Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj
Europe’s strategic imagination is dead. A new generation of politicians has lost the ability earlier leaders possessed — leaving the continent dependent and unprepared for a post-American order.
Strategic imagination is never an abstract faculty. It is a product of the geopolitical contexts in which political elites operate—shaped by threat perceptions, institutional constraints, and the distribution of power among allies. For much of the postwar period, European states possessed enough of this capacity to help design the order they inhabited. Today that capacity has withered, leaving Europe intellectually and politically unprepared for a world in which American strategic primacy can no longer be taken for granted.
In a July 2026 commentary in Survival, Riccardo Alcaro argues that Europe’s strategic-imagination deficit is largely generational. Earlier cohorts of political leaders, shaped by the Cold War, still possessed the capacity to generate original strategic initiatives that sometimes diverged from American preferences. By contrast, the current generation of European politicians, formed in an era of deepening dependence on US security guarantees, has largely lost that ability—leaving greater European agency dependent on recovering an imagination that previous generations occasionally possessed and that today’s leaders have largely abandoned. During the Cold War, and to a lesser extent in the first post-Cold War decade, European governments generated original strategic initiatives that either complemented or occasionally diverged from American preferences. West Germany’s Ostpolitik, France’s independent nuclear deterrent and force de frappe doctrine, the Helsinki process, and the early experiments in European political cooperation all reflected an ability to conceive security arrangements that were not simply derivatives of Washington’s global strategy. Even when these initiatives remained nested inside the Atlantic Alliance, they demonstrated that Europeans could still think in terms of autonomous agency rather than pure adaptation.
The deepening of the post-Cold War transatlantic bargain reversed this pattern. As NATO enlargement, American expeditionary dominance, and the progressive outsourcing of hard security functions to the United States took hold, European strategic culture adjusted accordingly. Dependence on U.S. security guarantees and strategic leadership became not merely a practical reality but an intellectual habit. The capacity to imagine alternative courses of action—whether a genuinely European conventional deterrent, a continental approach to crisis management independent of American prioritization, or a security architecture that treated the United States as a powerful but non-exclusive partner—steadily eroded. Policy debates narrowed to questions of burden-sharing percentages, capability targets set in Washington, and the rhetorical affirmation of “transatlantic unity.”
Donald Trump’s return to power and the visible weakening of the Euro-Atlantic order have abruptly exposed the costs of this long atrophy. American retrenchment is no longer a theoretical risk but an operational condition: conditional alliance commitments, transactional approaches to European security, and a clear preference for bilateral rather than multilateral arrangements. These developments create genuine incentives for strategic innovation.
Yet European responses remain torn between two insufficient paths. The first is adaptive: accelerating military spending, meeting revised NATO targets, and hoping that greater material contributions will restore American goodwill and attention. The second is declarative autonomy: repeated invocations of “European strategic autonomy” that still treat autonomy as an add-on to the transatlantic relationship rather than a possible alternative organizing principle.
Neither path reconstitutes the missing strategic imagination. Greater European agency will ultimately depend on the ability to conceive and organize security as a genuinely collective European endeavour—one that begins from European interests, European geography, and European political legitimacy rather than from the residual structures of the old transatlantic bargain.
This requires more than new capability packages or institutional rearrangements inside the EU and NATO. It demands a recovery of the intellectual habit of treating European security as a primary rather than derivative domain: imagining deterrence architectures that do not assume automatic American escalation dominance, crisis-management doctrines calibrated to European rather than global priorities, and political mechanisms capable of sustaining collective action even when U.S. preferences diverge.
The deficit is not primarily material. Europe retains the demographic weight, industrial base, and residual military capacity to underpin a more autonomous order if the political will and conceptual frameworks exist. What is missing is the strategic imagination forged in earlier eras when Europeans still believed they could shape the order rather than merely inhabit it. Until that imagination is recovered, Europe will continue to oscillate between anxious adaptation to American retrenchment and incomplete gestures toward autonomy—neither of which constitutes a coherent strategy for an age in which the old Euro-Atlantic bargain no longer defines the possible.
Historical examples of European strategic autonomy illustrate periods when European states or coalitions pursued security, diplomatic, or military policies that were not simply extensions of American (or earlier, external great-power) preferences. These efforts were rarely absolute independence; they usually sought greater room for manoeuvre within or alongside larger structures. Below is a chronological exploration of the most significant cases.Early Post-War Ambitions (1940s–1950s)In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, European leaders sought to rebuild collective defence capacity without total reliance on the United States.- The European Defence Community (EDC) treaty (1950–1954)
Proposed by French Prime Minister René Pleven and strongly backed by Jean Monnet, the EDC envisaged a common European army under supranational control, with integrated forces from France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries. It would have created a genuine European military instrument capable of operating with, but not subordinate to, American forces. The project collapsed in 1954 when the French National Assembly refused ratification, fearing loss of national sovereignty and German rearmament. The failure is often cited as the first major aborted attempt at hard-power strategic autonomy. - Western European Union (WEU)
Created in 1954 as a residual structure after the EDC’s demise, the WEU provided a purely European forum for defence consultation and later became the institutional vehicle for some crisis-management tasks before being absorbed into the EU.
