Europe rest on a single foundation: the strategic commitment of the United States of America to the continent’s security. Since the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949 , Article 5 guaranteed that the allies would come to its defense in the event of an attack. This has been the cornerstone of European security. That foundation is now eroding . Not rapidly, but gradually, with the calculated pace of those who know that the psychological impact of uncertainty is, in itself, a tool of attrition.

On May 1, 2026, the Pentagon announced the withdrawal of 5,000 troops stationed in Germany. This was not a strategic decision agreed upon within the Atlantic Alliance. It was a visceral reaction by President Trump to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s criticism of the US strategy in the war against Iran, or rather, the lack of a clear strategy. The criticism was, paradoxically, voiced by one of the allies most committed to NATO’s defense spending targets. Berlin had announced it would reach 3.5% of GDP in defense spending by 2029, was the undisputed leader in aid to Ukraine, and had published its first military strategy since 1945.

And yet, President Trump gave more weight to one of the criticisms of the war than to the substance of the German commitment. There can be no denying that the comments demonstrated a recklessness unbecoming of a head of government . Liana Fix , senior fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations, put it precisely in her May 2026 analysis: the withdrawal was not a strategic adjustment but an act of punishment against European allies. And what was most troubling was not the number—5,000 troops out of the 38,000 stationed in Germany—but what followed: the potential cancellation of the deployment of long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, scheduled to be stationed in Germany by 2027, agreed upon by Scholz and Biden to counter Russian missiles in Kaliningrad.

It would have been the first long-range, ground-based ballistic missile site in Germany since the end of the Cold War. Its cancellation—if confirmed— leaves Europe without a critical capability that the continent cannot independently replace in the short term.

The American commitment

What distinguishes the current distancing from previous episodes of transatlantic friction is its qualitative nature . In the past—the Suez crisis, the disagreements over Vietnam, the Iraq chasm in 2003—frictions were sectoral and circumscribed: the allies could disagree on a specific operation without it calling into question the foundation of the Alliance. What the Trump Administration is practicing in its second term is of a different nature: the systematic questioning of the very relevance of the American commitment to Europe.

Vice President JD Vance called European leaders a threat to democracy. Defense Secretary Hegseth declared that the United States would no longer be “primarily focused on the security of Europe.” Trump himself has repeatedly instrumentalized threats of troop withdrawal as a tool of economic pressure —tariffs on German cars, trade disputes—turning the guarantee of collective security into a variable in transactional bargaining.

This transactionalization of collective security is, in itself, an epistemic break with the philosophy that underpinned NATO for eight decades. Deterrence relies on the credibility of commitments. 
The great strategist Bernard Brodie , intellectual architect of the nuclear age, warned of this seventy years ago: deterrence depends not on capability, but on perceived willingness. An ally that conditions its commitment on immediate economic gain is not, in the eyes of the adversary, a credible ally. And when deterrence fails in perception, it is an invitation to aggression.

Vladimir Putin has been waiting for this moment for years. The 2026 Munich Security Report warned that Russia could reconstitute its forces for a “regional war” in the Baltic Sea area within two years of a potential ceasefire in Ukraine. The US State Department itself acknowledged before Congress in May 2026 that once the war in Ukraine ends, Moscow will seek to “rebalance its forces and look for opportunities to project power and create dilemmas for NATO,” with the Baltic area being “particularly sensitive and vulnerable.” The signal that this American confusion sends to Moscow is unequivocal: the Atlantic commitment is erratic, personalistic, and negotiable , and therefore, European allies are undoubtedly weaker.

