The strategic consequences of European rearmament

December 18, 2025

Geopolitics
Defence

Authors

I’m thinking aloud. Here are some tentative, non-exhaustive assessments of one of the big changes of our time..

  1. The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy makes European rearmament an imperative. Not only has the United States declared that it has reversed a eighty-year old policy to defend Europe, but that it wishes to support right-wing parties to acquire power in EU states.
  2. European states, including the European Union and Britain, will have to rearm. This will be a wrenching process because they have enjoyed the US security umbrella for such a long time. Financing rearmament and deploying advanced military equipment in adequate numbers will be a major challenge, but not the biggest one. Weaning away young Europeans from comfortable first world lives into the armed forces will be harder. The hardest will be to forge the armed forces of different member states together into a unified fighting force. NATO is a starting point, but without the United States, it’s a vastly different game.
  3. The future of NATO is itself in question.
  4. European politics will determine the course of rearmament. If right wing parties come to power in Germany, France, Britain and Poland, rearmament will proceed in cooperation with the United States. If they don’t, Europe will seek greater autonomy in all aspects of its rearmament.
  5. Coherent rearmament depends on European cohesion. A divided Europe might not rearm, or take longer, or rearm without a coherent plan. It is unclear if Europe can field a unified fighting force without fiscal unity.
  6. The pace of rearmament will be determined by Russian moves, continuing from the Russia-Ukraine war. An aggressive Russia will give Europe cause for rapid rearmament.
  7. Europe will court China, both to keep Chinese support for Russia under a threshold, and to the extent that it is under the threshold. Beyond that it will be “my enemy’s enemy is an enemy” and neither Europe nor China will want this threshold crossed.
  8. Poland will be a key military player. It is already a military power within Europe. It has the most favourable demographics among the EU countries and is effectively a frontline state with a deep history and distrust of Russia.
  9. Turkey can become a swing state. It is a member of NATO but not of the EU. Turkey has a ‘managed rivalry’ with Russia. Turkey-Russia interests might diverge over Europe but converge over West Asia and Central Asia.
  10. Britain will be a swing state if it can manage not to get torn apart in the divergence between the United States and Europe. The EU will need Britain, and vice versa. There is already a sense that Brexit was a mistake.
  11. With rearmament, the European worldview might securitise around Russia and politicise around the United States. Europe is not powerful enough to dictate a “with us or against us” line against third countries.
  12. In a rearmed Europe, France, Poland, Britain and Germany will be the military powers and could come to dominate the union’s foreign and security policy. This, in turn, will have an effect on their domestic politics.
  13. The rearmament of Europe, in whatever form, is a strategic window of opportunity for India.