The USA and Europe – who needs whom, and on what terms?

Reflections after a conversation between me, Lars-Erik Lundin and Michael Sahlin, with an AI background as a starting point

An addiction without sentimentality

The transatlantic link has never been about friendship. It is about utility under pressure. When the United States took on the security of Europe after 1945, the motive was cold: to prevent a Soviet-dominated Eurasia, to keep trade routes open, and to use the continent as a forward operating depth. As I told Michael: we are deeply interdependent – ​​but not at all in agreement on the terms.

What we agree on

Both the background and our conversation end up in the same three observations. The dependency remains, but it is skewed – the US can do without Europe at home, but loses global reach; Europe cannot replace American deterrence overnight. The complaint about European “free riders” is old, it goes back to Eisenhower, but Trump has done something new: he is publicly making Article 5 conditional, and it is hollowing out the core of the alliance. And the way forward is not a separate European umbrella but a stronger European pillar within NATO.

Where the tones differ

The background is neat. It asks questions and gives answers. The conversation is messier, and better for it. Michael asked the question that is really the whole key: is this something qualitatively new, or just an acquisition of something that has been there all along?

Three examples of where the difference is noticeable:

  • Article 5. The background notes the erosion. Michael emphasized: one must distinguish “this is what we dare to trust” from hard facts.

  • Iran and Hormuz. The background calls it an energy shock. In the podcast it became an acute stress test – the US demands NATO participation, while Europe responds that we cannot participate in the war itself but are prepared to contribute massively when there is a peace to build.

  • China. The background warns cautiously. I went further, and I'll do it again: right now it's perhaps easier to work with China than with the US – fewer interruptions, fewer conditions.

Sweden and DCA

Here the conversation adds something that the background completely missed. The US is running the DCA agreements bilaterally, not within a NATO framework. The idea that Sweden would become some kind of logistical hub does not really hold up – the Americans are looking towards the Arctic rather than towards Sweden and the Baltics.

Rutte and the price of gratitude

Mark Rutte's line is based on gratitude as currency. It works in the short term against Trump personally. But there is a price. A narrative that protects the asset in Washington can also erode legitimacy at home. My guess: if NATO continues to say that everything Trump does is good, the internal discussions will become increasingly acrimonious.

What the contract requires

The question of “who needs whom” has no clean answer, and I am not sure it will. What matters is whether both sides can live with a new contract. Europe takes more responsibility in its own neighborhood, without pretending to be able to replace the American umbrella. The United States accepts that a more capable European pillar also means more will of its own – not just more willingness to pay. That contract is being negotiated right now, with the war in Ukraine and the crisis over Iran as a backdrop, and the terms are anything but given.

 

AI background:

Who needs whom – and on what terms?

The United States, Europe and the new transatlantic ambivalence

  1. An addiction that was never about feelings

The transatlantic relationship is now entering a phase in which the conflict over the terms of interdependence is structural rather than temporary: the US wants a Europe that bears more of the regional burden without becoming strategically autonomous, while Europe wants American guarantees without being stuck in a permanent clientship. This mutual ambivalence finds concrete expression in three terms that are simultaneously being renegotiated: the military, the industrial/technological, and the political-strategic. How these terms are set over the period 2024–2030, with Ukraine as a stress test and China as a background horizon, determines not only who needs whom, but on what practical premises the transatlantic link can survive.

The transatlantic link is one of the most successful security projects of the post-war era, but it has never rested on sentimentality but on mutual benefit formulated under extreme pressure. The United States guaranteed Europe’s security after 1945 to prevent a Soviet-dominated Eurasia, secure trade flows and investment markets, and use Europe as forward operational depth. In return, Europe could prioritize reconstruction, the welfare state, and integration, under an American nuclear umbrella.

The interdependence remains, but is today asymmetrical in scale rather than in existence – and more dynamic than static. The US can protect its homeland without Europe, but loses global reach without European bases, British and Norwegian submarine hunting and European logistical depth. Europe cannot replace American nuclear deterrence, space-based intelligence and global transport capacity in the short term, but is now forced to build up components that will both relieve the US in Europe and live with a more transactional Washington.

