Is Europe’s rearmament plan a strategic misstep in a changing world?

A quiet but consequential transformation is underway in Europe. In capitals across the continent, national budgets are being recalibrated, defense ministries revitalized, and military industries given new mandates. Rearmament, once a politically sensitive topic in post-war Europe, has now become a consensus-driven strategy. But beneath this sense of urgency lies a more complex question: is this truly the right path for Europe’s strategic future?

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The impulse to rearm is not without justification. The global environment is shifting — multipolar tensions are on the rise, emerging technologies are reshaping the nature of conflict, and collective security arrangements are being questioned. However, Europe’s current trajectory reflects a strategic choice rooted more in historical reflex than in forward-looking logic. It is a choice that may inadvertently undermine the continent’s long-term stability, strategic autonomy, and global influence.

In parallel, across the Atlantic, the United States appears to be moving in a contrasting direction. Under the renewed leadership of President Donald Trump, Washington has taken a markedly different approach — prioritizing diplomatic re-engagement and active mediation efforts, including recent initiatives aimed at brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine. While debates around NATO burden-sharing persist, the U.S. is signaling a shift toward selective diplomacy and transactional engagement rather than military entrenchment. This evolving posture leaves Europe facing an important strategic choice: whether to continue down a path of large-scale rearmament or to reclaim its role as a diplomatic and normative power.

Ironically, Europe’s response has not been to embrace strategic independence through diplomatic innovation or soft power leadership, but rather to mimic a traditional model of military build-up — a model that the U.S. itself may soon abandon in practice. This divergence highlights a profound misalignment: as the U.S. turns away from its role as guarantor, Europe is rushing to militarize, yet without a unifying doctrine, industrial cohesion, or clear vision of what kind of power it wants to be.

Europe’s historical strength has never been its military dominance. It has been its ability to shape the world through institutions, norms, diplomacy, and cultural influence. The European Union’s power has always rested on the idea that influence can be achieved without coercion, and that integration is more powerful than confrontation. By overcorrecting toward militarization, Europe risks diluting the very assets that gave it global legitimacy.

Moreover, rearmament alone does not equal sovereignty. Much of Europe’s defense spending is flowing to non-European suppliers, particularly to U.S. defense contractors. This deepens dependence rather than reducing it, and reveals the absence of a coherent European industrial defense strategy. Without coordinated procurement, shared R&D, and a clear doctrine of common defense, the result is unlikely to be strategic autonomy — but rather a patchwork of reactive postures tethered to foreign supply chains.

At the same time, Europe faces internal constraints that will make sustained rearmament difficult to uphold. The continent’s demographic curve is flat or declining. Social systems are under stress. Political fragmentation is growing. Public appetite for endless defense expenditure may wane as other priorities — climate transition, education, energy security — demand attention. In this context, long-term influence will not be secured through arms, but through resilience, innovation, and social cohesion.

Perhaps most crucially, the logic of rearmament underestimates the nature of 21st-century threats. Conflict today rarely plays out on conventional battlefields. It manifests in cyberspace, in disinformation ecosystems, in economic coercion, in the slow erosion of democratic norms. Tanks and missiles offer little defense against these threats. Strategic foresight, intelligence cooperation, cyber resilience, and cultural diplomacy are far more effective tools — and they remain underdeveloped in Europe’s security agenda.

Europe still holds immense diplomatic capital. It has the ability to convene, to mediate, and to shape multilateral agendas. These are not peripheral assets — they are central to influence in a world where hard power is expensive, unsustainable, and often counterproductive. In a scenario where the U.S. retreats from global leadership, the vacuum will not necessarily be filled by firepower, but by those who can build bridges, establish norms, and foster trust.

Now more than ever, Europe must ask itself: what kind of power does it want to be? A reactive actor anchored in 20th-century models of deterrence? Or a forward-looking, norm-setting force capable of shaping global governance in a fractured world?

The rearmament path may offer the illusion of control, but true strategic depth comes from agility, imagination, and a willingness to lead with dialogue instead of division. This is the power Europe still holds — if it chooses to use it.