When Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, spoke of the “kick in the ass” that the United States would have given to Europe, in Brussels many experienced an uncomfortable mix of relief and recognition. Finally someone was saying aloud what for years had been whispered in carpeted hallways: that Europe does not move if it is not pushed, even when the push comes in the rear with Texan boots.
The 2026 Munich Security Conference, dedicated to the future of European and transatlantic security, was not a strategic physiotherapy session nor an exercise in collective catharsis. It was a mirror, of the kind that doesn't slim. In it appeared a Europe mature in speeches, prolific in communiqués and surprisingly insecure when it comes to talking about power, costs and irreversible decisions. But also a Europe that is beginning, at least, to become aware of its strategic orphanhood: automatic tutelage and eternal guarantees no longer exist, and the time to delegate fundamental decisions to third parties is running out. It is not yet a qualitative leap, but it is an advance compared to traditional paralysis, that elegant immobility that for years was confused with prudence.
The kick does not wake Europe. It simply reminds it that the bench is no longer so comfortable and that staying seated begins to be, besides uncomfortable, dangerously irresponsible.
Munich or the end of liberal theater
Munich certified something that should no longer surprise anyone except the most devoted to the old Atlantic catechism: the liberal order is not wounded, it is buried. The United States no longer leads to integrate, but to select, and Europe has gone from strategic partner to file under audit. All this happens while the war in Ukraine continues to burn, Russia presses and China disputes the international system, although Brussels continues to debate procedures as if the world had time for its institutional pedagogy.
The administration of Donald Trump does not improvise nor act on a whim. It is abrupt, yes, but coherent. This became evident in Munich, where the speech by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, different in tone and form from the one delivered by J.D. Vance in the previous edition but substantially similar in content, reinforced the idea that the redefinition of the transatlantic relationship is lasting and not merely circumstantial. The alliance has ceased to be political to become a commercial contract with draconian clauses: more military spending, less regulatory autonomy, and geopolitical alignment without nuances. European dependence remains especially visible in areas such as intelligence, military projection, industrial defense capabilities, and certain critical technologies.
Europe, accustomed to interpreting the alliance as an acquired right -almost hereditary-, ratified in Munich what some were already predicting: that Washington no longer subsidizes others' strategic ambiguity.
Member states: all European, each one to their own
European unity in Munich was impeccable in the photos and in the joint declarations. In the content, however, the old -and perfectly rational- national divergences clearly emerged.
Germany, accompanied in large part by the Nordic countries and finally freed from its historical military complex, advances with a firm step but short-sighted. It wants stability, predictability, and control. Its rearmament is serious, structural, and understandable. The problem arises when Berlin, backed by a European North comfortable with the existing order, seems to assume that what is good for Germany will be, by osmosis, good for Europe. European history invites a certain caution with that logic.
Italy, for its part, prefers not to stir the board too much and, precisely because of that calculated tacticism, opts to lean on a strong Germany as an anchor of stability. With a vulnerable economy and historically volatile internal politics, its Europeanism is functional: accompanying without leading, supporting without pushing, and waiting without deciding. It is not cynicism; it is strategic survival in an environment that penalizes any leap into the void.
France insists -with reason and with a coherence that in Europe borders on eccentricity- that without power there is no sovereignty. Even if all the large member states religiously increased their defense spending, the problem would remain the same: a Europe extraordinarily capable of spending more without deciding better, and of fragmenting resources with an efficiency that other areas of public policy would already wish for. Paris has been supporting this diagnosis for years and is starting to tire of being right alone. Its difficulty is not the analysis, but convincing its partners that sovereignty is not proclaimed: it is organized.
Spain moves in an ambiguity that is no longer just uncomfortable, but strategically self-harming. Supporting the French theses on European autonomy and sovereignty has become an exercise in institutional theater: measured applause so as not to be out of tune and automatic withdrawal when the discourse threatens to demand something more than words. It is not a Spanish singularity, but a quite widespread European specialty: to confuse verbal ambition with real politics and to present the lack of decision as a prudent virtue.
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Madrid nods with discipline, pushes with reluctance and, when it decides to act, usually does so alone, precisely when doing so without allies guarantees political irrelevance. The result is a rather unedifying cocktail: elegant paralysis in Brussels and unilateral gestures outside of it, always without the critical mass necessary for them to have an effect. It is not a lack of Europeanism, but a persistent confusion between influencing and simply appearing. In the current context, this strategy leads to a double failure: not leading when it could and being left alone when it is not convenient.