  1. Free-riders – an old complaint in new packaging

The idea of ​​an underperforming Europe is older than Donald Trump. Eisenhower worried about burden-sharing as early as the 1950s, Kennedy threatened troop reductions, and Kissinger’s “Year of Europe” speech came in 1973, not 1971 as is often misquoted. At the 1978 NATO summit, a Long-Term Defence Programme was adopted with a target of a three percent annual real increase in defence spending – a political ambition, never a hard demand.

Reagan, Clinton during Bosnia, Rumsfeld’s “old vs. new Europe” and Obama’s free-rider formulation in 2016 follow the same line. What is qualitatively new about Trump is not just the language but that an American president publicly conditions Article 5 on European payments and thereby actively undermines the core of the alliance. The demand for more European responsibility is continuous, but the way it is formulated has moved the conflict over the conditions from closed rooms to open political battle.

  1. Rutte and the politics of gratitude

Mark Rutte has made “gratitude” a core European narrative: without Trump, European countries would not have gone from around 1,5 to 2 percent of GDP, and the EU cannot defend itself without the US. There is some truth to this. Most NATO countries are now close to the two percent target, and European defense spending has risen sharply since 2022. But the figures hide red flags: Iceland lacks a defense force, some countries are still below the target, others include costs that are difficult to compare.

Above all, the causality is more complex than in Rutte’s story. Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 provided the threat picture, while Trump’s return and uncertainty about American alliance willingness sharpened the incentive to build more independent European capabilities. The combination – Russian aggression in the East, American unreliability in the West – explains more than any single factor. And Rutte is not a Dutch exception, but an expression of a broader European alliance logic in which flattery, accommodation and restraint in criticism are used as the price for continued American presence.

Rutte's line can be read on three levels: as rhetoric directed at Trump personally, as alliance management where influence is bought through praise, and as a strategic line where gratitude is made the norm for the relationship. The criticism in European capitals of his stance on the Iran crisis in 2026 illustrates the risk: a narrative that protects the asset in Washington can simultaneously erode legitimacy at home.

  1. Strategic autonomy – three (and a fourth) different projects

“Strategic autonomy” is often used as if it were a coherent goal, but in practice it involves at least three different projects:

  • Gaullist autonomy: national sovereignty over life-and-death decisions, especially nuclear weapons.
  • Mogherini autonomy: The EU's ability to act in the neighborhood without American approval, primarily militarily but also politically.
  • Economic/technological autonomy: reduced vulnerability to both the US and China via industrial and technology policy.

To this, a fourth dimension has been added in the 2020s: normative autonomy – the EU’s role as a regulator of data, digital platforms and AI, which often clashes with US corporate interests and sometimes with US security policy. The GDPR, the Digital Services Act and the AI ​​Regulation are expressions of a European will to set standards, which in practice affect the transatlantic relationship as much as tanks and aircraft carriers.

Confusing these projects creates conceptual fog. A “strategically autonomous” EU operation in the Sahel does not require the same things as an “autonomous” European nuclear umbrella or a semiconductor program decoupled from both Silicon Valley and Shenzhen. The EU’s tools (ReArm, SAFE, EDIP, EDF) have large framework volumes, but it is the Member States’ priorities, fiscal space and acceptance of industrial consolidation that determine the outcome. In practice, the trend points towards selective autonomy: Europe is trying to take more responsibility in its immediate vicinity and reduce certain technological dependencies, without breaking with American leadership.

  1. The US's mirror ambivalence – wants responsibility, not autonomy

It is misleading to describe the dynamic as simply European ambivalence in the face of American demands. The United States exhibits a mirroring ambivalence. On the surface, European responsibility is encouraged, but whenever an attempt at autonomy threatens American control – the Maastricht discussions, the EU reaction force, FCAS and Eurodrone, EU industrial funds that exclude American suppliers – red lines emerge.

Furthermore, “the USA” is not a unified actor. Under Trump, the White House is pursuing a pronounced transactional line, parts of the Pentagon want to be relieved to focus on the Indo-Pacific, Congress has codified the continued presence of troops in Europe in the NDAA, while the defense industry wants to retain European markets. In addition, there is strong pressure from trade policy actors to get Europe to join the American line against China when it comes to export controls, investment screening and technological de-risking. Behind the rhetoric about free-riders, therefore, lies both the strategic reality – China, not Europe, is the system challenger – and a growing American expectation of European loyalty in the China-political encirclement.

