In her 2025 state of the union speech last month, Ursula von der Leyen didn’t mince her words. Europe, the president of the European Commission declared, is engaged in a “fight for a continent that is whole and at peace”. Her analysis of the problem was pretty accurate. What is increasingly clear, however, is that the European Union is not the whole solution. The EU is good at many things. Being an effective defence organisation is not one of them.
Don’t get me wrong: European integration has, over the decades, performed an important security function. By binding former enemies together, it helped them overcome centuries-old rivalries. By incorporating new members, it calmed potential tensions (not least among those countries formerly within the Soviet bloc).
