World Geostrategic Insights’ interview with Agostinho Cunha on whether Europe’s strategic autonomy and a true European army is still a viable option, the prospects for cohesion within NATO in the context of the new U.S. Trump presidency, and whether Europe should align militarily with the United States not only in Europe but also in other areas of the world.
Agostinho Cunha, Ph.D., is Secretary General at EuroDefense-Portugal. Former army colonel, he specialized in defense policy and security, strategic planning, and management, with vast experience in the EU and NATO. His background includes having served in military and civilian multinational organizations, namely in NATO KFOR and B&H Headquarters, as a faculty adviser at the NATO Defense College in Rome, and at the European Security and Defense College in Brussels, as a member of its Executive Academic Board. However, the views expressed in this interview are solely his own and do not represent any institution or entity.
Q1 – According to Kaja Kallas, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, NATO and the EU are two organizations with different but complementary purposes: NATO’s function is to develop military plans, while the EU should mainly focus on providing munitions and capabilities. In this framework, the EU, according to Kallas, does not need to develop autonomous military powers or create a single European defense force with a command structure parallel to NATO. European Defense Commissioner Kubilius also stated that there will be no effective integration of European armies, pointing out that member states will retain control over their own armed forces. What is your opinion? In the current framework, Europe’s strategic autonomy and a true European army is still a viable option, at least in the long term, or is it simply a politically and financially unrealistic idea? How could you define the current state and prospects for Europe’s defense?
A1 – Indeed, NATO and the EU are two organizations with different but complementary purposes. Having worked more than once in NATO and also in the EU, I would begin by arguing that the above-mentioned division of tasks between NATO and the EU, as it was put forward, is a rather reductive and misplaced idea, both for NATO and the EU, as they do much more than just planning operations or being supposed to provide munitions and capabilities. I would even add that more than reductive, it is not at the core of what each organization is or is meant to do and is supposed to ensure to their member states. Therefore, this cannot also be their role in the future if we want to keep both organizations meaningful.
The traditional cooperative world based on a democratic, liberal, multilateral international system committed to the rule of law, as we know it, seems to be rapidly fading away and is being substituted by a “new harsh strategic competition world,” as it was defined by Ursula Von Der Leyen at the recent Davos’ 2025 annual meeting. So also seems the current framework and relations between the US and Europe, which are likely to soon change or have already just changed with the new Trump administration entering office.
These future foreseeable changes will demand new approaches and strategies, and the EU’s strategic autonomy will have to rapidly develop and adapt accordingly. It appears that the EU has already begun this task, namely regarding its economic affairs, by issuing a new Competition Compass, a guidance mechanism to be published next week that will lead the way of EU economic efforts for the next 5 years. This is also urgently needed for the Common Security and Defense Policy and to reset the EU’s strategic compass.
Despite the EU having been working on its strategic autonomy for quite some time already, it now needs to take the recent international changes into the equation, which may mean building a stronger autonomous military capability than before, which will allow the EU to use its own military capability when NATO or the US chooses not to do so. This means to also be ready for high-intensity conventional war scenarios that may imply new structures and forces, which the EU does not have available today. A new high-intensity war capability would be linked to deterrence, which will raise the question of European nuclear deterrence, implying another level of commitment for member states but also to the EU. This EU military capability-building work does not necessarily mean building and having a true European army. NATO does not have one either and works perfectly well without it.
I would agree that a true European army is still simply a politically and financially unrealistic idea now, as armed forces are still national capabilities, and it is from those national forces, which can be assigned to NATO or EU operations, depending on the situation, that both organizations may build their needed military forces for operations. Mechanisms such as the NATO Berlin Plus arrangements for EU operations can be used, and the EU could adopt a similar mechanism to support specific NATO operations, a EU Berlin Plus reversed, providing capabilities that NATO does not have and is not also well suited to conduct but are natural capabilities for the EU.
This does not preclude, of course, the EU from also having a bigger stick, especially now that no one is sure about the future commitment of the US in Europe’s security and defense. Therefore, some already defend instead a mixed solution for the EU by building one permanent Rapid Deployment Capability without the downsides we have seen in the EU battlegroups and in the NATO rapid deployment force, mainly related to conflicting national priorities, lack of interoperability, and dispersed logistics. They argue this new Rapid Deployment Capability of around 5000 strong military forces ready to use should have EU community-owned interoperable equipment and its military-specific personnel work under EU insignia and EU legal status, supported by just one line of logistics. All remaining forces and capabilities needed would be built from national forces and made available through previous commitments, as is the case in NATO. This is, of course, an ongoing negotiation process.
