The European Union's ambition to become a "global power" capable of standing on its own against Washington has been met with a stark warning from a leading geopolitics scholar, "Hvylya" reports, citing Foreign Affairs.
Hugo Bromley, an Applied History Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge's Centre for Geopolitics, has argued that the EU is fundamentally "a peace project, not a war project" - and that forcing it into a defense role would strain relations between member states to a breaking point.
The push for strategic autonomy has gained momentum as Donald Trump has attacked European leaders, demanded the purchase of Greenland, and warned NATO allies that failing to assist in the opening of the Strait of Hormuz would be "very bad for the future of NATO." French President Emmanuel Macron has responded by calling for Europe to chart its own course on security.
But according to Bromley, this reaction - however understandable - misreads the source of European stability. The continent's peace and prosperity have rested on a clear division of labor: Washington handles security through NATO, Brussels handles economic integration. Disrupting this arrangement would force EU members to confront deep disagreements over threat perception, arms exports, and fiscal burden-sharing that have been deliberately left unresolved for decades.
A new treaty establishing common defense would require consensus among member states that include countries committed to neutrality and some openly sympathetic to Russia. Northern member states would likely demand cuts to southern welfare programs as part of any spending push. The resulting political backlash, Bromley warned, could prove devastating for the European project.
The scholar urged Brussels to step back from defense issues entirely and allow coalitions of like-minded nation-states - from both within and outside the EU - to develop intergovernmental security partnerships instead.
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