Can French army become the backbone of Europe's security and can it replace US?

It has become a habit. When things do not go his way on foreign policy, Donald Trump turns on NATO, lashes out at allied leaders and often singles out Emmanuel Macron. Those repeated clashes are forcing Europe to imagine its security with less America than before.

France is the European country best placed to lead adaptation to a smaller American role. It has the strategic culture, the nuclear deterrent, the expeditionary reflex and the political instinct to think at continental scale. 

But it still lacks the mass, the logistical ecosystem and the industrial depth to replace the United States as Europe’s military backbone. 

Read more about whether France can become Europe’s defence pillar in the article by French journalist Charlotte Guillou-Clerc: Less US, more France: Can Paris become the center of a "new NATO" in Europe?

France is closer than any other EU country to being Europe’s strategic pivot.

It is the EU’s only nuclear power, one of the few states on the continent with a defence industrial base that still aspires to a real degree of sovereignty, and one of the rare European militaries that can think at once in terms of continental deterrence, expeditionary action and high intensity war. 

In Paris, dependence on Washington is not a new concern.

According to a Bruegel and Kiel Institute estimate, it would need around 300,000 additional troops to deter Russian aggression without effective US backing, along with roughly €250 billion more in annual defence spending in the short term. In practical terms, that means around 50 new brigades.

Although that figure is deceptive. 

American power comes as a system: coherent command, strategic lift, intelligence, air and missile defence, refuelling, satellite linked and other strategic enablers, and the ability to move, coordinate and sustain forces at speed.

Europe’s weakness lies there. 

The gap is not simply one of manpower or money. It is the gap between having soldiers on paper and being able to turn them into credible, integrated combat power in time. Rearmament is part of the answer, but not the whole of it.

The first real test of Europe’s adaptation to "less America reality" will not come at a summit table or in another speech about "strategic autonomy".

It is playing out in Ukraine.

If Europe wants to know whether it can carry more of its own security burden, the first question is simple: can it sustain Ukraine if Washington scales back?

In purely fiscal terms, replacing the United States is possible, but replacing US military aid is much harder.

But Macron did not offer Europe a French version of the American umbrella. 

His move is more serious than his critics admit and less revolutionary than some of his admirers suggest. 

Nuclear signalling can reinforce deterrence. It cannot compensate for conventional weakness. 

If Europe cannot deny Moscow a rapid gain on the ground, no refinement of French doctrine will solve the problem. The hard requirements remain the same: brigades, ammunition, mobility, command and the ability to fight early enough to make nuclear blackmail less useful.

But even if Macron has read the strategic direction correctly, there remains a second uncertainty, and it is French.  

Europe is being asked not only whether France has the right answer to a weaker American commitment, but whether France itself will remain on that line after 2027. 

Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally since 2022, is now widely seen as a plausible winner of the next presidential election which gives his defence positions immediate European significance.