European Strategic Compass, EDIRPA, EDIP, the White Paper on European Defense presented in March 2025, European Defense Fund and SAFE mechanism demonstrate how Europe has evolved in its thinking and planning for joint defense in recent years.

Strategic thinking  is guided by three questions:

1. Why? or Who is the enemy?
2. What? or What do we set out to do?
3. How? or What are the means?

Europe’s problem is that it does not use this framework to structure its strategic thinking on defense. The result? European strategy is focusing on the means, on the “how”, while it is losing sight of the “what” and the “why”. The absence of this logic in strategic planning undermines collective European defense industrial capacity. The latter depends on answers to three questions: 

• Who defines industrial capacity?
• Who should produce?
• Who should sell? 

The essential element of the response is that the nation-state remains the key defense industry player and arms producer today. The role of Europe is supporting the R&D and creating a regulatory framework for industrial development. It is not to choose one national champion over another as a producer of a single European war plane, tank or war ship.  

What Europe is experiencing today is the opposite to what it was preparing for. The end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union spurred visions by modern prophets of the 1990s, like Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama, of the end of history with a perpetual triumph of Western values over autocracy and dictatorship. It therefore came as a strategic surprise to Europeans that the 21st century world has become post-European. And the ghosts of the past political regimes are entering the present, raising their heads to challenge the political order of Europe itself. 

How can we adapt? How to transition, in the world where we have got used to taking peace for granted, to a world where we can put our industry, our military and our society on a war footing?

The situation is made worse for Europe by a greater competitiveness of the world: the Russia of today is not what it was in 1991, nor during the Cold War. Today, it is a fully integrated part of the world economy, leading to a paradox, where we continue to trade in critical materials and goods with a country we call a military threat. This paradox enhances Russia’s capacity to reach its main goal toward Europe: to weaken Europe.

Furthermore, today the question for European defense industrial production capacity has to be treated through the prism of the US foreign policy U-turn inside, begging a question about America’s role as a critical supplier of strategic weapons and weapons components to Europe. In other words, we can no longer rely on the U.S. for security. But what is our own production capacity? 

We live in a world where Europe’s defiant faith in commercial ties as a peace guarantee is being shattered over the political realism of Europe’s adversaries. A fundamental question for every EU member-state then becomes: is France ready to die for Spain?

Then there is the competitiveness problem: can Europe stand up to China, on which it depends on materials, manufacturing processes and supplies of critical weapons components, such as magnets?

In this new world autonomy is key, but interdependence is inevitable, because we do business with the same people who we fight. As the former French General Chief of Staff General Bourkhardt said, “We are at war and at peace all at once.” 

The Russian war on Ukraine has exposed Europe’s dependencies on critical defense supplies: either of ready-made weapons from the U.S., or industrial inputs, such as steel imports from China and Russia. As European states ramp up defense production, the question is no longer whether to restructure supply chains, but how. Three strategic responses emerged from the debate: stockpiling, diversification, and reinternalization.

1. Stockpiling of critical materials and components can serve as a short-term buffer against supply shocks and disruptions in periods of geopolitical tension. But it works only for some goods, does not address external supplier dependency, and is costly. While stockpiling modern weapons, such as drones, risks storing outdated junk. What is needed instead is structural supply chain resilience.

2. Diversification of supplies offers a more sustainable approach, and is a way for Europe to reduce its exposure to geopolitical risks. But diversification comes at a high cost and adds coordination complexity. 
3. The most robust—yet most demanding—approach is reinternalization: relocating production back to Europe. This strategy ensures reliability, enhances industrial sovereignty, and supports local employment. It also aligns with the broader goal of strategic autonomy, particularly in critical sectors like defense, semiconductors, and energy storage. However, reinternalization entails a fundamental shift in Europe’s economic model. It involves accepting higher production costs in exchange for long-term resilience, control and security. As illustrated by the decision to build battery factories in France and Lithuania, this approach is not only a policy choice but a strategic imperative. While it cannot be applied across all sectors, reinternalization represents a conscious investment in security, reliability, and the ability to absorb future shocks—economically, politically, and militarily.

While European industrial capacity has been sapped by market competition, our military capacity was undermined by the aversion to all things military over the last six decades. War studies have been replaced with peace studies in our academia and think tanks, and small, deployable armies have become the political choice in Germany, France and Great Britain. As a result, when Russia introduced 11 military brigades and 400 tanks in the Donbass between 2014 and 2021, it was more than the combined military capacity of these three countries. In 2000’s, the French army, one of the most active, has learnt fighting guerilla wars in Africa and the Middle East. 

This left us unprepared for 2022.

Today, we are facing a conventional war, non-conventional guerilla warfare, nuclear war, a hybrid war, including cyber, electronic warfare, space, drones and counter-drone systems. How to approach it from the angle of European defense? What is the place of Europe in modern warfare?