Compounding the alarm triggered by Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the erratic unpredictability of the second Trump administration has made the need for European security autonomy obvious. On a number of occasions over the past year, Donald Trump has loosely intimated that he might leave the Nato defence alliance.
Washington’s recent move to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany, plus unease over the US’s actions in Iran, have reinforced the imperative of European strategic independence. The US administration announced its planned withdrawal after the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, criticised Trump’s Middle Eastern adventurism.
European rearmament is well underway. Governments still need to follow through on their promises to increase defence budgets to Nato’s new 5% of GDP target. But in 2025, European Nato members and Canada spent US$574 billion (£422 billion) on defence – an increase of nearly 20% on the previous year. This was the sharpest annual rise for 70 years.
