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A year into Donald Trump’s second US presidency, Europe has got the message about taking more responsibility for its own security. Defence spending across Europe was up almost 80 per cent in 2025 from the year before Russia invaded Ukraine, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told the Munich Security Conference. But competing visions have emerged on how to manage the transition. Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte said last month European leaders could “keep on dreaming” if they thought they could defend the continent without US support. At Munich, Von der Leyen rebuked him, saying the EU must bring to life its own mutual defence clause. In essence she pitched the bloc as an alternative to Nato as guarantor of security.
Rutte’s vision sees European defence as a pillar within Nato, not a standalone entity. The military alliance, he says, should set standards and targets for capabilities, while the EU sticks to its strengths in mobilising financing and handling industrial regulation. Europe needs to buy what works and what it needs now — even if that means spending European funds on American arms.
Von der Leyen insists Europe must be capable of acting independently. Given the questions over US commitments to Europe raised, for example, by Trump’s threats to Greenland, she argues that the EU must use European procurement funds to build up Europe’s industrial complex, even if that riles Washington.
Both leaders, in truth, are right. Since it will take years of concerted effort for Europe to come anywhere near “strategic autonomy”, it needs to build up its capabilities within Nato and carefully manage US relations. But the continent must move as quickly and efficiently as it can towards the point where it can act alone if needed. Moving along both tracks will require a delicate balancing act; the Rutte-Von der Leyen “good cop, bad cop” act has its merits. The Nato chief’s “Daddy Trump” flattery can, though, go too far — as some leaders reportedly told him in Munich.
It is also not unreasonable for the EU’s common €150bn debt-funded Safe initiative to require 65 per cent European content and at least two European countries to participate in each project. It is only part of the total €800bn mobilisation target for rearmament by 2030, much of the rest coming from national spending and borrowing.
For Europe to build the capabilities it needs, moreover, it must pursue several priorities. First, its common defence industrial base needs to stretch well beyond the EU to include the UK, Norway, Switzerland and others. Second, its largest countries, in particular, must move beyond their attachment to national champions and pursue genuinely Europe-wide procurement of the best and best-value systems. That requires trust between states arguably even greater than when sharing a currency or losing border controls.
A parallel mindset shift is needed to ensure European countries are re-arming to fight — or deter — the next war, not the last. Senior German officials have had to pledge to channel more money into innovation and start-ups after analysts and market entrants accused Berlin of putting too much of its rearmament funding into conventional weapons such as tanks, mostly benefiting established arms makers.
As the Centre for European Policy Studies think-tank has argued, Europe must reduce dependency on the US by seeking strategic autonomy above all in next-generation military technologies — such as missile defences, hypersonic weapons, and strategic enablers such as the cloud, AI and quantum computing, and drones. Whether in averting war in Europe or anticipating what Trump’s US may do next, it makes sense to hope for the best, while planning for the worst.