At the heart of the matter is a growing gap between Europe’s ability to control its own security and the pace of external change. The Ukraine crisis has reshaped Europe’s assumptions about war and peace. Its future comfort will depend on its ability to prevent crises even as it prepares to confront them.
I recently traveled to Brussels to attend a dialogue on European security. One impression stood out: Europeans are becoming increasingly anxious. Despite committing ever greater resources to defense, Europe seems unable to achieve a corresponding sense of security. According to the European Defense Agency, spending by EU member states on defense reached 418 billion euros in 2025 and is projected to rise further to 454 billion in 2026. Yet even as military spending increases, discussions about the next conflict continue. With spending and anxiety rising in tandem, Europe faces a security dilemma that larger military budgets alone cannot resolve.
At the heart of Europe’s anxiety is a growing gap between its ability to control its own security and the pace of change in its external environment. In the past, Europe could rely on American security guarantees, concentrate on economic development and extend its influence through institutions and rules. Today, the crisis in Ukraine has reshaped European assumptions about war and peace, Washington is pressing Europe to shoulder more defense responsibilities and economic ties have become increasingly vulnerable to geopolitical shocks. Europe’s evolving understanding of security requires it to address several capability gaps simultaneously, while leaving relatively little time for policy adjustments.
Events in Ukraine have fundamentally changed how Europe thinks about war and peace. For the Baltic and Nordic countries, the discussion has already moved beyond the prospect of a cease-fire to questions about what comes afterward—what form the next crisis might take, whether they will be able to meet future security challenges and whether military alliances should remain unshakable. At the European Council meeting in mid-October, EU leaders called for a cease-fire and meaningful negotiations while emphasizing robust and credible security guarantees to underpin Ukraine’s long-term security. This reflects a prevailing assessment in Europe that even after the current crisis ends, a whole range of security problems will remain.
This outlook has rendered its security agenda increasingly open-ended. As European participants at the Brussels seminar observed, conventional military operations have relatively clear thresholds, while cyberattacks and information interference can occur in everyday life. The less clearly defined the threats, the more inclined governments become to expand the scope of their precautions. The EU’s Preparedness Union Strategy, introduced in 2025, covers geopolitical conflicts, cyber risks, and natural disasters. Among its proposed measures is the development of guidelines to enable citizens to be self-sufficient for at least 72 hours. Europe is extending emergency preparedness throughout society, asking households to assume greater responsibility for their own security.
The United States adds another layer of pressure. Europe has long organized its defense around American military capabilities, with deep transatlantic connections in procurement, training and command structures. Thus, as Washington calls on Europe to assume greater responsibility for conventional defense, European countries must confront a difficult question: Which capabilities can they develop relatively quickly, and which will continue to depend on the United States for years to come? Renewed American assurances of alliance commitments may provide political reassurance, but they cannot directly close Europe’s capability gaps. The more urgently Europe seeks to demonstrate that it can shoulder greater responsibility, the more acutely it feels the constraints created by its longstanding dependence on the United States.
In September, the NATO secretary-general spoke of making NATO more and more European-led and building “a stronger Europe in a stronger NATO.” This suggests that Europe’s current path toward greater autonomy still involves increasing its weight within the alliance. Yet a difficult trade-off follows. Purchasing readily available foreign equipment can meet immediate needs, while developing indigenous systems and expanding European production capacity take time. Europe must prepare for near-term challenges while seeking greater autonomy in the future—two objectives that compete for the same budget.
The pressure of time also exposes the difficulties of coordination within Europe. Every country wants to increase security spending, but each also wants contracts, jobs and technology to remain at home. Collective defense requires common requirements, while national industrial policies reflect distinct interests. Europe has the capacity to mobilize more funding, but turning that funding into shared capabilities demands political decisions that are much more difficult. Measuring burden-sharing simply by defense spending as a share of GDP can easily obscure this problem.
Europe’s external economic relationships are undergoing a similar transformation. Following disruptions to their energy supplies, Europeans have become increasingly concerned that dependencies profitable today could become instruments of pressure tomorrow. This concern is changing how policies are evaluated. Previously, the main question was how much economic benefit a particular relationship could deliver. Now, policymakers must also ask whether that relationship would remain reliable during a crisis. Raw materials, digital infrastructure, and artificial intelligence have consequently become part of Europe’s security debate. This growing tendency to view economic issues through a security lens has also brought China increasingly into the scope of European security policy.
The problem is that dependence alone tells us little about the magnitude of a risk. The concentration of supply, the availability of alternatives and the predictability of policies all determine the consequences of different forms of dependence. If Europe makes judgments solely on the basis of a supplier’s country of origin, it risks turning problems that could be managed through rules, contracts and technical safeguards into political confrontations. As businesses face higher costs, governments must provide more subsidies, and the very competitiveness Europe hopes to strengthen is weakened. As the boundaries of security policy continue to expand, restoring economic vitality becomes increasingly difficult.
This is also where Europe’s anxiety risks becoming self-reinforcing. Governments emphasize threats to mobilize resources, prompting the public to demand more comprehensive protection. As the scope of protection expands, further capability gaps become apparent. Europe may ultimately devote more resources to guarding against potential disruptions to critical supply chains without pursuing equally strong policies to sustain cooperation. For an economy heavily dependent on international trade and cross-border connections, a reduction in cooperative relationships can itself undermine the capacity to withstand shocks.
Europe needs more rigorous standards for evaluating the effectiveness of its security policies. Which specific capability gaps, if any, has the additional spending closed? How much risk has a restrictive measure actually reduced, and at what cost? Such questions require concrete assessments, rather than introducing policies under broad appeals to greater security and resilience. Security challenges associated with Russia, dependence on American capabilities and industrial competition with China need to be assessed separately. Folding fundamentally different problems into a single bloc-based narrative will only make European policies less targeted and spread limited resources thinner across an ever-growing range of priorities.
This matters for how Europe navigates relations between China and the United States. If Europe wants to protect its interests amid great-power competition, it must preserve its ability to make independent judgments on different issues. If the need to secure American support translates into pressure to align with Washington on every issue, so-called strategic autonomy will be reduced to burden-sharing, potentially leaving Europe with obligations beyond its capabilities. The practical meaning of security autonomy lies in Europe's ability to decide which risks it should bear, which confrontations it should avoid and how to allocate sufficient resources to support those choices.
China’s engagement with Europe should also be guided by this consideration. What Europe seeks is the capacity to determine its own policies and sustain social prosperity. China needs to explain how its policies affect these concrete interests. The two sides may have disagreements, but they should still be able to discuss common rules for maintaining economic ties and handling security incidents. The value of China-EU cooperation should be reflected in its ability to expand the choices available to both sides and reduce the costs of managing crises. Whether or not Europe can overcome its security anxieties will ultimately depend on its ability to continue creating opportunities to prevent crises—even as it prepares to confront them.
