"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." The warning is from Eisenhower, in 1952, upon accepting the Republican nomination. It was signed by the general who had commanded the largest military coalition in the West, not an orator seeking applause. Seventy-four years later, Europe is beginning to read that sentence not as campaign rhetoric, but as a warning.
The continent has been talking about strategic autonomy for years: the formula sounded good, allowed for nuances, irritated Washington just enough and offered Paris a vocabulary with which to dress in doctrine what was often an intuition. That no adult continent can indefinitely delegate its security to another is no longer a French aspiration or a Brussels formula: it is an urgency. And, like almost all European urgencies, it arrives a little late, wrapped in shock and with more declarations than ammunition.
The mere possibility of a reduction in US troops in Germany has acted as a pedagogical slap. Withdrawing 5,000 soldiers from a much larger deployment seems like a limited gesture, but in defense, numbers rarely speak for themselves. What is withdrawn, when, what signal is sent, and what void is left behind matters. The military presence of the United States in Europe was never just a sum of brigades: it was political insurance, a command architecture, and a psychological guarantee. The continent did not feel secure because it had sufficient means of its own, but because Washington was within the perimeter.
The military presence of the United States in Europe was never just a sum of brigades
That is the real discovery. For decades, Europe could afford incomplete defense because the Atlantic alliance completed its shortcomings. NATO was the framework; the United States, the backbone; Europe, the body that moved with difficulty knowing it would not have to bear the weight alone. The war in Ukraine had already revealed part of the problem: scarce arsenals, slow production, critical dependencies, insufficient air defense, fragmented industry. The Middle East crisis and tensions with Washington add a harder lesson: the indispensable ally also has its own priorities, unpredictable political cycles, and limited patience.
In the Alliance's recent documents, the talk is no longer just about spending more, but about reaching 5% of GDP on defense and related security before 2035, with at least 3.5% on strictly military requirements. This is not an accounting figure. It is the recognition that the old 2% target has proven insufficient for an era of industrial warfare, long-range missiles, cheap drones, and saturated air defense.
Europe spends more, but not necessarily better or fast enough. The European Defence Agency estimates that member states' military spending reached 343 billion euros in 2024, 1.9% of GDP, and was around 381 billion in 2025, about 2.1%. This is a significant leap. It is also an embarrassing snapshot: the continent is starting to run when the accumulated distance is already enormous.
The European Commission has tried to turn fear into method. Its White Paper for European Defence —Readiness 2030— proposes a wave of investment to rebuild capabilities, sustain Ukraine, and achieve a sufficiently robust posture before 2030. It identifies flagship projects: eastern flank surveillance, drone defense, European air shield, and space shield. The direction is correct. The problem is that defense is not decreed: it is manufactured. And that it takes time, which is perhaps long for increasingly rapid evolutions of threats. Furthermore, Europe has spent too many years outsourcing strategic toughness while perfecting regulatory rhetoric.
The German case is the most symbolic. Berlin, which for decades made military containment a historical virtue, is being pushed into a transformation that makes part of its society uncomfortable. The Government has approved gigantic investment plans until 2030 and aims to surpass the new allied objectives. But between approving budgets and producing military power, there is a desert of deadlines, contracts, bottlenecks, doctrine, and social legitimacy. Protests against rearmament are already appearing on the streets; in the ministries, the old Roman maxim prevails: if you want peace, prepare for war.
The threat of a US withdrawal exposes another deficiency: the European deficit in long-range capabilities. Contemporary warfare demands finding and destroying targets at great distances, integrating sensors, satellites, drones, artificial intelligence, command and fires; sustaining ammunition campaigns for months; deterring a nuclear adversary without provoking uncontrollable escalation. The non-arrival in Germany of a state-of-the-art US unit—a Multi-Domain Task Force—weighs more than the number of soldiers withdrawn, because it concentrates long-range missiles, hypersonic weapons, and advanced target processing.
