Macron won the argument over European strategic autonomy. Will better European defense come of it?

WASHINGTON—French President Emmanuel Macron has championed the idea of European strategic autonomy since he rose to power nearly a decade ago. To the repeated chagrin of more than a few of his European and US counterparts, Macron pushed for greater European agency and capabilities at every turn. Next year, he will end his time in the Élysée having won the argument. Whether Europe can finally translate Macron’s vision of strategic autonomy into practice, however, is far from certain. Ukraine will be an important test case. On July 14, Macron chose to mark his final Bastille Day by highlighting Europe’s strategic awakening. He invited the thirty-five nations of the “Coalition of the Willing,” countries dedicated to supporting Ukraine against Russia’s full-scale invasion, to march down the Champs-Élysées. This display was a clear message that Europe understands that Ukraine’s future is inseparable from Europe’s own security. Beyond the symbolic pomp and circumstance, Macron can point to real wins for the vision behind strategic autonomy. European defense budgets are way up, pan-European spending programs give preference to European firms, and even once-skeptics of strategic autonomy now repeat the philosophy’s talking points. This is visible in Denmark’s response to American ambitions to take control of Greenland, and in Canada’s deepening ties with the EU, which could include a proposed “associate member” status. That shift is also visible at the EU level. In her September 16 State of the Union address before the European Parliament in Strasbourg, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed the creation of a European Security Council involving the EU, Canada, Norway, and the United Kingdom. “All of this proves one thing. That Europe is there for Europeans. And that in the cold fragility of today’s world, only Europe can provide true sovereignty to Europeans,” she said. She also proposed an emergency security protocol modeled on NATO’s Article 4, allowing member states to quickly plan a shared response to security threats. Yet the rise of European strategic autonomy has not come easily. The shock of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought to Europe the closest threat of continental war since World War II. Then, Donald Trump was elected for another term as US president. The Trump administration’s position toward Europe, including threats to draw down US assets in Europe and doubts over US security guarantees, have forced a real shift in European thinking. The result is that Europeans are now identifying critical capability gaps and looking for ways to replace or supplement strategic enablers long provided by the United States, should threats to remove those assets come to pass. Even Europe’s efforts to shore up its own defense through European preference have irritated Washington. Take, for example, long-range strike and defense systems. Most European Union (EU) countries have limited capabilities and have long relied on Washington. But over the past year, the EU has announced a litany of joint projects to fund and establish common operational requirements, joint technical working groups, governance mechanisms, and a roadmap toward developing indigenous capabilities. The Ukraine test case Perhaps no test before Europe is as immediate and critical as doing more for Ukraine’s defense. Kyiv currently lacks adequate air defense, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for three hundred US-produced Patriot missiles, which are the only defensive weapons capable of countering Russian ballistic missiles. Yet, for 2025, Zelensky reports having received around half as many as it did in 2023. Furthermore, Trump has been inconsistent, promising in early July to grant Kyiv a license to manufacture Patriots, only to backtrack by the end of the month and demand that Europe take ownership of Ukraine’s defense. This month, talk is of granting the license to produce less advanced versions. The formation of the Coalition of the Willing was Europe’s response to the Trump administration’s ambiguous support for Ukraine. That it is led by France and the United Kingdom, with participation by nearly every EU member, is a signal that Europe is on the same page that it needs to be able to act, even if that means doing so independently of Washington. More recently, to meet Ukraine’s air defense needs, European countries have jumped in. France, together with Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, in partnership with Ukraine, announced the formation of an integrated anti-ballistic missile defense coalition. These nine countries announced their intention to pool their defense industrial and technological bases, research capabilities, and operational experience to support Ukraine in developing its “Freya” air defense project, which promises to be a more affordable alternative to the US Patriot system. The timeline is ambitious: The Freya project leverages existing European capability components with the aim of producing a missile defense system with low operating costs by next year. Announcements, roadmaps, and working coalitions are one thing. Delivering real capabilities is where this vision of strategic autonomy will succeed or fail. European countries’ rising national military spending will not produce stronger collective capabilities. More spending could still result in fragmented rearmament, incompatible equipment, competing industrial supply chains, and poorly coordinated national priorities. In this context, the EU could play a new role by coordinating defense procurement and investment, supporting shared capabilities and equipment standardization, and strengthening European preference clauses in the next multiannual financial framework (2028–2034), the EU’s multi-year budget. At the same time, this effort will need to balance calls for greater national strategic autonomy with European solidarity and the NATO framework. The national politics ahead It is no secret that France and the United Kingdom are leading drivers of Europe’s current strategic awakening. Yet both Paris and London face growing political constraints to sustaining those commitments. While France’s 2027 presidential election approaching and the possibility of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally coming to power, London has seen no fewer than seven prime ministers in the past decade. Rising inequality and inflation, alongside deteriorating public services on both sides of the Channel, do little to garner public support for increased defense spending. A far-right victory in France, for example, could lead to a significant cut in the French contribution to the EU budget, just as Brussels plans to allocate €131 billion ($150 billion) to defense in the next budget. French military support for Ukraine could also be called into question, as the National Rally recently called for “turning off the aid tap” to Ukraine. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham will have to counter the rise of the far-right Reform Party ahead of the 2029 elections. Germany faces similar pressures following electoral gains by the Alternative for Germany, a far-right party that campaigns on cutting aid to Ukraine. Both the Franco-German partnership and the Franco-British tandem appear to be under strain due to internal political tensions and mounting economic and budgetary difficulties. Even with the national politics of key European states shifting, strategic autonomy has undeniably moved to the center of European thinking. Macron will leave office having won a hard-fought battle to put strategic autonomy into the mainstream of European thinking. But the real fight is only just starting, in a context of American political distrust and even hostility towards the EU. How financing and national politics weigh on projects such as Freya, and whether von der Leyen’s proposals make it onto paper, will show whether Europe’s strategic awakening can outlast political cycles and the long procurement and production timelines needed to build real capacity.