Europe needs protection. That was true even before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, before the conflict in the Gulf threatened to spill over onto European soil. The key difference is that back then, Europe could look to its friends across the Atlantic for support. The United States, as the world’s biggest military spender and as the world leader in a number of advanced technologies, supplied the muscle that Europe needed to carry on peacefully, investing what it might have spent on defence on schools, hospitals and a generous welfare state.
It was clear from the first days of Donald Trump’s second presidency that the United States was going to do things differently. To the great credit of Europe’s leaders, the continent responded to the new president’s calls for more European autonomy in defence by pledging to spend. Since then, the relationship between those leaders and President Trump has not been smooth. Now, the idea that Europe should continue to welcome American participation in defence procurement seems unwise.
The reason is not that the United States is no longer our ally and economic partner. The relationship might be turbulent, but we still have a strong and historic connection, and NATO still matters. The reason is that European security cannot, partly or fully, depend on the whims of those running the United States. The situation in Iran has made that plain. No country or region is completely self-sufficient; but one that needs others for something so basic as its defence is far less self-sufficient than another that doesn’t. An ally cannot replace Europe’s own ability to deter threats. Europe must be able to defend and deter in its own right.
Europe is not poor. With few exceptions, we enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world. But the threat posed to Europe by Russia, the twelfth-largest economy in the world, is clear proof that having a lot of cash, or even being willing to spend a lot, is not the same as being safe and able to deter hostile actors. Here lies Europe’s difficulty. Not only is it dependent on the United States in the abstract, but practically, its systems – systems that are now the backbone of defence – are full of American technology. It’s a commonplace in cybersecurity and software engineering that whoever owns the code, the keys, or the architecture is the ultimate controller of the technology. This means that much European equipment and technology is in fact controlled by the U.S. The U.S. could, on paper, restrict European access to that same technology or withhold the updates it needs to run well. In theory, Europe could instead turn to China for that technology, but that would bring about the same problems and a different kind of dependence.
It would be easy to say that this is so unlikely as not to be worth thinking about. I hope that’s true. But recent years have surely made it clear that the future remains as impossible to foresee as ever. In 2002, the Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan said that arguing against globalisation was like ‘arguing against the law of gravity’; yet the story turned out to be more complicated. After the financial crisis, trade growth stalled, protectionism rose, there was strategic decoupling, and, more recently, a turning-inwards by certain countries. Very little is inevitable in geopolitics, and that’s why Europe mustn’t be complacent.
What should Europe do? I have three suggestions. European governments should invest more heavily in their domestic defence technology companies. They should embrace faster procurement and much greater support for ‘dual-use’ technologies – technology with military and civilian applications. These include satellites, advanced materials and secure communications. Deeper industrial cooperation is also needed. Fragmentation leads to duplication; joint programmes spread costs and increase scale. Europe should also work more closely with Ukraine to test and deploy new technologies quickly, with strong government backing. The battlefield has become a powerful engine of innovation, and closer cooperation would help Europe accelerate development while strengthening Ukraine’s defence. European countries should also protect their critical intellectual property, ensuring that core defence technologies remain under European control wherever possible and encouraging European standardisation to boost interoperability and make it easier for smaller players to join the market.
This is not an exhaustive list. Europe could do with its only equivalents of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and DARPA, U.S. initiatives that accelerate technology development for the Department of Defense, for instance. Moreover, there are encouraging signs that governments – that of Germany, for instance – understand the problem and are taking steps to fix it. But these three fundamental suggestions provide a good starting point.
Failing to see our need for independence doesn’t just make Europe vulnerable to the whims of politicians abroad. It also weakens home-grown European innovation. Our finest minds will come to see the U.S. as the best place to set up shop. There, there is funding, there are initiatives designed to support defence startups, and there is a much more richly developed defence ecosystem and culture. Young European founders in the U.S. are encouraged to create subsidiaries there, relocate research teams and develop intellectual property locally. That can strengthen American ecosystems while weakening Europe’s own innovation base. The goal should not be a one-way flow of talent and technology, but a more balanced transatlantic relationship in which innovation grows on both sides.
I don’t expect the necessary changes to happen overnight. But nor do I need to point out the urgent need to get moving. Over a dozen countries are now involved in the war in the Gulf, and many more are implicated indirectly. Europe is now having to fight its own wars as the U.S. loses interest in Ukraine. If Europe wants to be able to negotiate robustly, if it wants to defend its Eastern flank from future Russian aggression – if, in a phrase, it wants to be able to stand on its own two feet in a very dangerous world, then it must embrace reform.
Dr Robert Brüll
Dr Robert Brüll is the CEO and co-founder of FibreCoat, a world leader in advanced materials technology. FibreCoat’s lightweight, high-performance materials protect against radiation, heat, and electromagnetic interference (E.M.I.), making them crucial for space, defense, automotive, and construction. They’re suppliers to NATO and allied forces across Europe.