The paradox is that the more serious Europe is about defense, the more useful it will be to the United States
Therein lies the Gordian knot. Europe does not need to spend more: it needs to learn to produce deterrence. And deterrence is not an abstract word. It is the ability to convince Moscow that aggression will have unbearable costs; to guarantee Warsaw, Tallinn, or Helsinki that they are not alone; to prevent a crisis in the Middle East from emptying European arsenals; to prevent Washington from seeing the continent as an expensive protectorate and Beijing as a rich but strategically weak market. Autonomy does not consist of separating from the United States, but of the alliance ceasing to resemble a relationship between a security provider and anxious clients.
The paradox is that the more serious Europe is about defense, the more useful it will be to the United States. Misunderstood autonomy is sometimes presented as anti-American emancipation. This is a mistake. A Europe capable of sustaining the eastern flank, producing ammunition, deploying air defense, and protecting the Arctic, the Baltic, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic would not weaken NATO: it would make it less vulnerable to the mood of the White House. Mark Rutte himself has said it with unusual clarity: the era when the United States comfortably bore a large part of the burden of common security is over.
Brussels knows how to sanction, set standards, open investigations, and draft legal frameworks of extraordinary complexity. All of that matters. But a continent is not defended with regulations. Defense requires steel, gunpowder, electronics, shipyards, satellites, radars, reserves, trained personnel, and protected supply chains. It also requires a political culture capable of explaining to its citizens that military spending is not a warmongering whim, but a policy for freedom. Without this pedagogy, European rearmament will be vulnerable to two internal enemies: automatic pacifism and budgetary populism.
There is also an industrial risk. If the increase in spending ends up in uncoordinated national purchases or a new wave of acquisitions from external suppliers, the continent will have financed its own dependence with more money. Europe needs interoperability, but also industrial scale, joint purchases, common standards, and priority to the European technological base when possible. And when I say Europe, I mean Europe, not some countries in Europe. The old mosaic of national systems and industrial rivalries is not suitable for an era in which Russia produces in a war economy and China combines industrial muscle, technological ambition, and strategic patience.
The war in Ukraine has taught a lesson that Europe should not forget: in a long war, industry is strategy. Speeches run out before ammunition depots. Summits are forgotten before production lines. A continent that cannot replenish interceptors, artillery, drones, and missiles at the rate it consumes them does not have autonomy: it has inventory. And inventory, when not replenished, is an accounting illusion.
Spain should not watch this debate from the sidelines. Its geographical position, its bases, its Mediterranean, Atlantic, and African projection, its defense industry, and its allied commitments oblige it to take this new phase seriously. European strategic autonomy is not just a matter for the Baltic or Poland. It also affects the Sahel, the Maghreb, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, the South Atlantic, maritime security, cyber defense, and the protection of critical infrastructure. A stronger Europe will not necessarily be more militaristic. It can simply be a less blackmailable Europe.
The European task is not to renounce its civil, legal, and democratic vocation, but to protect it
The conclusion is bitter, but useful. The United States has not created European weakness: it has unmasked it. The eventual withdrawal of troops does not inaugurate exposure; it illuminates it. Strategic autonomy is not improvised in a crisis, it is not bought in a legislature, nor is it proclaimed at a summit. It is built over years with money, industry, doctrine, alliances, reserves, and political will. The continent has resources, technology, population, and experience. What it lacks is the ability to convert all of that into organized power.
For a long time, Europe believed that its main contribution to the world was having overcome the logic of power. It was a noble idea, but incomplete. Power does not disappear because one stops mentioning it: it only changes hands. The European task is not to renounce its civil, legal, and democratic vocation, but to protect it. And that requires something the continent had preferred to forget: freedom also needs firepower, industrial resilience, and the will to resist. Strategic autonomy is no longer a dream of grandeur. It is the minimum condition for not living at the mercy of the dreams of others.
And by the way, the Rota-Morón complex is not a camp that is set up overnight. It is much more. But we will talk about that in another article.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
José A. Monago is the deputy spokesperson for the Popular Party Group in the Senate. Member of the National Security and Defense Commissions.