Because in a Europe that redefines itself with hard decisions, neither silent followership nor occasional quixotism replace the ungrateful work of building real consensuses and alliances. Moral quixotism looks good in the stands, but rarely survives the first contact with reality. Defending values without allies is not bravery; it is an anticipated form of irrelevance.
Unanimity: moral refuge against responsibility
If something was especially laid bare in Munich, it was the great European institutional fiction: unanimity as an automatic synonym for legitimacy. In practice, it has become the best insurance against action, an exquisite mechanism for no one to assume costs… except Europe as a whole.
It is no coincidence that even from the heart of European institutions, what for years was almost a taboo and only tolerated in private is starting to be said aloud. Ursula von der Leyen's openness to a Europe that advances at two speeds in strategic areas is not a bold gesture, but the admission -late, but inevitable- that unanimity has gone from a democratic principle to a perfect alibi for inaction. The so-called variable geometry does not seek to break Europe, but to prevent it from dying suffocated by its own immobility.
Advancing in defense requires stopping pretending that Europe is synonymous with the European Union and accepting that European security is already being articulated through increasingly close cooperation between the EU, the United Kingdom, and Norway. It is not a bold concession, but the belated realization of a strategic reality that no serious person discusses anymore.
The misgivings about a two-speed Europe are not limited to the East, although in their case they have understandable historical and existential roots. They are also present in small and medium-sized States, where they respond less to external fear than to the fear of losing influence or political visibility. Ignoring these misgivings would be irresponsible; turning them into a permanent structural veto is an effective -and politically comfortable- way to guarantee paralysis. Advancing in a differentiated way, if it is open, transparent and oriented towards converging, does not break Europe: it keeps it minimally functional.
The American castling: less sermon, more bill
Munich recalled another comforting illusion that should be abandoned: that everything will return to normal when Trump passes. It will not pass. The United States has redefined its global position and Europe is no longer the center of the map. More defense spending, less commercial autonomy, and technological alignment. The message does not change; it only becomes more explicit. Washington does not demand affection, it demands results.
Europe can accept that subordinate role, as it has done before. But it should do so without deceiving itself: in return it will obtain borrowed security and structural dependence, a high price for whoever defines itself as a global normative power.
The German rearmament: muscle without common architecture
In Munich, a barely disguised certainty lay beneath the surface: German dominance is no longer hidden, it is displayed. Germany presented itself assuming military and industrial rearmament as the future central axis of European power with the naturalness of someone who believes that urgency legitimizes leadership and that national capacity can supply, at least provisionally, the lack of a common political architecture. The end of the German military taboo is, without a doubt, one of the great turns of this stage. But it is advisable not to confuse national power with European sovereignty. A strong Germany does not automatically equate to a strong Europe.
Without a common political command, without a real balance between North and South, East and West, the risk is to move towards a Union more hierarchical than autonomous, where German centrality functions as a substitute -comfortable, but problematic- for a true shared capacity. Europe does not need a functional hegemon, however efficient it may seem in times of crisis; it needs common power politically legitimized.
Delegating to Berlin because it is operational is not integration: it is institutionalized strategic laziness, and its consequences -as European history itself takes care to remind us-, are rarely neutral for the whole. Something will have to say the atomic Paris.
More Union, less self-deception
Having arrived here, rhetoric is exhausted. Europe needs fewer solemn declarations and more uncomfortable decisions. More Union implies renouncing national vetoes in that which is truly strategic, assuming without self-deception that autonomy has a price -in money, in industrial policy and in internal conflicts-, investing in a sustained and ambitious way in technology, defense and innovation and completing once and for all the European internal market, suppressing barriers that today only protect national inertias, just as Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi have been insistently pointing out.
As Wolfgang Münchau warns, without common public procurement or real industrial coordination, Europe runs the risk of doing what it knows best: paying more to remain dependent, fragmented, and strategically irrelevant.
More independence does not imply less interdependence, but chosen interdependence, not imposed. Europe needs to diversify relationships, deepen commercial and political ties with BRICS, India, Mercosur and middle powers, not out of multipolar romanticism, but out of pure strategic survival instinct.
Epilogue: getting up hurts more than the kick
Lagarde's "kick" does not inaugurate a new Europe. It confirms that the time for strategic self-indulgence has run out. Europe is not facing an inspiring opportunity, but an uncomfortable obligation. More Union, more autonomy, more intelligent interdependence, and more politics. Everything else -the fetish unanimity, the strategic waiting, or the solitary heroism- is not European prudence: it is fear of getting up in case the ground turns out to be too real.