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- While US wants Europe that ‘stands on its own two feet,’ it is at the same time feeding, growing biggest obstacle to that goal with its own hands
- Utku Asker is a strategic analysis correspondent at Anadolu.
By Utku Asker
ISTANBUL (AA) - After World War II, European states built their welfare models under the US military umbrella, leaving most of the defense bill to Washington to make room for social spending.
Lasting through the Cold War and beyond, the guarantee was about more than just military protection. Even though some European countries kept a degree of military autonomy, US backing sustained a wider order, one where Washington provided security, relations ran through institutions, and European politics relied on consensus within the EU.
However, first the Russia-Ukraine war and then Trump's demand that everyone carry their own weight in defense raised doubts about how reliable this shield really is. Naturally, the European welfare model that grew in its shadow is now being questioned too. Today, as the US starts putting conditions on its support, the ground beneath the comfortable order Europe is used to is quickly shifting.
Speaking in front of the Parthenon in Athens on Oct. 7, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Europe could "wake from its long slumber," arguing that what the continent truly needs is to regain its lost civilizational self-confidence. Rubio's diagnosis essentially reduces the problem to a mere lack of will, a failure to use the resources already at hand. Yet the turmoil in Europe today has a much deeper cause. When the balance of power shifts in the international system, states that rely on an outside security umbrella inevitably see their domestic orders shaken as well. The huge vacuum left by Washington's gradual pullback will not be filled simply by adding a few extra percentage points to defense budgets. What is actually cracking is the very social contract that was carefully woven over decades beneath that shield.
- What was actually built under the shield?
With the US security umbrella in place, European countries were able to take the funds they would have spent on weapons and armies and use them to finance domestic social peace and prosperity instead. Two details are worth keeping in mind here. First, the welfare state model was not just an American gift, it was also the product of Europe's own class struggles and social democratic traditions. Second, the US took on this security burden not out of pure generosity, but to keep the Soviet Union from dominating Eurasia. Still, the "glorious" prosperity Europe achieved after World War II cannot be separated from the advantage created by that bipolar world order. Even though the Cold War ended years ago, the comfort that lingered out of political habit is now coming to an end as the global balance of power is rewritten. And it is hard to see how the welfare state model escapes this shift untouched.
In fact, Britain’s past experience shows that this equation can also work in reverse. Caught in 1968 between the cost of its young welfare state [1] and its global imperial responsibilities, London decided to withdraw from East of Suez and effectively handed over the security of the Gulf to the US. Today, Europe faces the exact opposite situation, rising military needs are putting heavy pressure on social spending. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's review of the American presence in Europe back in June, his move to tie future support to defense spending, and the rhetoric taking shape around "NATO 3.0" [2] all mean that Washington is dropping the burden it took on some 75 years ago right back into Europe. When that superpower "security subsidy" is pulled away, the gap in a domestic order built on outside backing has to be filled by the state's own resources. And that inevitably pushes security right to the top of the budget list.
- Who will pay the bill?
European governments today are caught in a tight squeeze: Building a credible defense deterrent, keeping the welfare state standing, and preserving fiscal and political stability. Nor should states be expected to achieve all three of these goals at once. Europe is at a tough crossroads where, whichever two it chooses, it will have to compromise on the third.
Taking advantage of loosened fiscal rules, Germany turned to record borrowing for defense and infrastructure, effectively passing the bill on to the future. In France, efforts to curb the budget deficit amid ongoing political turmoil sent bond yields surging. This showed just how quickly the insistence on protecting both defense and social welfare at the same time can push an economy into a corner. The Netherlands, meanwhile, funded its rising defense costs directly at the expense of the welfare state. By not adjusting tax brackets for inflation, the government collected an indirect "freedom contribution" that weighed more heavily on lower-income groups, while also cutting the healthcare budget to free up money for defense.
Spain and Italy, for now, are among those choosing to keep defense as a secondary priority. Spain argues that military targets can be met with far less spending. Italy, on the other hand, used a clever accounting move. It simply renamed several existing budget items as "defense spending" to cross NATO’s spending threshold on paper [3].
The reality is clear. Whichever path a country chooses, a different group ends up paying the price. Borrowing places the burden on future generations, while cutting social benefits directly hurts retirees, patients and low-income citizens. Avoiding defense spending, in turn, undermines the trust of Eastern European allies and damages a country's standing within NATO. As centrist parties hesitate between these hard choices, they alienate a different group of voters with every move. Ultimately, this ongoing indecision is quietly eroding public trust in mainstream politics.
- What does the far-right promise?
