How Europe must act to survive without its current security partnership with the US

The US-led global order as we have known it is gone. 

As the tectonic plates of geopolitics continue to shift beneath us, the challenge for Europe is to keep its institutions alive and prevent the world from returning to an era of might makes right – where power accrues to strongman leaders in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing.

Rising to this challenge requires a fundamental reconsideration of long-held assumptions and beliefs.

Read more to learn how Europe must transform to protect democracy and its way of life in the op-ed by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO Secretary General (2009–2014) – Security without reliance on the US: how Europe must change to prevent a new war.

The author warns that Europeans cannot preserve democracy and our way of life with soft power alone.

"We must dispense with entrenched taboos and relearn the language of hard power. That is the only way to deter and defend against those who directly threaten our values and interests," Anders Fogh Rasmussen believes.

He points out that Europe must at least double its investment in defense.

"Indeed, I would go much further and say Europe should aim for 4% by 2028," he writes.

The author emphasises that if Europe’s extra spending is confined to military procurement, it will miss an opportunity to spark its own high-tech revolution. Technological innovation is what underpins US and Chinese hard power.

In addition to mobilizing fiscal resources for defense and technology, Europe also must forge a new social contract.

"Though we should not abandon what makes us European, we do need to revisit some tenets of the old welfare state. Freedom is not free. European leaders must be honest and open about the challenge we face, and about what it requires of us. The solutions will not all be popular, but we must remember that we have entered an era of crisis", former NATO Secretary General writes.

He believes that Europeans must be equipped with the skills and resources to fend for themselves. We can learn a lot from the Ukrainians and the Taiwanese about building resilience and paying the price for freedom.

Moreover, according to him, Europe will need new ways of convening like-minded democracies.

"A coalition of such democracies – a D7 – can build new tools to promote open trade and economic cooperation, defense partnerships, intelligence-sharing, and access to critical minerals," Rasmussen suggests.

He underlines that the point is not to replace America, but to ensure that Europe will remain resilient with or without US support.

the European Union should work closely with traditional partners – like the United Kingdom – and seek even closer relations with Canada, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia. It also should explore new ways to collaborate with India, a democracy whose GDP has doubled in the past decade, putting it on track to become the world’s third-biggest economy before the end of this decade.

So, Rasmussen stresses that Europe must prepare for a world in which America is not only unreliable but even adversarial and expansionist.

"New circumstances demand new strategies. Defending democracy is not a spectator sport. We will have to make some sacrifices, because the alternative is unimaginably awful. Europe has an opportunity to assume the mantle of leader of the free world. Our descendants will not forgive us if we fail to seize it," he concludes.