European Strategic Autonomy in a Transatlantic Security Context: From Dependence to Independence?
Year: 2026

This article analyses how European strategic autonomy has been viewed and understood by different US administrations since the late 1990s, focusing especially on how the Russian war in Ukraine and the first months of the second Trump administration impacted European attempts to build up strategic autonomy. There are both external and internal drivers behind the need to develop European strategic autonomy—Europe’s ability to act autonomously, to set political objectives and to act upon them eithe