When I recently asked a high-ranking European diplomat what, to him, was the most important takeaway from the meeting of NATO leaders in Ankara, Turkey, on July 7 and 8, he said without hesitation: “This was the first time all European leaders acted as one group, without some of them breaking ranks and bending over backward trying to please Donald Trump.”

This may sound as if European countries, long addicted to U.S. military protection, are finally getting their act together. However, this newfound unity does not mean that they are ready to work on a strong European defense with joint determination.

When I recently asked a high-ranking European diplomat what, to him, was the most important takeaway from the meeting of NATO leaders in Ankara, Turkey, on July 7 and 8, he said without hesitation: “This was the first time all European leaders acted as one group, without some of them breaking ranks and bending over backward trying to please Donald Trump.”

This may sound as if European countries, long addicted to U.S. military protection, are finally getting their act together. However, this newfound unity does not mean that they are ready to work on a strong European defense with joint determination.

Europe’s most trans-Atlantic-oriented countries may finally come to terms with the United States’ gradual withdrawal from Europe’s defense responsibilities. But for now, European countries continue to rely heavily on American defense companies; in 2024 they spent 68 billion dollars on defense products in the US, against just 11 billion on average between 2017 and 2021. Worse still, a major rift has appeared between Europe’s two largest economies: Trust between Germany and France, which should be at the heart of any European defense structure, is in the process of breaking down.

This is a problem for all of Europe. European integration started in 1952—with “no more war” as its motto—when France and West Germany (plus Italy, as well as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) placed their national defense industries under supranational authority. They did this with a sole purpose: to make another world war impossible. Now, after a period of long peace and decades of military neglect, increasingly faced with hybrid and military threats from Russia, Europe’s former warmongers have started to invest in their national industries again—not together this time, but increasingly alone. In the past couple of months, one Franco-German defense project collapsed with a loud bang while others stalled.

First, the collapse. Conceived as a showcase project of........

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