Iran exposes Europe’s strategic dependency on the US
The transatlantic relationship just about held together during Donald Trump’s first year back in the White House, despite the returning president’s obvious dislike of NATO and the European Union.
It survived disagreements over Ukraine, trade and Greenland. Now it seems to be unravelling over Iran, an American war of choice that the overwhelming majority of Europeans consider reckless and illegal — and on which they were not consulted.
How seriously those threats should be taken is an open question. Trump’s ability to withdraw from NATO is constrained by 2023 legislation requiring two-thirds approval from Congress. The US could withdraw forces from its European bases, but would it really want to surrender facilities developed over decades that are essential to its ability to project forward power? European leaders have long feared that Trump might walk away from Ukraine, but it is hard to see how handing Russia a huge strategic victory would serve US interests.
Nonetheless, Trump’s threats and erratic behaviour will only harden the resolve of many European leaders – and much of the public – that Europe needs to reduce its dependence on the US and boost its own strategic autonomy. As the German think-tank SWP puts it in a new report: “Trump’s dealings with Europe are no longer merely transactional, but increasingly resemble blackmail, employing a variety of instruments to demonstrate that ‘might makes right’.”
Yet as the SWP report also makes clear, disentangling Europe from US dependency will not be easy, not least because those dependencies span everything from defence to technology, energy, trade and finance. What’s more, the Trump administration showed during last year’s tariff dispute – where it linked support for Ukraine with securing a one-sided trade deal – that it is prepared to weaponise any of these dependencies to get its way in unrelated areas.
Take defence. Europeans are already taking on many of the key responsibilities within NATO, but they lack the strategic enablers that would allow them to project power independently: satellite communications, transport systems, and aerial refuelling. Building European alternatives would take ten to fifteen years, reckons SWP – assuming Europe can find a way to finance them. Nor would the process be truly independent: Europe would have little option but to purchase much of that capability from the US, lacking its own systems, and thereby handing Washington further leverage. According to the IISS, even since 2022, 34% of European military spending has gone to US-based contractors.
An even bigger challenge would arise if the US were to relinquish the role of Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), which by convention has always been held by an American. An independent European nuclear deterrent – the logical consequence – would be a vast political, financial and technological undertaking, and one that both Washington and Beijing would be sure to try to frustrate.
It is equally hard to see how Europe could achieve meaningful security independence without also achieving technological independence. Europe remains dependent on America for much of the technology that underpins its economy, effectively handing the US a kill switch. Technological autonomy would require Europe to build its own technology stack, from microprocessors to software systems. Again, this would be the work of decades. The cost would be astronomical: according to a 2025 Chamber of Progress report, achieving technological autonomy would cost €5 trillion — more than twenty-five times the EU’s annual budget, or roughly one quarter of EU GDP.
Throughout this transition, Europe will remain acutely vulnerable to US coercion. The Trump administration has already shown its willingness to deploy asymmetric power not only against countries and institutions, but against individuals: the chief prosecutor and other senior staff at the International Criminal Court have found themselves stripped of bank accounts, email services and US entry rights. Threats of similar action were recently used to swing a key vote at the International Maritime Organization in America’s favour.
Europeans should not mistake Trump’s threats to walk away from NATO as evidence of a retreat to isolationism. On the contrary, Europe retains vital importance for America in its systemic rivalry with China. Washington wants Europeans to remove regulatory obstacles facing US technology firms and to buy more American fossil fuels, rather than pivot to Chinese renewables. Speaking in Brussels this week, US Under-Secretary of State Jacob Helberg declared that America’s national interest lies in saving Europe from a “civilisational emergency”.
The US clearly intends to remain fully engaged in European affairs even as it retreats from traditional methods of engagement. What this means in practice can be seen clearly in Hungary, where the Trump administration is lobbying hard on behalf of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ahead of the April 13 election. The paradox is that the more the US directly interferes in national politics, the greater the support it tends to generate for politicians willing to stand up to it.
The upshot? Europe’s leaders may have won plaudits at home for standing up to the US over Iran. But the result is likely to be a more distant and adversarial relationship with America for which European governments are dangerously ill-prepared.