  1. The nuclear weapons paradox: umbrella, prestige and credibility

Nowhere is the mutual ambivalence more acute than in the nuclear dimension. For the US, the extended umbrella is an instrument of control: through extended deterrence, Washington controls the definition of what constitutes a casus belli for escalation to nuclear weapons. For Europe, the umbrella is an existential insurance policy – ​​but also a potential lever for American influence.

Since Macron’s École de Guerre speech in 2020, a serious but sensitive conversation has been going on about European nuclear deterrence. It concerns French strategic dialogue, POKER exercises, possible German co-financing, the British legacy of WE.177 and ideas for joint cruise missiles. But the real obstacle is not technology or money but credibility and legitimacy. Could French doctrine even be adapted to a European framework, where other states participate in decision-making and risk-sharing? And would European societies accept the legal and moral consequences of a more “Europeanized” nuclear responsibility?

Deterrence is more than warheads. It requires space-based early warning, integrated C4ISR, functioning risk-sharing arrangements (nuclear sharing, dual-capable aircraft) and a political structure that makes a leader appear credibly prepared to risk Paris for Narva. As long as the EU is not a political union with a unified supreme commander, a full “European umbrella” is harder to imagine than a growing role for French and British components within a broader NATO framework, where the US remains the ultimate guarantor.

  1. Ukraine: more than three scenarios – and a ranking

The Ukraine war is the stress test of the transatlantic relationship and the undecided fate of Europe. Much of the debate has centered on three pure scenarios: frozen conflict, continued attrition, Ukrainian collapse. In practice, mixed scenarios are more likely, overlapping with the transatlantic renegotiation of terms.

Ranked by combination of probability and strategic consequence, three scenarios emerge as particularly relevant for European planning:

  1. Long-term Russian pressure without breakthrough
    The war continues as a war of attrition, the front moves limitedly, Ukraine remains dependent on extensive military and financial support, but without formal security guarantees. For Europe, this means a long-term strain on inventories, budgets and political endurance. For the US, the pressure to reallocate capabilities towards the Indo-Pacific is increasing, which in turn creates new demands on European capabilities.
  2. Frozen but violent conflict
    A ceasefire or “Korean” solution in which Russia retains about a fifth of Ukrainian territory including Crimea, the front is stabilized but the level of violence remains high through artillery, drones and sabotage. The risk is that such a situation will normalize, while Russia may gradually redirect resources from the front towards sub-threshold operations against NATO countries and towards exploiting cracks within the EU and the alliance.
  3. Partial American retreat with selective European compensation
    The US is reducing its operational engagement in Europe, both for resource and domestic policy reasons, to free up power against China. Europe manages to increase production and contribute artillery, ammunition, air defense – but leaves gaps in ISR, long-range precision capabilities and space-based surveillance. The gap between formal commitments and actual capabilities is growing.

Pure collapse scenarios – a total Ukrainian defeat or a rapid internal Russian collapse – are less likely in the short term, but must be included as outer edges. Policy should still be dimensioned for prolonged attrition with either an open front or a frozen conflict, since this is where the combination of resource demands, political erosion and strategic uncertainty becomes most tangible. For the Baltics and Poland, every Russian breakthrough means a shortened strategic warning period, but even a frozen situation means a permanent high-voltage interface with a revanchist great power.

  1. The defense industry – Europe's weak link and the US's leverage

The defense industry is the material side of the ambivalence. Europe's defense spending has increased sharply since 2022, but the share of joint procurement is still far below the set targets, fragmentation persists (many platform types, parallel systems), and critical gaps remain in air defense, ammunition, unmanned systems, and logistics. At the same time, the United States expects both that Europe strengthens its industrial base and that it does not exclude American suppliers from major contracts.

The fragmentation problem can be divided into three:

  • Short-term production capacity: can Europe deliver ammunition, air defenses and sensors in time to Ukraine and to its own stockpile?
  • Long-term technological sovereignty: can Europe develop and retain key technologies in sensors, propulsion, AI support for command and control and space systems?
  • Political economy: can member states accept industrial consolidation that damages national champions, including in countries like Sweden?

Figures indicating the proportion of a country’s procurement that goes to European and American systems respectively must be handled with caution. Major contracts for the F-35, Patriot and various transport helicopters show that the US remains a key supplier, even as the political rhetoric shifts towards “Buy European”. What is new is the direction, not a complete shift. The US leverage lies in this very mix: Washington can openly support European industrial capacity, but also use trade policy to punish projects that are perceived to threaten American corporate interests.