Q2 – Europe’s security dependence on the U.S. is not only political-strategic, but also logistical, industrial and technological, not just about the nuclear umbrella. Dependence that even the European defense industrial program is unlikely to reduce considerably, at least in the short, medium term. However, with Trump in power in the United States the possibility looms, even if not yet very likely, of an American disengagement not only from Ukraine but also from Europe. The issue of cohesion within NATO thus arises. In your opinion, will the content and structure of the alliance have to be revised? Is a strengthening of the European “pillar” of NATO foreseeable, especially with a decrease in the cost to the U.S. for European security, and a consequent substantial increase in the defence budget spending by European countries?
A2 – Europe’s military capabilities dependence on the US is acknowledged, but, until now, despite this dependence, a strong transatlantic link cooperation ensured peace and security for both sides of the North Atlantic and has probably been seen as part of NATO’s biggest strengths. Allies cooperated and traded the use of their possible military capabilities and forces to get legitimacy for military interventions and for the use of force in the Euro-Atlantic area and beyond. This informal trade-off principle was needed to ensure peace and stability for both the American and European allies and to prevent new devastating wars in Europe, as it happened in the Second World War.
However, this situation seems to be rapidly changing with Putin cleverly achieving to break up this purpose, while the US forgot the basic assumption of that original trade, allowing Putin to swiftly invade Ukraine and bring back war to Europe and instability to the rest of the world.
With Trump’s new administration, we may expect even deeper changes in the US security and defense policies, which may also imply new guidelines for both NATO and EU organizations. This does not exactly imply that NATO will have to change its core aim or structure. The NATO Treaty proved to have been fit and worked well for more than 75 years in all situations and in all its international challenges, asking for only minor military structure adaptations. NATO survived the Cold War and reinvented itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union, also surviving the more recent challenges of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. This was also valid for the EU. Indeed, any attempt to change NATO’s treaty may probably kill it instead, and not strengthening the European “pillar” of NATO may well kill the EU, if not also NATO.
Trump’s new administration actions and its future security, defense, and foreign policies will contribute to defining the urgency and the pace of the needed changes for Europe. It would also define the size and depth of the changes needed in European countries’ national military capabilities, as well as in the EU military strategy, if necessary, although the EU would better do it independently of American policies, proactively before. The EU High Representative and the new Commissioner for Defense and Space would need to work together and be ready for leading those EU changes, fast and accurately, while European countries have to make resources available to let it happen. However, the commissioner may not be of much help for this crucial task, being limited to defense industry issues.
Trump’s policies will probably imply a new world international disarray, where a divided EU will rapidly become irrelevant in international affairs, especially if it still remains subservient and limited to a supporting actor role. To prevent it, the EU member states must do much more, faster and better, still affirming their commitment in NATO, but also steadily building the EU’s already announced strategic autonomy. To be effective, the current European leadership crisis would need to be addressed and quickly sorted out, independent of the weak reasons being the lack of strong, visionary EU leaders or suffering from too much elite leadership. Circumstances do not allow a divided Europe and a weak European Union anymore.
No matter which will be the solution adopted by the EU, the European security and defense pillar must be quickly reinforced financially, industrially, and militarily. European countries seem to have enough resources for it; the question is if they have the political courage and the will to make it happen.
Q3 – The new technological and economic cold war between China and the United States, their rivalry for world primacy, and the growing assertion on the world stage of the countries of the “Global South,” increasingly pitted against the West, create geopolitical uncertainties and growing challenges for European countries. The United States, in order to maintain its world primacy, must preside over and intervene in most areas of the world, albeit with a focus on the Indo Pacific. It has been argued that NATO should be transformed from a North Atlantic regional alliance into a global alliance of the West, based on the concept that European countries cannot ask the United States to maintain its “extended deterrence” to protect Europe without contributing to U.S. security in other areas of the world. What is your view on this?
A3 – I believe Europe does not have any global ambitions, nor should it have to support others’ global ones. NATO was created, and it is intended to secure the Euro-Atlantic area, not the Far East or the Indo-Pacific region, which is clearly out of our interest area. For that purpose, the US must find proper local allies, if it so wishes.
