The war in Ukraine has forced Europe to face a blunt fact: European security still rests heavily on the United States. For decades, the American umbrella allowed European governments to postpone tough decisions on defense. Now, with war on its borders and a harsher geopolitical environment, Europe must ask whether it can act on its own and how long it will remain strategically subordinate to Washington.
Drawing on Colonel Vincenzo Stirpe’s analysis, the picture is clear: Europe has more military and industrial capacity than public debate suggests, but it lacks the political architecture to use it autonomously.
A “civilized divorce”, not a hard break
Europe cannot simply walk away from the US. A “hard divorce” would be politically symbolic but strategically reckless.
Dependence persists because:
- NATO command: The US controls key elements of NATO’s military machinery. Removing the US now would paralyze the alliance and leave Europe exposed.
- Nuclear umbrella: French and British arsenals exist, but they are much smaller than the US strategic deterrent. Europe still needs American nuclear protection.
- Time factor: Even with maximum political will and industrial mobilization, full strategic autonomy would take about 7–8 years.
The realistic path is therefore a gradual rebalancing: maintaining the alliance while methodically reducing dependence.
The real bottleneck: no European “brain” for military power
Public debate often obsesses over tanks, ammunition, and troop numbers. These matter, but they are not the core problem.
The real obstacle is political-military, not material:
- Europe has no unified chain of command.
- Europe has no political authority with the legitimacy to give a clear, binding order such as “open fire” on behalf of the continent.
NATO has:
- A political body with authority (the North Atlantic Council).
- A structured military command chain.
- Therefore, high credibility.
Europe, by contrast, has:
- No equivalent political-military authority.
- No unified command chain.
- As a result, low credibility as an autonomous defense actor.
Without this missing “brain”, any European rearmament risks creating a military giant unable to act cohesively and in time.
Europe is not weak, but Russia is weaker than it looks
Europe is not militarily impotent. The continent already shows significant strengths:
- Industrial surge: Germany ramped up artillery ammunition from almost zero to about half of Russia’s sustained output in under a year.
- Transatlantic interdependence: Fincantieri builds Constellation-class frigates for the US Navy; Beretta supplies pistols to the US military; F-35s for many European users are assembled in Cameri, Italy.
- Technological edge: European fighters like the F-35 and Eurofighter are roughly two generations ahead of Russian Sukhoi aircraft.
Russia’s threat does not lie in superior technology but in its willingness to sacrifice huge numbers of soldiers in ground combat and endure wars of attrition.
Russia’s structural weaknesses
The invasion of Ukraine has exposed profound Russian limits:
- Since late summer 2023, the war has settled into mutual attrition, with neither side able to conduct decisive maneuver warfare.
- Russia has failed to achieve its initial objectives and cannot restore that lost window of opportunity.
Three missing elements are decisive:
- Effective air power
- Robust logistics for deep operations
- Adequate armored vehicles for rapid maneuver
Russia is essentially fighting on foot, assaulting fortified positions frontally. This is desperation, not strategy.
Russian air power is described as “a disaster”:
- Fighters like Su-30 and Su-35 are outclassed by F-35s and Eurofighters.
- Western missiles can be launched from beyond Russian radar detection ranges.
- Russian pilots fly fewer training hours, maintenance is poor, and logistics are fragile.
- Russia lacks hardened airbases; aircraft parked in the open are easy targets.
- Result: Russia has failed to gain air superiority despite larger numbers on paper.
The navy is even weaker:
- Chronic underfunding means many ships rarely sail and deteriorate in port.
- The Black Sea Fleet has been humiliated, including the sinking of the Moskva by a country with almost no navy.
- Only the fleet of ballistic missile submarines is maintained properly, because it anchors the nuclear triad.
Western sanctions are steadily hollowing out Russia’s economic capacity to wage prolonged war. Two variables will decide which side breaks first:
- The effectiveness of sanctions
- The continuity of Western support for Ukraine
Unable to prevail militarily in a conventional sense, Russia falls back on what it does better: information warfare and hybrid operations. It exploits legal grey zones and the absence of formal declarations of war to maintain plausible deniability, while trying to fracture Western public opinion and political unity. The real battle is in Western living rooms and social media feeds, not just on the battlefield.
Russia resembles a heavy boxer: strong mass (ground forces and tolerance for casualties) but lacking speed and advanced “gloves” (air power, logistics, modern navy). It can grind, but not land a decisive blow against NATO.
Italy’s strategic niche: air and sea, not mass armies
Italy’s geography in the Mediterranean shapes a different kind of military role compared to Eastern European states:
- Italy does not face the prospect of Russian tanks crossing its borders.
- Italy therefore does not need massive conscript armies.
- Italy can specialize in naval and air power and in power projection across the Mediterranean and beyond.
This is not a weakness but a strategic advantage.
Italian air and naval excellence
Italy stands out in two domains:
- Air Force:
- Italy is effectively Europe’s second-best air power.
- Italian pilots fly F-35s and Eurofighters with missiles that can be fired from beyond Russian radar detection.
- The Air Force is operationally active on NATO’s eastern flank in the Baltics, Poland, and Romania.
- Navy:
- The Italian Navy operates at top international standards, with particularly strong performance in submarine operations.
- Italy has no nuclear submarines yet, but its conventional submarines are highly capable.
- In a conflict with Russia, Italy’s role would be to cut Russian naval and commercial lines, hunt the “shadow fleet” of oil tankers, and track submarines—not to send large ground divisions east.
The Italian army is intentionally small. Using it for peacekeeping in Ukraine would strip Italy of effective land defense. Italy has chosen concentration over dispersion of resources.
Italy is less dependent on US weapons than commonly assumed
The usual narrative—Europe buys American weapons, remains dependent—is misleading in Italy’s case.
Key facts:
- The US Navy buys major surface combatants from Fincantieri.
- The US armed forces have long used Beretta pistols.
- F-35s for Europe are assembled in Cameri, in Italy, for the whole European theater.
- Italy and France co-produce the SAMPT air defense system, which Ukrainian forces have reportedly preferred to the US Patriot in some contexts.
Italy, therefore, is not simply an American client; it is a significant defense exporter to the US. The relationship is more balanced than public discourse suggests.
The deepest constraint: political will and culture
If the material and industrial foundations exist, what is missing for European strategic autonomy?
Two elements stand out:
- Lack of European political-military authority
- Europe has no equivalent to NATO’s decision-making and command structures.
- Decades of “outsourcing” defense to the US have delayed this integration.
- Italian cultural self-sabotage
- Italian political culture often treats criticism of national capabilities as sophisticated and praise as naive.
- This habit undermines recognition and strategic use of genuine strengths in air and naval power and in the defense industry.
The path ahead: toward a “NATO minus the United States”
Italy’s situation resembles a specialized company in a larger consortium: it offers top-tier maritime and aerospace expertise but still relies on the consortium for insurance—here, the American nuclear umbrella.
The realistic way forward:
- Maintain the alliance with the US while building European capacity to act independently when interests diverge.
- Work toward a European defense organization that looks like “NATO minus the United States”, including not only EU members but also key partners such as the United Kingdom and Canada.
- Focus on constructing a European political-military command structure able to issue binding orders and coordinate unified action.
The military tools are largely in place. The industrial base has proven itself. The hardest task is political: creating legitimate European decision-making authority and sustaining the political will to use it.
Breaking completely with Washington now would be neither reasonable nor safe. Europe is still strategically and militarily dependent on the US, especially for nuclear deterrence. The journey toward full autonomy will require at least seven to eight years of coherent effort. Europe’s future role in the world will depend on whether it manages to complete this political construction in time.