Gaullist France and Independent Nuclear Deterrence (1950s–1960s)Charles de Gaulle’s France remains the clearest single-country example of strategic autonomy in the Cold War.- Force de frappe and withdrawal from NATO’s integrated command (1966)
France developed an independent nuclear deterrent (the force de frappe) explicitly designed to give Paris a “seat at the table” and the ability to act without automatic American escalation. In 1966 de Gaulle withdrew French forces from NATO’s integrated military structure and ordered NATO headquarters to leave French soil. France remained a member of the Alliance but insisted on national control over its forces and nuclear weapons. This posture demonstrated that a major European power could maintain a distinct strategic identity while still benefiting from the broader Western security umbrella. - Fouchet Plan (1961–1962)
De Gaulle also proposed a confederal political union among the Six that would have coordinated foreign and defence policy independently of the United States and NATO. The plan failed due to opposition from Atlanticist partners (especially the Netherlands and Belgium), but it revealed a coherent vision of Europe as a third force between the superpowers.
Ostpolitik and Détente (Late 1960s–1970s)West Germany under Willy Brandt pursued a distinctive Eastern policy that diverged from pure American containment orthodoxy.- Ostpolitik
Brandt’s policy of engagement with East Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union (formalised in the 1970 Moscow and Warsaw Treaties and the 1972 Basic Treaty) prioritised European stability and eventual German reunification over rigid bloc confrontation. While coordinated with Washington, it reflected a European-centred calculation that security could be enhanced through controlled détente rather than perpetual military confrontation. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and the 1975 Helsinki Final Act further institutionalised this European-driven approach to managing East–West relations.
Post-Cold War Revival Attempts (1990s–2000s)The end of the bipolar order briefly revived ambitions for greater autonomy.- Saint-Malo Declaration (1998)
The Franco-British summit at Saint-Malo marked the formal launch of the European Security and Defence Policy (later CSDP). Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac declared that the EU “must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces” for crisis management where NATO as a whole was not engaged. This led to the creation of EU battlegroups, the European Defence Agency and a series of autonomous operations (e.g., Artemis in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003, the first purely EU military mission without NATO assets). - European Security Strategy (2003)
Drafted under Javier Solana amid the Iraq crisis, the ESS articulated a distinct European worldview emphasising “effective multilateralism,” preventive engagement and a broader concept of security that went beyond American-led counter-terrorism priorities. France and Germany’s opposition to the 2003 Iraq War further underlined the possibility of European divergence on the use of force.
Limits and Recurring PatternAcross these cases a consistent pattern emerges: moments of genuine strategic imagination and institutional innovation were followed by political or structural constraints—national sovereignty concerns (EDC), alliance solidarity pressures (Gaullism), or the practical dominance of American military capabilities (post-1990s CSDP). European strategic autonomy has historically been episodic rather than structural: strongest when a major power (usually France, sometimes Germany) was willing to invest political capital, and weakest when the perceived costs of divergence from the United States appeared too high.
These historical precedents remain relevant today. They show that Europeans have repeatedly demonstrated the capacity to conceive security arrangements that are not pure derivatives of American strategy—yet have rarely sustained them long enough to alter the underlying dependency.
Conclusion
The historical record of European strategic autonomy reveals a recurring pattern rather than a linear progression. From the aborted European Defence Community and de Gaulle’s independent nuclear posture, through Ostpolitik and the post-Cold War ambitions of Saint-Malo and the European Security Strategy, Europeans have repeatedly demonstrated the capacity to imagine and partially implement security arrangements that were not mere derivatives of American strategy.
Yet each episode proved episodic: constrained by national sovereignty concerns, alliance solidarity pressures, or the sheer practical dominance of U.S. military power. Strategic imagination flourished briefly when political leaders were willing to invest capital in alternative frameworks, only to atrophy once the costs of divergence appeared too high or the transatlantic bargain seemed secure.
Today that bargain is fraying. The return of Donald Trump and the visible weakening of the Euro-Atlantic order have exposed the long-term consequences of Europe’s post-Cold War intellectual dependency. The deficit is no longer theoretical; it is operational. Adaptation through higher defence spending or declarative autonomy will not suffice if Europeans cannot recover the conceptual habit of treating their security as a primary, collective endeavour rather than a residual function of American priorities.
History shows that the capacity for such imagination has existed before. Whether it can be reconstituted—and sustained—will determine whether Europe remains a strategic actor capable of shaping its own environment, or continues to oscillate between anxious dependence and incomplete gestures of independence. Greater European agency ultimately hinges less on new institutions or capability targets than on the recovery of the strategic imagination that earlier generations occasionally possessed and that the present generation has largely lost.
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