The European response

Eastern European countries have been the most loyal in their commitment to NATO. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have allocated resources to Ukraine equivalent to 13% of their annual defense budgets. As Representative Bill Keating reminded Congress, “To match Estonia’s contribution to Ukraine as a percentage of GDP, the United States would have to provide more than a trillion dollars in additional defense funding.” The reward was the cancellation of the deployment of the 2nd Armored Combat Brigade—which was to rotate through Poland and the Baltic states—via a memorandum signed by Hegseth that caught even the senators on the Armed Services Committee off guard. “We were not notified,” declared Senator Jeanne Shaheen. “It is, I think, very short-sighted. It sends the wrong message—the wrong message to Vladimir Putin, the wrong message to China, the wrong message to Iran.”

The European response has finally been the right one—although late and still insufficient in its scope . The ReArm Europe/Readiness 2030 Plan potentially mobilizes up to €800 billion in additional defense spending. As of February 2026, 17 member states had activated the escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact to finance rearmament.

The SAFE instrument—Security Action for Europe—channels preferential loans for joint arms purchases with at least 65% European components . A document from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, signed by Thomas Enders—former CEO of Airbus and president of the German Council on Foreign Relations—quantifies the cost of strategic autonomy at €50 billion annually over the next decade: the equivalent of 0.25% of European GDP. Achievable. But it requires a political resolve that Europe has not yet fully demonstrated.

The obstacles

The obstacle is not only financial: it is industrial . The Iran war has depleted the American arsenals on which Europe depended. Delays in the delivery of NASAMS, HIMARS, and Patriot interceptor missiles are now a documented reality. Europeans had invested massively in American systems as a way to “keep Trump in NATO” ; now they are discovering that this strategy has its limits: when the guarantor’s arsenals are depleted in another theater, the European partner is left without supplies. The lesson is brutal but necessary: ​​strategic autonomy is not an ideological option—strategic autonomy is the only real guarantee of survival.

This transformation has consequences that extend far beyond the bilateral US-Europe relationship. In the emerging geopolitical order—which I have been describing as the transition from the post-1991 unipolar world to an imperfect multipolar world characterized by “variable-temperature wars ,” low-intensity conflicts with low resolution but high destructiveness, which no one can win and no one can afford to lose—the transatlantic fracture alters the balance of power to the benefit of those who have most desired it.

China, which controls 75-80% of global rare earth production and 95% of global refining capacity, watches with a hunter’s eye as the West divides. Moscow exploits this rift. Beijing courts a Europe—the most pusillanimous toward China—that seeks new balances that will inevitably make us all much more fragile and vulnerable to our enemies.

The temptation of a so-called pragmatic approach to China—which some European leaders have begun to explore—would, however, be a strategic error of historic proportions, since China is not an ally; for us, it is a systemic competitor with an agenda that includes eroding the liberal international order that Europe represents. And for China, the West is not an adversary; it is the enemy with whom we must get along, for now.

A renewed transatlantic relationship

The emerging world is neither bipolar nor multipolar in the classical Westphalian sense. It is a “contained systemic fracture”: multiple actors with partially converging agendas, weakened international institutions, and challenged norms. In this world, Europe faces a historic choice: either it assumes responsibility for its own security and becomes an autonomous pole of power, or it is reduced to an object of competition among the great powers, without the capacity to influence its own destiny. Political scientist Graham T. Allison, author of the concept of the Thucydides Trap , has warned that rivalry between established and emerging powers with incompatible models does not necessarily lead to war—but it does lead to a systematic erosion of the order they built.

The transatlantic relationship has survived De Gaulle, Nixon, the Euromissiles of the 1980s, and Iraq. It can survive Trump—but only if Europe finally abandons its comfortable dependence on a guarantor whose reliability is contingent on the whims of the occupant of the Oval Office.

The capital accumulated over eighty years of shared history is real, but not infinite. And strategic trust, once eroded, is very difficult to rebuild, much less with mere declarations. It is rebuilt with actions, with troops, with investment in defense, with strategic coherence, and with the willingness to pay the price that freedom has always demanded. Europe can no longer remain the passive recipient of its own security policy . It must become its active agent. That is the historic challenge of our generation—and the only path that leads to a renewed transatlantic relationship based on equality, not on subordination and dependence.