  1. Energy shocks, technology addictions – the forgotten dimension

Much of the discussion about transatlantic dependence revolves around troops, money and weapons. At least as important is the security of flows: energy, data, cables, space. An Iran scenario with closed or severely disrupted flows through the Strait of Hormuz would hit Europe harder than the US, since the US is significantly more self-sufficient in energy. Such a shock would trigger a negative loop: energy prices up, inflation up, recession, squeezed state budgets – just when defense spending needs to be increased the most. US military action in the Middle East could thus materially undermine the European rearmament that Washington is demanding.

The digital dimension is similar. The Ukraine war has clearly demonstrated the dependence on private cloud services and commercial space systems: AWS, Azure, Starlink. Even if Europe builds its own drones and sensors, much of the logic runs on American software and American chips. The question then becomes: can we talk about strategic autonomy when the digital nervous system is externally controlled? Here, European ambitions for technological and normative autonomy collide with concrete vulnerability.

  1. Three open questions – and five priorities

Where is the USA?
The internal American tension between transactionalism, isolationism and hegemonic reflex is not resolved. The Indo-Pacific pivot is fixed, regardless of the administration, and Europe will at best be a secondary theater where the US wants to see more capabilities but avoid real rivalry. Added to this is a stronger pressure for European alignment with US China policy.

Quo vadis Europa?
Europe is moving towards something more capable than the old “peace dividend Europe”, but hardly towards full-scale Gaullist autonomy. Most likely is selective autonomy: a stronger European pillar within NATO, reinforced by mini-lateral formations such as JEF, NB8, Weimar+ and E4. The UK, Norway and Turkey are key players in this, but do not fit well into a narrow EU framework.

Where is NATO?
The most stable scenario is a dual-leadership NATO in which Europe takes greater responsibility for its own region, while the US retains the ultimate guarantee and focus on global balance of power. The problem is that it requires two simultaneous and politically difficult shifts: that Europe actually builds the capacity, and that the US accepts that capacity means greater autonomy – not just more ability to pay.

To make this mutual ambivalence manageable rather than paralyzing, Europe needs to make at least five priorities that link capacities and institutions over the next five to ten years:

  1. Prioritize three key conventional capabilities for Europeanization: air and missile defence, artillery/ammunition, and the protection of critical infrastructure and underwater flows should be given priority in European planning and funding. These areas are both militarily urgent in Ukraine and directly relevant to NATO’s eastern and northern flanks, and they are areas where European industry can scale up without immediately challenging the US globally.
  2. Build a common European ISR and space foundation within a NATO framework: Instead of talking about a stand-alone “European umbrella”, EU countries, together with the UK and Norway, should focus on strengthening European components of space-based early warning, C4ISR and cyber resilience that are integrated into NATO’s command structure. This reduces the most sensitive dependence on US sensors and cloud services without breaking up the deterrence architecture.
  3. Consolidate the defense industry with clear European priorities but open transatlantic doors: EU tools should be used to drive real consolidation in a few critical segments – ammunition, air defense, unmanned systems – while avoiding protectionist arrangements that lock Europe into unnecessary conflict with US and British suppliers. A principle of “Buy European where time and expertise are available, Buy Transatlantic where gaps are critical” is more sustainable than both full openness and total preference.
  4. Accept a de facto dual leadership NATO/EU with minilaterals as a bridge: NATO remains the ultimate military guarantor, but much of the capacity building, standardization and flow resilience will in practice be driven by the EU and minilateral formats. The goal should not be institutional purity but interoperability and political synchronization.
  5. Makes explicit that European rearmament is the price both for American guarantees and for limited autonomy: European governments need to be honest that increased defense spending is not just a tribute to Washington, but an investment in being able to say no when American demands clash with European interests – in the Middle East, in technology policy, in relations with China. The dual rationale makes it easier to legitimize long-term armaments, while making it clear to the United States that increased European capabilities inevitably also imply a certain degree of self-will.

The question of “who needs whom” thus does not receive a clear answer, and perhaps it should not. The decisive thing is whether the US and Europe can live with a new contract in which Europe takes greater responsibility for the capabilities that are most relevant in its own immediate area, without pretending to be able to replace the American umbrella, and in which the US accepts that a more capable European pillar also means more autonomy – not just more willingness to pay.