A Lasting Friendship?

The transatlantic friendship is no longer sacred. But the postwar bond was always twisted. What passed for partnership was often dependency. Today, the veil lifts. As sovereignty trumps sentiment, the EU and US are no longer allies by default, but powers in recalibration.

Fidelity Test

The EU outsourced its hard power to America. NATO became a security subscription service, paid mostly by the US and enjoyed by the EU. Even today, only 22 NATO countries meet the 2% of GDP defence spending target. The US now demands more involvement or they'll cut the deal. Trump could formalise the divorce. Ukraine’s war has already become a test of fidelity between Brussels and Washington. Interests have drifted. The US now sees itself as a standalone bloc, steadily retreating from its role as global gendarme.The EU answered with an €800 billion defence fund and a mantra that Macron already made official in 2024: “Europe can no longer rely on the security umbrella of others nor should it.” Strategic autonomy is no longer French speech; it’s European. Now everyone sees the illusion of the transatlantic relation, as Mitterrand once warned, “France doesn’t know it, but we’re at war with America. A permanent war—economic, vital, without deaths.” For decades, the transatlantic dance masked this quiet rivalry. Yet Europe isn’t pursuing outright decoupling from the US; rather, it is de-risking. Autonomy is now the main target of the EU.

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But autonomy comes with a basic logistical need: decision making. Are EU member states truly ready to pool sovereignty in exchange for collective power? There is no agreement there yet. The deeper issue is consent. Strategic autonomy sounds nice in Brussels, but splinters in Warsaw, Budapest, and Rome. Europe’s paralysis is political. The Union’s biggest threat isn’t America or China. It’s itself.

Multipolar Maze

But perhaps unity won’t be chosen, it will be forced. With an openly hostile US president who has called the EU a “foe”, Europe now feels the full pressure of the new world order: fragmentation, rising powers, and the end of old guarantees. The age of autopilot is over. Strategic autonomy is the entry fee for political relevance.

The world isn’t going to wait for Europe to find its voice. China cements influence with its Belt and Road programme, Russia redraws borders by force, and America turns inward, arming allies and undermining alliances in the same breath. Nations are closing ranks, leveraging autonomy for power. Meanwhile, Europe keeps selling diplomacy wrapped in hypermoralism. Yet in a world of hard power, effective diplomacy demands strength, not sermons. Real influence requires leverage.

Worse. Multipolarity may magnify the EU’s fractures. This is the age of super-nations, and the new global maze rewards only those who move together. The US, China, Russia, India, all pivot around a single centre of power. Their strength lies in cohesion, even if forced. Thus Globalisation 2.0 is fractured, dominated by civilisation-states armed with trade walls and cultural codes. Europe, by contrast, drifts, its unity isn’t there yet. Trump’s America offers a blueprint: tariffs as a tool of de-dollarisation, cultural crusades to unify the nation, and fiscal nationalism to reclaim control over debt and currency. The US is becoming a civilisation-state just like China—a self-sustaining bloc with little need for external validation. And the higher the walls, the tighter the grip.

Civilisational Chess

The unspoken truth is that the US and the EU no longer share a political project because they no longer share a worldview. America is adapting to multipolarity, whereas Europe clings to moral universalism. But with the US pulling back from its role as global guarantor, the scaffolding is falling away. What remains is a Europe that lacks leverage. J. D. Vance said it plainly: “What I certainly recognise, that it’s not in Europe’s interest, and it’s not in America’s interest, for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States.” The US and the EU could then cooperate but only if the EU takes itself seriously and endorses a pragmatic diplomacy.

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Europeans seem to understand this movement. In the latest Eurobarometer, 81% of EU citizens said they want the Union to “do more to protect them.” 70% demand more unity and decisiveness, and 62% support building a common defence system, even if that means overriding national vetoes. It seems then that the public is not rejecting the EU as a project, it is rejecting its powerlessness. If this disconnect endures, public trust will falter. National governments, pushed by populist waves, could quietly turn inward, fracturing the Union from within. The strategic autonomy would then not vanish because it was rejected, but because it was never realised.

The age of ethical politics is over, as human rights alone don’t purchase influence anymore. The era of civilisational rivalry has begun. And unless the EU can move beyond virtue, it will not lead in this new world, it will continue to be led.

Statement

The transatlantic alliance is no longer sacred; it’s increasingly strained, and its conditional nature emerges with increasing clarityAs the world fractures into blocs and civilisation-states rise, Europe must choose: evolve or dissolve. In the absence of hard power, Europe’s moral voice will fade, its markets will be divided, its alliances bypassed. Strategic autonomy will remain a slogan. Multipolarity won’t just define the world around the EU, it will fracture the Union from within.

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