Has Europe Finally Woken Up?

I. The Numbers

The numbers are impressive. Germany's defence spending reaches more than 108 billion euros in 2026 — the highest military budget in the history of the Federal Republic, a tripling compared to 2023. The defence spending of EU member states has risen by nearly 63 percent between 2020 and 2025. In 2025 it is expected to reach 2.1 percent of EU GDP. The majority of German procurement contracts are to flow to European manufacturers — only around eight percent to the United States.

This is real. This is not paper. This is money being spent — on ammunition, tanks, personnel, infrastructure. And it is a signal: Europe is taking the defence of its own existence seriously — for the first time since the end of the Cold War genuinely, not rhetorically.

But the question is not whether Europe is spending money. The question is whether Europe has woken up. And spending money is not the same as waking up.

II. What Triggered the Awakening

It is necessary to be honest about what has moved Europe to act — because the trigger determines the character of the reaction.

Europe has not acted from its own strategic judgment. It has reacted. To Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022. To Trump's return to the White House and his explicit threat not to defend NATO. To Greenland, the Panama Canal, Canada — to the demonstrative announcement that Pax Americana is no longer a gift but an offer with a price.

This is understandable. Reaction to external pressure is the most common form of political action — not only in Europe. But reaction to external pressure is structurally different from strategic decision out of one's own initiative. It is dependent on the nature of the pressure. It stops when the pressure eases. It produces adaptation, not transformation.

The decisive question is: has Europe understood why it slept for thirty years? Has it analysed the structures that produced the dependency — the energy dependency on Russia, the security dependency on the US, the technology dependency on American platforms, the supply chain dependency on China? Or is it rearming without understanding what led to the state of sleep?

Those who do not understand why they slept will sleep again after the next shock.

III. Rearming Is Not Sovereignty

There is a fallacy running through the European debate: that military strength is the same as strategic autonomy. It is not.

Sovereignty is the ability to define one's own goals and make one's own decisions — independently of external pressure. Military strength is a condition of the possibility of sovereignty. But it is not sovereignty itself. One can have a strong army and still be fully externally steered — if the political class imports its goals, if the economy remains structurally dependent, if the technology infrastructure is controlled from outside.

Europe is buying weapons. It is buying F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin — certified to carry US nuclear weapons, with technologies that export law and strategic interest make impossible to produce outside the United States. It is increasing its NATO contributions and taking on larger capability packages. It is rearming — within a structure that remains dependent on American decisions.

That is not worthless. But it is not sovereignty. It is more expensive dependency.

Genuine strategic autonomy would mean: European command structures capable of operating independently of NATO. European technology sovereignty in critical defence areas. A European nuclear doctrine — the question of whether and how the French and British nuclear umbrella can be extended to all of Europe remains unanswered. And a European foreign policy that does not fragment into national individual positions at every transatlantic disagreement.

Europe is far from all of this.

IV. The Wrong Lessons

There is a specific danger in Europe's current awakening: that it draws the wrong lessons.

The obvious lesson runs: we spent too little on defence. The right lesson runs: for thirty years we made the political and economic decisions that made us dependent — and we did that because it was comfortable and cheap, and because no one was held accountable for it.

The energy dependency on Russia was not an accident. It was the result of decisions made over decades against warnings — from Polish, Baltic, Ukrainian voices saying: look where this leads. Gazprom was not a business partner. It was a geopolitical instrument. Those who did not want to see that did not want to see it.

The technology dependency on American platforms was not a mistake. It was the result of an industrial policy that left digitalisation to the market — and the market was American. Europe had no GAIA-X vision in the 1990s, when the foundations were being laid. It did not have one in the 2000s. It has one today — ten to fifteen years too late, against network effects that are almost insurmountable.

If Europe now rearms without analysing and addressing these structural dependencies, it has not learned the right lesson. It has learned: more money for weapons. That is not enough.

V. What Europe Is Missing

What Europe is missing is not money. Money is available — as the numbers show. What is missing is a coherent political vision of what Europe wants to be: not as a reaction to Trump or Putin, but from its own initiative.

The EU is one of the largest economic powers in the world. It has more inhabitants than the US. It has an industrial base, a scientific capacity, a rule-of-law tradition that is globally unique. It has everything a sovereign power needs — except the political will to act as one.

This political will does not fail at Europe as an idea. It fails at the national elites who experience European decisions as an imposition — because they would have to cede power. It fails at unanimity in the Council, which makes every common foreign policy step dependent on the willingness of the most unwilling. It fails at the structural inability to decide quickly — in a world in which speed is strategic.

That cannot be solved with more money. It can only be solved with institutional reform — with the courage to make the EU what it would need to be: a capable political union, not a free trade zone with a common currency and occasional summit declarations.

VI. The Honest Answer

Has Europe finally woken up?

Partially. Yes. The seriousness with which defence spending is being increased is real. The signal that Europe can no longer delegate its security has got through — at least in the capitals, at least in the defence ministries.

But no. Europe has not yet understood why it slept. It has reacted to pain, not from insight. It is rearming without addressing the dependency structures that made it vulnerable. It is investing in military capabilities without creating the political preconditions that would make these capabilities strategically usable.

Waking up does not mean opening one's eyes when someone breaks into the room. Waking up means locking the door before the intruder comes — and understanding how they got in at all.

Europe has been startled. That is not the same as woken up.

Reaction to pain is not awakening.
Awakening would be understanding
why one slept so long —
and changing the structures
that made the sleep possible.
Europe has not yet done that. — beyond-decay.org