MUNICH, Germany — European leaders used this year’s Munich Security Conference to accelerate plans for a stronger European pillar inside NATO, including faster rearmament, deeper industrial cooperation and a sharper debate over nuclear deterrence, Feb. 16, 2026.
The push reflects growing unease about Washington’s long-term reliability after President Donald Trump’s renewed drive to acquire Greenland and mixed U.S. signals on Russia, even as European capitals say they still want the alliance at the center of continental security.
NATO pressure rises as Europe builds a bigger “European pillar”
A Reuters report from the conference described a mood shift among heads of government and EU officials: the idea of “strategic autonomy” is no longer a slogan but a timetable, with NATO framed as the vehicle for Europe to do more with less U.S. certainty.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen captured the tone with a blunt warning: “Some lines have been crossed that cannot be uncrossed anymore.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz argued the course is unavoidable “under all circumstances” — whether the United States stays closely engaged or not.
Behind the rhetoric is a practical calculation: European militaries want to fill capability gaps exposed by Russia’s war in Ukraine — from air defense and long-range strike to ammunition stockpiles — while reducing single points of dependence in U.S. enablers, logistics and production.
NATO’s 3.5% benchmark and the race for industrial capacity
The debate is sharpened by NATO’s new spending framework: a 5% overall commitment by 2035 that includes at least 3.5% of GDP for core defense requirements and up to 1.5% for broader security-related spending. NATO outlines the structure in its explainer on defense expenditures and the 5% commitment.
For European leaders, the headline number is less important than what it forces: multi-year procurement pipelines, industrial expansion and cross-border standardization to avoid 27 different solutions for the same battlefield problems.
EU institutions are also pushing to channel spending into joint programs. The European Commission has tied that effort to its defense-industrial agenda and its white paper approach to capability development — summarized in its overview of the future of European defense.
Economists, meanwhile, warn that the spending ramp will collide with debt rules, interest costs and domestic politics. The European Central Bank flagged the scale of the shift and its trade-offs in its analysis of the fiscal aspects of European defense spending.
At Munich, European governments pointed to new groupings and letters of intent for shared weapons development, including long-range strike concepts. But officials also acknowledged long-standing obstacles: national “buy local” instincts, slow contracting and disputes over workshare.
Those problems show up in big-ticket programs where politics and industry collide. A flagship future combat aircraft effort has repeatedly run into friction, while smaller, faster projects are gaining favor because they can deliver sooner and at scale.
NATO and the nuclear question: a European deterrent debate returns
Nothing illustrates the shifting climate more than the renewed conversation about nuclear guarantees. Merz said he had begun talks with French President Emmanuel Macron about European nuclear deterrence, a sensitive subject that reemerged as some European officials openly weigh a future in which U.S. political support for NATO could weaken.
France has the only truly independent nuclear deterrent in Europe; Britain’s Trident system is closely tied to the United States. The result is a complicated question that NATO itself has long managed through nuclear sharing and extended deterrence — but Europe is now exploring what additional layers might look like if Washington’s posture changes.
Arms-control uncertainty is also feeding the debate. The end of the New START era and the erosion of guardrails in U.S.-Russia strategic relations have raised new concerns in Europe, outlined in a Council on Foreign Relations analysis on how Europe faces uncertainty as New START ends.
European officials stress that no one is proposing to replace NATO’s deterrence architecture overnight. Instead, they describe a hedging strategy: bolster conventional forces under NATO planning, tighten European defense-industrial links, and explore nuclear consultations that reduce Europe’s sense of strategic helplessness.
Continuity: from Wales to Greenland, the long arc of NATO burden-sharing
European leaders say the current surge is not happening in a vacuum. NATO’s modern burden-sharing debate was codified after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, when allies pledged to move toward spending 2% of GDP on defense — language that remains in the 2014 Wales Summit Declaration.
The “strategic autonomy” vocabulary also predates today’s crisis politics. Macron’s 2017 call to build a shared European strategic culture — including a European intervention initiative — is laid out in the French government transcript of his Initiative for Europe speech.
Germany’s own turning point came after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In a Feb. 27, 2022, policy statement, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a 100 billion-euro special fund for the Bundeswehr and a commitment to exceed 2% of GDP — the speech that helped cement the term “Zeitenwende,” archived by the German government in full text.
And Trump’s Greenland fixation has its own history. In 2019, he floated buying the territory and lashed out after Denmark rejected the idea, according to a 2019 Reuters dispatch — an episode European diplomats now cite as an early warning of how quickly alliance politics can become transactional.
What happens next for NATO and Europe’s defense autonomy
For all the talk of NATO strategy, European officials acknowledge the test is execution: contracting faster, producing more ammunition and air defenses, and training forces for high-end contingencies — not just declarations.
That pressure is also political. Spending trajectories that look plausible in defense ministries can collapse under election cycles, budget ceilings and public skepticism. Leaders left Munich arguing that the Greenland shock and the Ukraine war have narrowed Europe’s choices — and that NATO, reshaped with a stronger European core, is now the only credible path they can sell at home.
