> I assume we have a shared understanding that more than just Europe was affected by WWII

Absolutely, but they were 2 different wars with entirely different personas and leadership.

For example, China and Japan treat WW2 as having started in 1936-37 and don't really view or care about WW1 or the European theaters of WW2

And European dependencies in Asia were already autonomous at that point (eg. British India had it's own autonomous military and political leadership after the 1920s era reforms independent of London, Dutch Indonesia and it 1930s era reforms, and French Indochina as well as they largely retained the pre-colonization era leadership).

> What does manage mean

Problems on the European and African continent should be dealt with by our European allies. Ideally, the US provides some amount of support and armament, but strategy within Europe and France should fall onto individual European allies.

You saw this in Ukraine pre-2022 with the UK and Turkiye helping Ukraine rebuild it's armed forces, and in much of the Sahel with French armed forces tamping down on Islamism and Russian/Chinese backed factions.

> Europe certainly has strategic autonomy, no

The issue is, what is "Europe".

There needs to be a much stronger unification of posture and strategy amongst our European allies, but you would often see France and Germany clash because France wants to ensure a unified European force has expeditionary capabilities (because of French dependencies in the Pacific and Africa), but Germany constantly pushes back because they want to remain Central Europe first.

On top of that, individual European MICs directly compete with each other and extremely furiously. For example, Dassault, Eurofighter GmBH, and Saab trying to undercut each other in global fighter jet sales.

And finally, individual European states do not see eye to eye. For example, France+Italy tends to have a very strong co-sell relationship with Israel (a direct competitor to Turkiye) and targets the India (a competitor to Pakistan) and UAE (a competitor to Saudi) market.

But Germany+Spain tends to have a very strong co-sell relationship with Turkiye (a direct competitor to Israel), who tends to sell to Pakistan (a direct competitor to India) and Saudi Arabia (a direct competitor to UAE)

While we would all want the EU to be a truly unified union, in it's present form, individual nation states will continue to zealously guard their soverignity.

And even on the economic front - to continue using the India example due to the plan to finalize the EU-India FTA this year [0] - countries like Germany+Spain directly compete with France+Italy, especially in the Automotive and Pharma sectors (two of Europe's largest and most globally competitive sectors).

For example, German+Spanish+Czech automotive manufacturers like Volkswagen AG (includes Spain's Seat and Czechia's Skoda) largely invested in China during the 2000s but French+Italian+Romanian manufacturers like Renault-Nissan, Citroen/Fiat/Stellantis, and Piaggo (scooters yes but THE scooter in India) invested heavily in India. An EU-India FTA doesn't impact French+Italian+Romanian manufacturers but directly undermines and harms German+Spanish+Czech manufacturers.

And Indian biopharma companies (the only manufacturing industry that India is competitive at globally) are largely partnerships with French (Sanofi), British (GSK, AstraZeneca), Swiss (Novartis), Israeli (Teva), and Japanese (Takeda) players that directly compete with German firms like Bayer and Boehringer Ingelheim that invested in China.

While at a macro-level a EU-India FTA is good for European autonomy from the US or China, it will undercut German+Spanish+Czech companies and benefit French+Italian+Romanian companies, and as such Germany has been lobbying against it (and India has retaliated by fining Volkswagen group $1.4B in back taxes and an additional $1.4B in interest [1] - an amount that will destroy VW Group's business in India [2] and maybe even globally depending on Chinese and NAM sales as it's an amount that's 17% of their net income).

And this is one of dozens of examples where individual European nation states do not have strategic alignment, and why when push comes to shove, they all ignore the EU and prioritize their own domestic needs.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-eu-agree-push-conc...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/india-...

[2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/indias...