A more integrated “Europeanised NATO” could take over the US deterrence role, EUISS report says
Europe’s real deterrence capacity will be judged not by how much it spends on defence, but by whether its forces could actually fight together in a real crisis, an EUISS report argues.
The report, titled Defending Europe, Deterring Russia: Resources, Readiness and Resolve, states that Europe’s deterrence capabilities depend not on pursuing a single EU solution, but on shifting from parallel national militaries to “genuinely integrated operational systems”.
The most obvious path is towards a more “Europeanised NATO”, as the alliance is already the established framework through which European collective defence is organised. But the authors stress the importance of deepening multinational military cooperation to generate a posture capable of replacing the US role.
For the EUISS, incremental coordination is no longer sufficient, and European nations must deliberately expand bilateral and multilateral cooperation across the full spectrum of military capabilities, ensuring that interoperability “becomes the default condition rather than the exception”.