We all must be very careful with the extent of our support for the new US global aspirations, which are not solely directed to the Indo-Pacific region; circumstances are leading to substantial changes in the international system, especially after the recent US elections.
Donald Trump won, and not surprisingly, the US suddenly dramatically changed its international foreign policy posture, bringing up too many worrying similarities between Trump’s new imperialist policies and those of Adolf Hitler, which reason is more than enough to make us cautious about new US global intentions. Like Hitler, Trump intends to implement a new American Lebensraum (living space) under the motto “Make America Great Again”, which follows the same basic principles enunciated by Friedrich Ratzel, the theorist who initially coined the term Lebensraum, advocating that every society, at a certain level of development, should conquer territories where people are less developed and the state should be as large as its organizational capacity. This concept of Lebensraum, or living space, served as a critical component in the Nazi worldview, driving both its military conquests and racial policy, which seems to be the same case as with recent Donald Trump policies, version 2.0.
In Hitler’s Nazi state, Lebensraum became not just a romantic theory for a return to the East but a vital strategic component of its imperial and racist visions. Trump, in order to guarantee his own America Great Again, also intends to expand eastwards, including now Greenland in his ambitions, but also to the north, making Canada his target, and to the south, the Panama Canal.
The concrete measures taken by Nazis to secure their Lebensraum demonstrate the very real power of ideas. Hitler wrote in his Zweites Buch book that Germany should concentrate all of its strength on marking out a way of life for German people through the allocation of adequate Lebensraum for the next one hundred years. Trump also defends the same type of vital space and power ideas for the American people. Indeed, Trump has repeatedly affirmed that he will concentrate all of his strength on making America great again, no matter the processes and means needed to achieve that legacy for the US future. For that purpose, Trump suggested occupying new territories and surrounded himself with a number of radical supporters, many of them oligarchs, with one even openly making Nazi salutes in front of the American public and on television, who happened to be Trump’s closest adviser, Mr. Elon Musk.
Naturally, like Hitler, the “inferior” races occupying the so-called US living space region must be removed. Despite being the grandson of German immigrants, Trump appears to deeply hate immigrants and intends to purge American society of them, many of whom have already lived in the US for years. Trump has also promised to implement mass deportations and will use new concentration camps for this purpose, as he has done in the past, demonstrating behavior similar to Hitler. But the segregation of “inferior” races will not stop with immigrants. Persecution and segregation based on sexual orientation and race are also on the horizon, including for transgender and other individuals. This does not appear to be the promised American Golden Age; instead, Trump might be plunging the rest of the world into an abyss.
Democracy appears to be dangerously at risk in the US nowadays, as well. There is no longer a separation of powers: legislative, executive, and judiciary. Each one of them is dominated by Trump. Convicts are pardoned in masse, and Trump appears to be above any existing law system. Morality and democratic principles are disappearing, being replaced by the need for power with an excessive materialistic focus on economic growth and wealth. The use of fake news and lies has become an art and a new normal in Trump’s politics, even if they are quite often completely different from reality.
While American liberal democracy is languishing, the US basic principle of a democratic “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” expressed by President Abraham Lincoln (1863), also seems to have been forgotten in many cases. However, there are also alarming signs in Europe and elsewhere. While Western democracies lack the will to fight, populism and corruption have grown, while personal agendas and private interests have taken precedence over the higher national interests of nation-states. And these are not the only diseases showing that democracies have been pushed to their limit. As Zanny Beddoes, editor of The Economist, stated on August 29, 2019, “Democracies are generally thought to die at the barrel of a gun, in coups and revolutions. These days, however, they are more likely to be strangled slowly in the name of the people. Old-established polities, such as Britain and America, are not about to become one-party states, but their democracy is already showing signs of decay. Once the rot sets in, it is formidably hard to stop.”
Indeed, we are living in dangerous times, and Trump’s new American policies are making everyone nervous. NATO Allies will likely face difficult choices in the near future, but European countries and the European Union should also be prepared for this. The sooner the better, if they want to survive and be relevant.
Agostinho Cunha, Ph.D. – Secretary General at EuroDefense-Portugal.
The views expressed by Agostinho Cunha in this interview are solely his personal opinions and in no way represent the official, or informal, policy or position of the EU institutions, EuroDefence-Portugal or any other body, including World Geostrategic Insights.
Image Credit: European Defence Agency