Strategic Autonomy: How Trumpism Is Forcing Europe to Reinvent Itself

A new analysis published in the journal Global Public Policy and Governance argues that the European Union’s pursuit of strategic autonomy has moved from abstract political rhetoric to an existential necessity, driven largely by the disruption of multilateral norms under Donald Trump’s second presidency. Markus Kotzur of Universität Hamburg examines the philosophical roots of autonomy, the Union’s uncomfortable position between the United States and China, and the three domains in which the EU must now prove it can stand on its own: geopolitics, economics and norm-setting. His conclusion is sobering but not fatalistic. Trumpism, he suggests, may be the unwelcome catalyst that finally forces a reluctant Europe to grow up.

The starting point of the analysis is the sheer unpredictability of the new American posture. Political positions, the paper observes, now change like daily specials on a menu, and a flood of true and false information makes fact-based political discourse increasingly difficult. The United States under Trump 2.0 still wants to be a hegemonic power, but no longer a hegemon in the sense of the liberal, rules-based world order that it largely built itself. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made this explicit in his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, describing the post-Cold War belief that all nations would join a democratic, Western-led community as a dangerous delusion rather than a fantasy. For a political community like the EU, which is founded on rules- and values-based reliability, this is more than uncomfortable news; it is the counter-concept to everything the supranational project was designed to represent.

Kotzur grounds the debate in etymology and political philosophy. Autonomy, from the ancient Greek autos and nomos, means the ability to live under one’s own laws, to make informed and uncoerced decisions. Strategy derives from the art of leading an army. Combining the two, the EU implicitly makes a dual claim: the capacity to decide independently, and the capacity to do so in light of its own interests and values. Strategic autonomy therefore fuses factuality and normativity. It demands a pragmatic view of what is realistically possible and a self-confident view of what ought ideally to be done. Crucially, the paper identifies two preconditions that apply across all dimensions of the concept. Autonomy does not mean total self-sufficiency; it means not being overly reliant on any single other actor, and it means possessing genuine influence, understood not as coercion but as the ability to build sustainable partnerships.

French President Emmanuel Macron articulated the vision of strategic autonomy, or even strategic sovereignty, in 2017, partly in response to internal crises and partly to Trump’s first-term attacks on NATO. For too long, the analysis notes, other member states including Germany ignored the ambition. Macron was not proposing a new political theory of integration or a radical rebalancing of powers between Brussels and the capitals. He was calling for a concrete power to act, above all the potential to become a serious but more independent global player in security and defence. The second Trump term, with its more elaborate version of Trumpism, has given that call renewed urgency and taught Europeans, rather the hard way, that their honeymoon with history is over.

That honeymoon had deep roots. From the founding of the Coal and Steel Community in 1951, the EU saw itself as a pure force for peace, a normative power that could afford to neglect hard military capability because it believed it could rely completely on American protection. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine exposed this self-conception as short-sighted, and Trump’s tariff politics have done the same for the EU’s role as a global economic player. An impactful peacekeeping actor, the paper argues, must be ready to defend itself and capable of military action if it wants to be taken seriously as a global peacemaker. The geopolitical awakening triggered by the war and by shifting American priorities now demands innovative readjustment in all three dimensions of the Union’s claimed abilities to act.

On the geopolitical dimension, the analysis traces the pressure back to the Helsinki Final Act, the mid-1970s foundation of European security that Russia shattered with its invasion of Ukraine and its attempt to unilaterally reshape the continent’s security architecture. This breach creates military as well as political pressure and serves as a litmus test for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and its integral defence component. The Union’s legal competence is comprehensive, extending to all areas of foreign policy and all matters of security, including conflict prevention, conflict management and post-conflict rehabilitation. Trumpism has intensified the strain, through demands for fairer burden-sharing within NATO, nonchalant attacks on the territorial sovereignty of Greenland, and contradictory remarks on alliance obligations, while simultaneously seeking to isolate EU member states from one another. Paradoxically, the paper suggests, Trump acts as a catalyst for EU governance.

