ESSAY: Trans-Atlanticism isn't dead — it's being renegotiated, and Europe must be its architect

Introduction: The obituaries are premature

An alliance buried too quickly

Since Donald Trump's election, analyses pronouncing the death of trans-Atlanticism have multiplied like so many funeral dispatches. NATO is supposedly broken. Atlantic solidarity is supposedly a relic of the Cold War. Europe is supposedly left to fend for itself against an aggressive Russia. These diagnoses capture something real — the tensions are palpable, the cracks are documented — but they miss the essential point: what is happening is not a dissolution, it is a renegotiation. And to renegotiate is still to want to preserve something.

This is the central argument of Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, president of the German Marshall Fund, in an article published on July 1, 2026 in Foreign Policy. Its title says everything: «Trans-Atlanticism Isn't Dead — It's Being Renegotiated.» In 2025, European NATO members and Canada increased their defense spending by 20% in real terms, reaching a combined total of $574 billion — the largest annual increase in alliance history. For the first time since the commitment made in 2014, all 32 NATO allies are spending at least 2% of their GDP on defense. This is not the behavior of a dying alliance.

The pain of transition

The transition is painful, de Hoop Scheffer concedes. Painful but «long overdue». Europe underinvested in its defense for decades, relying on the American guarantee as a free insurance policy. This comfort produced a structural dependence that successive crises — Crimea 2014, Brexit, Trump's first term, then the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — proved insufficient to dissolve. It took Trump's second term, his vocal skepticism toward NATO, his attempts to seize Greenland, his withdrawals of European troops, for the wake-up call to become irreversible.

It is uncomfortable to say, but Trump did Europe a service by forcing it to face its own vulnerability. He is a necessary evil — not a trusted ally, not a friend, but a therapeutic shock that accelerated a transformation no one else had managed to trigger. Germany broke its constitutional brake on borrowing to invest $114 billion in defense. Poland is on track to spend 5% of its GDP on defense. Norway now outspends the United States on defense per capita. These are silent revolutions.

The new division: Europe handles conventional, the US stays strategic

A model of complementarity, not substitution

The core of de Hoop Scheffer's essay is a proposal for «strategic complementarity» — a formalized division of roles that reflects the political and capability realities of 2026. Europe would take responsibility for conventional defense on the continent: ground forces, territorial defense, logistics, short-range air defense. The United States would remain guarantor of strategic capabilities: long-range strikes, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, high-intensity naval assets, nuclear deterrence.

This model is neither an American capitulation nor pure European independence. It is a division of labor that acknowledges Europe has the forces and geography for land defense, and that the United States has capabilities no one else can replicate at short notice. Washington's global power projection capability also depends on European bases, access to the Mediterranean and European logistical infrastructure. The interdependence is not one-directional.

The Ankara summit as a codifying moment

The NATO summit in Ankara, held in early July 2026, is presented as the ideal moment to formalize this new distribution of responsibilities. Secretary General Mark Rutte himself translated this argument into Trumpian, pragmatic, economic language: European rearmament generates an order book worth $300 billion for the American defense industry, supporting nearly 200,000 American jobs. This is not emotional diplomacy — it is a commercial argument that Trump can understand and even defend to his electorate.

France and Germany have also created a nuclear steering group to explore a possible role for the French nuclear arsenal in deterrence at the European scale. Emmanuel Macron has raised the possibility of deploying elements of French nuclear deterrence on allied territory — a revolution in French strategic doctrine since de Gaulle. NATO is also studying the possibility of expanding its American nuclear weapons sharing agreement, which would represent the largest such expansion since the Cold War.

Ukraine as the foundation of European security

Without Kyiv, there is no credible European defense

An angle often missed in the trans-Atlanticism debate: European security is now inseparable from Ukraine. This is not merely a moral question — it is a strategic equation. Ukraine pins Russian forces on its territory, giving Europe the time to rebuild its military capabilities. Its drones, air defense systems and military artificial intelligence applications are being tested in combat at an intensity no European arsenal can claim. Ukraine is, in this sense, simultaneously the laboratory and the rampart of European security.

From January to April 2026, European countries committed approximately €2 billion per month in new military support to Ukraine, on top of the €90 billion financial facility already provided. European funds dedicated to drones for Ukraine grew from €400 million in 2022 to €1.6 billion over the first four months of 2026. Europeans have largely compensated for the near-total halt in American military aid decided by Trump.

The strategic error Europe cannot afford

A scenario exercise conducted by the Council on Foreign Relations with European officials and experts, set in 2029, concluded without ambiguity: «there is no future defense architecture for Europe without the United States in which Ukraine is not a key element.» If Ukraine fell, Europe would be next. This is not a metaphor — it is the mechanics of Russian expansion as documented in Kremlin strategic documents.

