Europe’s Strategic Infantilism: Why the Real Crisis Is Dependence on Washington

The European Union and United States flags stand side by side with blurred institutional buildings in the background, symbolizing the structural alliance and strategic dependence shaping transatlantic relations.

 Europe’s strategic dependence on Washington did not begin with Donald Trump. It was built into the architecture of the Atlantic alliance after 1949, reinforced through NATO, the dollar system, intelligence sharing, and repeated crises that confirmed one lesson: when danger rises, America leads.

Trump did not create this dependence. He exposed it.

At Davos this year, relief swept through European policymakers after a crisis over Greenland appeared to cool. The immediate tension eased. The structural question did not. If even the specter of annexation by an ally fails to trigger strategic autonomy, what exactly would?

The deeper issue is not personality. It is posture.

For decades, Europe outsourced its hard power to the United States. The arrangement made sense. Washington carried the nuclear umbrella. It dominated global financial plumbing. It projected force in the Balkans. It set the tempo in Afghanistan. It now frames the Ukraine response. Each episode strengthened integration. Each episode reduced incentives for European strategic adulthood.

Dependence became rational.

Critics describe this as “cognitive.” That term flatters the problem. The dependency is structural. European militaries are interoperable with American systems. Intelligence flows through Five Eyes and NATO channels. Financial markets operate inside a dollar-based ecosystem that Washington can weaponize through sanctions or liquidity controls. Detaching from that infrastructure would not be symbolic. It would be disruptive, expensive, and politically destabilizing.

Autonomy sounds noble. It is not cheap.

A serious European pivot would require sustained defense spending above four percent of GDP. It would require fiscal integration across member states that still argue over debt ceilings. It would demand a credible nuclear doctrine independent of Washington. It would force uncomfortable conversations about energy security, industrial capacity, and rapid mobilization. These are not rhetorical steps. They are budgetary and electoral risks.

Comfort remains easier than sovereignty.

Meanwhile, power in Washington has become more concentrated. Successive administrations have expanded executive authority in trade, sanctions, and emergency powers. Congress often defers. Courts intervene selectively. Economic elites absorb or cushion domestic costs of trade wars. The presidency now moves faster than allied consensus structures can respond. That asymmetry unsettles European capitals.

Still, unease is not strategy.

European leaders split into camps. Some cultivate personal ties with American leadership, hoping influence will substitute for independence. Others cling to transatlantic nostalgia, convinced that continuity will return. A few speak of strategic autonomy but hesitate when budgets and voters react. The divisions reflect different histories, yet they share one constraint: no government wants to test whether Europe can stand alone under stress.

Perhaps that caution is rational. Or perhaps it signals strategic infantilism. I hesitate over the word, yet it fits. Europe expects protection without unpredictability, influence without vulnerability, partnership without asymmetry. History rarely grants such combinations.

In truth, the United States is behaving as a hegemon facing domestic transformation behaves. It experiments. It centralizes. It recalibrates alliances around its own political cycles. Superpowers do not freeze themselves for the comfort of partners. They adjust to internal incentives.

Europe must decide whether it adjusts with them or beyond them.

The debate should not revolve around Trump, or any single leader. The question is structural. Does Europe accept that strategic adulthood carries costs that voters may resist? Or does it continue to interpret American politics as weather, hoping storms pass without forcing architectural change?

Strategic autonomy is possible. It is not inevitable. It requires sacrifice measured in percentages of GDP, in political capital, in industrial redesign. Until those sacrifices become acceptable, dependence will remain.

And dependence, once normalized, rarely feels like crisis. It feels like routine.

The real test will arrive not during a speech in Davos, nor during a diplomatic scare over Arctic territory, but during the next emergency when Washington hesitates. On that day, Europe will discover whether its reliance was partnership or postponement.

The difference will matter.