Reform options are on the table. One would be to communitise foreign, security and defence policy, replacing intergovernmental unanimity with qualified majority voting and gradually building a Security and Defence Union. Another, less likely scenario would remove these competences from EU structures altogether. Neither appears probable. More plausible, in keeping with the piecemeal engineering that has shaped integration since its beginnings, are incremental steps of the kind outlined in the Strategic Compass of 2022: joint risk analysis and a gradual shift of competences to the EU level. Twenty-five member states have already established Permanent Structured Cooperation under the Lisbon Treaty, a framework that seeks to balance national sovereignty with credible collective defence. Such coordination, the paper stresses, requires a shared strategic culture and, above all, money. Strategic autonomy does not come for free. Early in March 2025, ahead of the EU crisis summit on Ukraine, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented a plan to rearm Europe, including greater flexibility in debt rules, which the Commission says could mobilise almost 800 billion euros. Without Trump’s pressure, the paper notes, it would never have reached the Commission’s agenda. Discussions of a French nuclear umbrella and Franco-British cooperation on a coalition of the willing for Ukraine point in the same direction.

The economic dimension is equally turbulent. At the 2025 Davos World Economic Forum, von der Leyen declared that the cooperative world order imagined twenty-five years ago had not materialised, and that the world had entered an era of fierce geostrategic competition in which sanctions, export controls and tariffs are used routinely. Trumpism has adopted an aggressive tariff policy that disregards international trade norms, yet the Union still seeks to stand for rules-based multilateral trade, the lowering of barriers, a revival of World Trade Organization principles, and goals such as the European Green Deal and carbon neutrality by 2050. At the same time, the paper highlights an uncomfortable concession: the European Commission has admitted that its own trade deal with the United States most likely does not meet WTO standards, and the promise of purchasing American weapon systems after a meeting at Trump’s private golf club can be read as surrendering a degree of autonomy. The author warns of a neo-feudal style of politics in which strategic accommodation replaces strategic autonomy. Even so, he argues, transatlantic cooperation is not over; its parameters have simply changed fundamentally. Europe must now confront the United States as a strong actor with its own agenda, relying on its economic strength, innovation capacity and proven ability to generate new integration dynamics, as shown by recent trade agreements with Indonesia and New Zealand and the opportunities presented by MERCOSUR.

The third dimension is normative. Article 3(5) of the Treaty on European Union commits the Union to upholding and promoting its values, contributing to peace, sustainable development, free and fair trade, the eradication of poverty, human rights and the strict observance of international law. Trumpism stands in stark contrast: drastic cuts to foreign aid, defiance of international norms such as unlawful attacks on smuggling boats in the Caribbean, and broad threats to rules-based multilateralism. Yet the paper recalls that the EU’s self-image as a legal community, a creation of law in the words of the first Commission President Walter Hallstein, has always been more than functional. Law, conceived as an antidote to force and a carrier of a new spirit of cooperation, can become the cement holding divergent forces together. The EU should therefore continue to act as a mediator for democracy, the rule of law and universal human rights, fill the gaps Trumpism has opened in multilateralism, and pursue genuine dialogue on an equal footing, especially with the countries of the Global South.

The deeper lesson, Kotzur concludes, is that the old transatlantic normality was always partly an illusion. Even before Trump, America’s advocacy of law-based multilateralism was driven to some extent by an America First mentality, and scepticism toward multilateral institutions has grown as China, Russia and Global South states assert their own right to shape international norms. After the first Trump presidency, European leaders erred in dismissing him as a temporary phenomenon. The new normality demands pragmatism, conceptual clarity and self-assurance: the capacity to defend itself as a geopolitical actor, new trade partners and free trade agreements as an economic actor, and honest alliances built on mutual understanding as a norm-setter. Values and interests, realism and idealism, should not be played off against each other in dichotomous thinking. Trump 2.0, the analysis suggests, is keeping Europe on its toes, which may not be such a bad thing if old Europe wants to reinvent itself as a better version of what it has been so far.

Subject of Research: European Union strategic autonomy in response to Trumpism and the erosion of multilateralism

Article Title: Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy in response to Trumpism

Article References: Kotzur, M. (2025). Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy in response to Trumpism. Global Public Policy and Governance, 5(4), 457-466. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-025-00133-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43508-025-00133-9

Keywords: strategic autonomy, European Union, Trumpism, multilateralism, Common Security and Defence Policy, NATO, trade policy, normative power, Global South, Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron, World Trade Organization