![]() politics-which now extends to foreign policy-has heightened doubts among European policymakers about the long-term reliability of the U.S. alliances and in the transatlantic relationship in particular, the polarization of U.S. 3 And although President Joseph Biden intends to reinvest in U.S. Highly critical comments of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) reinforced European concerns about the credibility and strength of the U.S. 1 Against this backdrop, in June 2016 the European Union Global Strategy issued a strong call for Europe to achieve “strategic autonomy.” 2 The momentum behind this call received a boost from the administration of Donald Trump, whose The Barack Obama administration's “pivot to Asia,” combined with recurring, sharply critical comments from key policymakers about insufficient European burden sharing -including from Defense Secretaries Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, as well as Obama himself-greatly magnified European concerns about the long-term robustness of the transatlantic alliance. Russia is far stronger militarily than it was ten years ago, and its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and subsequent aggressive actions in Eastern Ukraine demonstrated that territorial revisionism remains a security concern in Europe. In the past decade, Europe's security landscape has changed dramatically. As a result, Europeans are highly unlikely to develop an autonomous defense capacity anytime soon, even if the United States were to fully withdraw from the continent. Profound, continent-wide divergences across all domains of national defense policies-most notably, threat perceptions and severe military capacity shortfalls that would be very costly and time-consuming to close. It shows that any European effort to achieve strategic autonomy would be fundamentally hampered by two mutually reinforcing constraints: “strategic cacophony,” namely Addressing this question requires an examination of the historical evolution as well as the current and likely future state of European interests and defense capacity. “restraint” scholars that Europe can easily defend itself. grand strategy debate in light of the prominent argument by U.S. This changed security landscape raises an important counterfactual question: Could Europeans develop an autonomous defense capacity if the United States withdrew completely from Europe? The answer to this question has major implications for a range of policy issues and for the ongoing U.S. ![]() security commitment, and Europe's growing aspiration for strategic autonomy. Europe's security landscape has changed dramatically in the past decade amid Russia's resurgence, mounting doubts about the long-term reliability of the U.S.
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