The pressure from Moscow to return to the December 2021 treaty drafts — which demanded, among other things, the effective withdrawal of NATO from 14 countries of Eastern Europe and the Balkans — has never disappeared. It will resurface at every opportunity that Western weakness offers it. Supporting Ukraine is not charity: it is enlightened strategic self-interest.

The institutional architecture: reforming for durability

Four pillars for a renewed trans-Atlanticism

De Hoop Scheffer proposes four concrete measures to consolidate the new trans-Atlanticism. First: reform the European defense procurement architecture, with joint purchases, binding interoperability standards and radically accelerated acquisition timelines. Second: convince Washington to stop viewing European operational autonomy as a threat — a stronger Europe does not replace the United States, it complements them. Third: formally codify the new transatlantic division of responsibilities at the Ankara summit. Fourth: launch a transatlantic defense technology pact to maintain the alliance's technological edge over China and Russia.

These four pillars are not revolutionary — they are a sign of a long-deferred European strategic maturity. Norway spends more per capita than the United States. Germany has rewritten its constitution to unlock military capabilities. Poland is targeting 5% of GDP. If these trends hold and become institutionalized, Europe will have, in five to ten years, a conventional defense architecture that no one — including Russia — can ignore.

The challenge of internal coherence

The main obstacle to this ambition is not external — not Russia, not China, not even Trump's unpredictability. It is the internal coherence of the alliance. Repeated blockages over sanctions against Russia, some members' resistance to collective commitments, national economic interests overriding strategic solidarity — these are the fractures that genuinely weaken the European posture. NATO can define the world's best architecture; if Budapest or Sofia blocks at every critical moment, the architecture stays on paper.

The unanimity rule in foreign and security policy is the structural Achilles heel of the EU. Discussions on introducing qualified majority for certain foreign policy decisions are ongoing but moving slowly. Yet it is a project every bit as urgent as defense spending: without decisional cohesion, the billions invested in national armies lose their collective multiplier effect.

Trump: necessary evil or missed opportunity?

What the Trumpian chaos produced

Donald Trump never wanted to be the architect of a stronger Europe. His pressure on allies — pay up or be abandoned —, his threats over Greenland, his troop withdrawals, his public doubts about Article 5: all of this aimed to extract financial and political concessions, not to reform the alliance in depth. Yet the effect produced exceeded his intentions. Europe responded not by capitulating, but by rearming. Trans-Atlanticism did not collapse under Trumpian pressure — it mutated.

The question that remains open is one of durability. If Trump — or an isolationist successor — were to genuinely dismantle American engagement in Europe, would Europe be strong enough to hold alone, or at least long enough for American allies to come to their senses? The honest answer is: not yet, but the path is laid out. The goal is not total independence — it is sufficient resilience to make American withdrawal too costly to sustain even for an isolationist.

The economic argument as shield

Rutte's strategy — translating European defense spending into American jobs — is clever. $300 billion in orders, 200,000 jobs: this is the language Trump understands and repeats. This translation of collective security into immediate economic benefits for Americans is cynical — but it is effective. It sidesteps the debate on values to land on the terrain of commerce. In the Trumpian world, this may be the only diplomacy that works.

China and Russia: the real threats redefining the alliance

Two threats, one coordinated response

The new trans-Atlanticism is defined not only by what it preserves — deterrence against Russia — but by what it anticipates: systemic competition with China. European and Canadian allies are called upon to cooperate with the United States where interests converge, particularly on Indo-Pacific deterrence, AI governance, and technological competition with Beijing. Europe can no longer afford to see itself as a purely regional actor when its critical supply chains — rare earths, semiconductors, batteries — run through China.

Russia and China are not identical threats. Russia is an immediate military threat on Europe's eastern flank. China is a longer-term systemic threat that operates through economic dependence, control of critical technologies and alignment with authoritarian regimes. Iran and North Korea, by supplying ammunition and soldiers to Russia, have completed an axis of autocrats that the West can no longer treat as separate actors.

The authoritarian axis as a catalyst for cohesion

Paradoxically, it may be the consolidation of this authoritarian axis — Russia-China-Iran-North Korea — that offers the West its most powerful argument for cohesion. Faced with adversaries who are increasingly cooperating openly, internal divisions between allies appear as luxuries no one can afford. Every time a member state blocks a NATO or EU decision for domestic economic reasons, it provides this axis with a free demonstration of democratic weakness.

