The second Trump administration in Washington has created disruption around the world for allies and adversaries alike, whether that is energy market dislocations created by the US president’s war in Iran, attempts to rewrite Washington’s relationship with Big Tech, or the wholesale gutting of the United States’ foreign aid apparatus. In Europe, disruption has centered primarily around the administration’s more limited support for the war in Ukraine, and its push for a transformed NATO alliance, one in which European states will seek to replace much of the military capabilities provided by the United States today.

Whether the Trump administration is successful in creating this so-called NATO 3.0 is an open question, particularly given its own internal disagreements on the defense industrial base, US forward presence, and other non-defense issues (i.e., Greenland, trade). But with recent spending pledges from European governments, and a growing fear about the future of US foreign policy, the path of travel is clear: Europe is set to become once again a continent with a relatively capable set of military actors.

Yet ironically, this shift toward greater military capabilities is not being driven – as liberal internationalists might have long assumed – by a foreign policy consensus that draws European states together; fear of Russia today is only part of the equation.

Instead, as realists have long argued, this shift is driven by fear of abandonment by the United States, and to a lesser extent fear of what the United States itself might do. European states are going to be more militarily capable but do not necessarily have a clear idea of what they will do with those capabilities.

Indeed, the next few years are likely to see a struggle for the soul of European foreign policy as different states seek to build a joint foreign policy vision. Contestation is already underway on this question but will intensify as the unifying impulses created by the war in Ukraine fade, and as capabilities increase. During this period, the aims sought by European Union member states, and what they can achieve, is likely to be shaped by tension between three different levels of decision-making: the national, the multinational, and the European.

National Competencies

Defense and foreign policy have long been seen as national competencies for European Union member states, even as many domestic and regulatory policy functions have shifted at least partially upwards to the European level. The critical importance of defense and security concerns mitigates against the willingness of states to surrender their sovereignty to a higher authority.

This is particularly true when one considers that not all European Union member states share the same security concerns. Compare this, for example, to the tensions created in the 2010s by the eurozone crisis, where divergent interests between northern and southern states helped to create a cascading series of economic crises. In the defense space, such problems could be even more destabilizing.

Despite this, many European states are simply not capable of adequately competing on the world stage across all domains in foreign policy. The exceptions are Germany (and perhaps France), which we should expect to retain an outsized portion of foreign policy decision-making at the national level. But for the smaller European states, the temptation to obtain increased global influence by pooling foreign policy resources with their neighbors must be weighed against the risks of surrendering autonomy. Two impulses are likely to guide their decision-making on this critical question of national vs. supranational decision-making.

The first is an inclination to avoid “hanging alone.” Smaller states will seek ways to shift the potential risks of any foreign policy decision away from the national level. Recent debates over the seizure of Russian frozen assets to fund the war in Ukraine are illustrative here. Belgium’s opposition to seizing these funds was not based on ethics or the practicality of this step, but rather on concerns that the country might find itself financially liable for the money in the future, while other European states could potentially avoid that liability. Foreign policy decisions that distribute risk broadly are more likely to be delegated upwards than those that carry specific, national risks.

A second, related factor is that states are liable to retain national decision-making where they have specific vulnerabilities – or national competencies. With Belgium, the specific vulnerability at question was their control of the SWIFT international clearing system, giving the state leverage, but opening it to specific financial liabilities if legal action were to go poorly. Similar dynamics are at play with the Netherlands, whose relative position of strength in the market for silicon chip-producing machinery could be imperiled by broad-based European-level decisions about export controls on China, Russia, or other countries. States will be less willing to delegate decision-making authority to the European level if it could undermine specific key areas of national competency.

European (Defense) Union

The traditional foil to national-level decision-making is the delegation upwards to the European Union level, building supranational constructs that increase the heft of small states and allow for increased economies of scale and interconnectedness across the European continent. It is certainly not out of the realm of possibility that the European Union will come to play a greater foreign policy role in the coming years. After all, few would have predicted the extent to which member states have already delegated enforcement authority on sanctions and trade to Brussels in recent years. Yet the barriers to a single European foreign policy are far higher than in other areas of policy, which is also not easily manageable by the kind of lengthy collaborative processes seen in other policy areas. To put it in simpler language: Foreign policy often requires quick, decisive actions. The European Union is too big and too unwieldy to manage a responsive foreign policy for the entire bloc. With 27 members of varying size and capabilities – and perhaps most importantly, varying exposure to different kinds of threats – a consensus-based foreign policy will be too slow and too targeted toward the lowest common denominator to be truly effective.

Foreign policymaking at the European level is also hampered by the lack of institutional structures and authorities for such decision-making. The European Union has authority only in some areas – notably sanctions, trade, and other economic-adjacent issues, plus a growing competence in the management of joint procurement and defense industrial considerations. But this still leaves core questions of foreign and defense policy where the EU has no authority; the use of foreign policy sinecures in Brussels as bargaining chips on other policy issues only adds to Brussels’ perceived illegitimacy on foreign policy. The European Commission’s foreign policy staff also tend to be more hawkish, leading to tension with national capitals.

This creates a related concern: With competencies in some areas and not in others, there is an increasing risk that the Commission may make decisions that it cannot back up. Indeed, even in areas with broad ostensible agreement between European capitals and where the European Union has authority, we’ve seen a substantial amount of divergence between member states and the Commission. This was the case with wrangling over whether to challenge the Trump administration’s tariffs, where the Commission initially took a much stronger stance before being constrained by member states.

Coalitions of the Willing

For most European states, a purely national foreign policy that is truly impactful on the world stage remains largely out of reach, yet the barriers to a truly “European” foreign policy remain. This tension is nothing new. Indeed, it has for decades been smoothed over by an inclination to defer to US decision-making in many cases.

As the United States begins to play a less active role in European defense, and as European capabilities in the foreign policy and defense space grow – whether that is military, cyber, or economic tools – small and medium-sized European states are likely to look for a middle path: ways to build joint foreign policy initiatives with smaller coalitions of states. Such minilateral arrangements are potentially big enough to have heft in international affairs, but still small enough to achieve consensus on specific issues.

This, in short, suggests that the most likely foreign policy path for many European states in the coming years will be a coalitional approach. Such an approach has many benefits. It can be issue-specific, allowing for states that disagree on some issues – but agree on others – to work together as needed. Coalitions can more effectively resolve divergent threat perceptions. And whether they are functional or geographic, these groupings are more likely to succeed in their endeavors. Indeed, there have already been several examples of such minilateral coalitions emerging, such as the Nordic-Baltic 8, or Romania’s Three Seas Initiative. These groupings are likely to be particularly effective when shepherded by one of Europe’s larger powers.

Such coalitions are not perfect. They often lack the institutional structures that could render them more effective on some issues and are prone to duplication and waste. States often create too many minilateral organizations, rather than focusing specifically on those with the potential for concrete achievements. And it is also possible – and problematic – that such an approach will generate opposing coalitions within the European context on hot button issues such as China, the regulation of AI, or migration. If these minilateral arrangements begin to contest within the European Union for control of EU policy, this could weaken the bloc over the long term.

Nonetheless, in bridging the difference between national and supranational approaches, the coalitional approach to European foreign policy is a practical solution to an intractable problem. It is also potentially the most likely of the three to be most effective at responding to potential swings in foreign policy created by election results in the next few years. With possible hard-right governments or coalition partners on the ballot in France, Germany, and elsewhere, a minilateral approach can allow smaller European states to hedge against shifts in these states – and in their attitudes toward Brussels, allowing them to co-opt Euroskeptic governments on specific issues while remaining at odds with them on others.