To understand the rise of the far right, one must see that they offer a supposed "way out" of this impasse. While centrist parties struggle to tell voters the hard truth, that certain sacrifices are unavoidable, the far right reframes the issue entirely by questioning who should benefit from the welfare state in the first place. In their view, if the boundaries of welfare are drawn strictly around citizenship, cultural identity and "nativeness," the massive funds needed for defense can easily be found by cutting the money going to migrants, Brussels, or Ukraine. Known in political science as "welfare chauvinism," this formula holds strong appeal for the public because it shifts the entire bill onto "outsiders" and promises to preserve existing comforts without asking its own voters for any sacrifice.
Yet, these promises do not add up mathematically. The gap created by defense spending is simply too large to be closed by cutting migrant budgets or foreign aid. Indeed, far-right parties that take power soon come face-to-face with this same reality. The loss of power by Victor Orban's Fidesz party in Hungary, along with the Sweden Democrats losing votes and falling back for the first time in the September elections, shows that far-right parties that take on responsibility, whether by governing or joining a coalition, cannot escape political wear and tear either.
There is also a much deeper dimension to the issue. Europe's most realistic way out of this deadlock lies in joint borrowing, eliminating duplication across the defense industry [4] and sharing the burden equally across the continent without blocking potential partners for political reasons. However, the obsession with "national sovereignty" among the far-right and certain governments, combined with their politically motivated efforts to undermine potential defense industry partnerships, is eroding the political foundation needed for a collective solution.
Broadly, this is the picture the US has targeted in its criticism of Europe, especially since the Trump era. While some of Washington's concerns are certainly valid, the path it is taking to resolve these issues carries serious risks of its own.
Once pushed to the fringes of European politics and dismissed, the far right now walks hand in hand with Trump and his Republican allies. It is no coincidence that Marco Rubio played to anti-immigrant sentiment and fears of "losing our civilization" in Athens. This language shows that the "welfare chauvinism" taking root in Europe has open backing from the US.
Yet, there is a major contradiction here. On one hand, the US wants Europe to shoulder a significant share of the security burden, on the other, it gives ideological legitimacy to the very political movements that make it impossible for the continent to carry that burden together. In short, while Washington calls for a Europe that can "stand on its own two feet," it is actively feeding and growing the biggest obstacle to that goal.
- What reality must Europe wake up to?
Security is no longer a temporary crisis; it is directly a matter of national budgets. As long as governments fail to make clear choices between welfare, security and fiscal-political stability, centrist parties will continue to lose support no matter how large the external threat grows. How much further the far right grows ultimately depends on the courage shown by mainstream politics. The fact that Nordic countries, with their strong welfare states, have been among the highest defense spenders in percentage terms in recent years is an important example. It shows that when trust in the state is solid and the public is convinced of why sacrifices are necessary, this transition can be managed quite well.
Europe today stands at a sharp crossroads, facing two clear options. Either it will share this burden across the continent through joint mechanisms, or it will drift into an inward-looking era, one where every country fends for itself, austerity policies drive people into the streets as seen in France, and the line between "us and them" is redrawn along political, ethnic, and cultural borders.
At this point, rather than explaining Europe's crisis as a simple lack of will and self-confidence, as Rubio does, an approach that works backward from effect to cause, it is worth recalling Kenneth Waltz's theoretical framework. When the structure of the international system changes, states must restore the balance between their ends and their means. In a world where the security umbrella is gone, no welfare contract can survive without the means to protect itself [5]. Having forgotten this strict hierarchy, Europe is now waking up to a harsh reality as the international structure shifts.
If European governments accept the deadlock they are in, turn toward partnerships, and sit down at the table constructively with both one another and their allies, the pullback of the US security umbrella could even turn into a long-delayed opportunity for "strategic maturity." However, if that table is never set and the field is left to those who promise isolation and draw political, ethnic, and cultural lines, the Europe we know, carefully built over decades during the Cold War, will be shaken. It will turn into something entirely different, a structure that has lost its welfare state ambition, broken away from the idea of a shared future, and rewritten its social contract through the politics of fear.
[1] For further reading, see Edward Longinotti’s article, “For God’s sake, act like Britain: Lessons from the 1960s for British defence policy”: https://historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/for-gods-sake-act-like-britain-lessons-from-the-1960s-for-british-defence/
[2] Article on NATO 3.0: https://v.aa.com.tr/3990932
[3] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-says-meet-natos-2-gdp-defence-spending-goal-this-year-2025-04-17/
[4] As noted in the NATO 3.0 article, European militaries “operate 178 different types of major weapon systems, compared to roughly 30 used by the U.S.”
[5] Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics. While Waltz defines approaches that tie international outcomes to the internal characteristics of states as "reductionist," he emphasizes that in an anarchic system, security is the "highest end", the prerequisite for all other goals, including prosperity and peace.
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Anadolu's editorial policy.
