The United States Determines If, When and How the European Union Develops 'Strategic Autonomy'

The election of Donald Trump meant that a person highly skeptical of NATO and of the European Union became President in the United States and the leading member of the NATO alliance. The Russian assault on Ukraine along with Donald Trump in the White House represent serious threats the European security. Despite the European Union for years had the official goal to develop ‘strategic autonomy’ and thus develop an independent capacity to defend Europe, not much progress has taken place. The conventional arguments have been linked to the lack of political will and capacity of European governments. It has been stressed that the European NATO members preferred to rely the United States and on NATO for military protection instead of relying on the EU for defending the continent. The paper launches the argument that it is not because of lacking European will and lacking political interest that Europe has not developed a capacity to defend itself. On the contrary, the paper argues the absence of European capability to defend itself is because the United States actively worked against the development of an such a European capability. After the end of the cold war, the position in Washington was that greater European defense autonomy within NATO or within the EU should not result in decoupling of European and North American security. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright argued that the 3 so-called ‘D’s, decoupling, discrimination and decoupling should be avoided. Every American administration since the fall of the Berlin Wall maintained their opposition to the development of an independent European defense capability. The empirical analysis of the paper has a dual aim. First, it is to scrutinize the motives and policies of the different administrations in Washington aimed at preventing the development of independent military and defense capabilities in Europe despite verbal support of such plans. Second, it is the aim to scrutinize the policy changes following the inauguration of Donald Trump towards initiatives aimed at enhancing strategic autonomy for Europe. The paper applies a neo-classical realist theoretical framework for analyzing the American foreign policy with a special focus on the potential discrepancy between the new foreign policy leaders in Washington and the American strategic culture that emphasizes the value of multilateralism.