Defense technology: the third transatlantic front

Military AI and the technological edge to preserve

The renegotiated trans-Atlanticism is not being played out solely on the terrain of budgets and troops — it is also being contested in research laboratories and data centers. Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer calls for launching a transatlantic defense technology pact, and this is not a rhetorical formula. The technological competition with China — in artificial intelligence, autonomous drone systems, offensive and defensive cyber capabilities — is as determinative for Western security as conventional arms spending.

Ukraine here again provides a paradoxical advantage: its war industry has become a real-time military innovation laboratory. Ukrainian drone systems, tested against Russian defenses with an intensity unmatched in any modern war, have produced lessons that no NATO training exercise can replicate. Integrating these operational insights into the transatlantic technological architecture — through intelligence sharing, technology transfers and co-production — is one of the most urgent decisions that the Ankara summit could formalize.

The risk of technological dependence on China

In parallel, the question of technological dependence on China — semiconductors, rare earths, batteries — is the specter haunting every discussion of alliance resilience. A Europe that devotes 5% of GDP to defense but whose weapons systems depend on Chinese components has solved only part of the problem. The transatlantic technology pact must therefore include a joint strategy for diversifying critical supply chains — in coordination with Indo-Pacific allies, notably Japan, South Korea and Australia.

What the essay does not say

The blind spots of strategic optimism

I respect de Hoop Scheffer's analysis, and I share a large part of her conclusions. But an honest essay must also name the uncertainties that optimistic analysis leaves in the shadows. First blind spot: the durability of European defense spending. These increases were largely triggered by fear and external pressure. Once that pressure eases — through a ceasefire in Ukraine, through a Trumpian lull — will governments revert to their old habits of defensive austerity? Post-Cold War European history counsels caution.

Second blind spot: defense procurement reform. Europe is notoriously inefficient in this domain — dozens of different types of tanks, aircraft, communications systems that do not talk to each other. Moving to joint procurement, binding interoperability standards and accelerated timelines requires not only political will but also the dismantling of very well-defended national industrial rents. This is a politically costly fight that few governments are genuinely taking on.

The risk of renegotiation without conclusion

The renegotiation is underway. But a renegotiation without a formal conclusion remains an unstable situation. If the Ankara summit produces no document clearly codifying the new division of roles, the alliance will remain in ambiguity — useful in the short term for maintaining pressure on allies that do not pay enough, but dangerous over the long term because it leaves the alliance without a clear roadmap. Putin plays the long game. Sustained ambiguity is his preferred terrain.

Conclusion: renegotiate to defend better

A trans-Atlanticism of maturity

The trans-Atlanticism emerging from this turbulent period is not that of 1949. It cannot be — the world has changed, threats have evolved, capabilities have been redistributed. But it is not dead either. It is being built on more balanced, more durable foundations, more firmly rooted in genuine mutual interest than in an asymmetric dependence inherited from the Cold War. It is an alliance between adults, to borrow the phrase increasingly heard in Brussels and Washington.

The moment of truth

The Ankara summit, the autumn budget decisions, the negotiations over sanctions against Russia — each of these moments is a test of the new European maturity. Zelensky, in Kyiv, is watching with attention that is anything but academic: for him, the outcome of these renegotiations is measured in weapons delivered, in positions held, in lives saved. For us, Western observers, it is the demonstration that our democracies can adapt without dissolving. That is the real stake of the renegotiated trans-Atlanticism.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

My declared biases

I am a columnist who is resolutely pro-Western and pro-Ukrainian. I believe that NATO is an alliance that has preserved peace in Europe for seventy-five years and that it deserves to be preserved and reformed — not abandoned. I consider Putin an aggressor and Zelensky a courageous leader defending his people against an illegal invasion. These positions inform my reading of the texts I analyze.

What I do not know

I am not a military strategist. My analysis of NATO capabilities and divisions of roles rests on public sources, not on technical field expertise. Alliance negotiations are partly confidential; I have access only to information made public. Developments between July 1 and the publication of this essay may alter some analytical elements. I fully accept this.

Sources

Primary sources

Foreign Policy — Trans-Atlanticism Isn't Dead—It's Being Renegotiated, Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer — July 1, 2026

Foreign Policy — With America in Retreat, Europe Now Depends on Ukraine — June 29, 2026

Euromaidan Press — NATO chief Rutte tells Trump: Europe's arms spending supports 195,000 US jobs — July 1, 2026

Secondary sources

Foreign Policy — NATO, Trump, Erdogan: Ankara Summit and Europe's Defense — June 29, 2026

The Guardian — NATO leaders fear they can no longer rely on US help if Russia attacks — June 27, 2026

19FortyFive — NATO Is Weighing the Biggest Expansion of Its Nuclear Weapons Sharing Since the Cold War — June 26, 2026