The Pentagon recently confirmed it will not deploy Tomahawk missile forces to Germany, leaving Berlin with what its own officials call a missile gap. Within days, Spain called for the European Union to build its own army as their Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares openly worried about whether America could be counted on in a crisis. Albares declared, “This is the moment of the sovereignty and independence of Europe. The Americans are inviting us to that.”
Madrid is right, and Washington should welcome European defence autonomy while stepping back from the continent, rhetorically and materially, as American forces and dollars further shift to higher priorities. We are still at war with Iran after all. And with Russia bogged down in Ukraine, and China remaining the looming threat, Washington needs to refocus from Europe, where the conventional threat is lower.
The decision not to send scarce Tomahawk missiles exposes deficiencies that European capitals had decades to address but did not. Washington’s pullback did not create Germany’s shortfall in land-based missiles that could strike deep into Russia. Berlin’s own choices did. Nearly four years after Berlin approved a special €100 billion “Zeitenwende” defence fund, Germany still struggles with shortages of munitions, drones, air defense, and deployment-ready units. In fact, the German army is today less battle-ready than when the war in Ukraine began.
The same pattern holds across much of the continent: underinvestment in industrial production, hollow ground forces, and lopsided reliance on American logistics and intelligence. If deterrence in Europe fails, it will fail because European governments passed the buck and ignored the defense gaps they have long known about. True, it does not help that America launched another war of choice in the Middle East. But the fact is we live in a world where every country is responsible for their own defence first and foremost.
Author
More on Europe
