Jacob Funk Kirkegaard: A new and more equal transatlantic relationship is emerging

The election and not least re-election of Donald Trump accelerated the decade old shift away from generally wealth and welfare generation oriented collaborative global economic integration, and towards a world in which both the United States and China focus on a more power and security oriented order. As the European Union and its closely affiliated neighbours represents the deepest regional economic integration in existence and correspondingly has an ingrained belief in and dependency on a rules-based global system, this foundational shift by the United States has disproportionally affected Europe.

Irrespective of what the outcome of the next U.S. presidential election will be, America’s electoral system is largely dictated by its fossilized Constitution, and Europe cannot base its future security on just one of what will remain just two political parties. This necessitates the hastening of our ongoing core military and economic efforts to make Europe able to militarily deter Russia without the United States in the long-term. This in turn means continuing the full integration of Ukraine into the EU and relevant coalition of the willing based defence institutions with NATO as a nice to have, but not need to have option.

Europe must continue to economically isolate Russia and in particular implement the permanent end-2027 stop for all imports of Russian fossil fuels. This will, not least due to the Iran War, impose short-term economic costs. Yet these must be countered by continuing investments in renewable energy sources and resilient grid infrastructure, and a pragmatic everything-but-coal energy supply strategy including both traditional nuclear and small modular reactors, as well as fossil transition fuels. Norway, the United States and Canada will be Europe’s new key fossil energy backstops.

As Europe’s core military dependency on the United States declines, NATO will invariably change from focusing on the American security guarantee to the rest of the membership to becoming an alliance of likeminded and militarily capable nations, agreeing to defend each other and pool some relevant military assets across the entire or subgroups of the membership.

The scope of future asset pooling inside NATO will be directly dependent the broader political and economic transatlantic relationship, and should future American presidents and the next Congresses choose to maintain Donald Trump’s openly hostile trade and economic policies towards Europe, it could drop precipitously and even threaten the survival of NATO.

On the other hand, if future U.S. Administrations revert back towards wanting the traditionally intensively competitive, but nonetheless rules-governed transatlantic economic space, Europe and the United States looks likely to be able to jointly fund, develop and deploy the common military and related capabilities, noticeably in space, cyberspace and many military logistical and support function currently utilized within NATO and today most often provided by the United States.

An overall less confrontational future transatlantic economic relationship between militarily more equal NATO members will further facilitate a deeper ongoing alignment on new especially AI, data and other information technology standards, representing together with other G-7 and likeminded countries a more coherent and much larger democratically anchored block when engaging China on these issues.

With Europe via our expanding support for Ukraine well on the way towards its rearmament goal of being able to deter Russia on our own, the political importance of Europe’s other ongoing technological dependencies on the United States will perhaps surprisingly diminish. The outright weaponization of Europe’s military dependency on the United States that in summer of 2025 led to the unbalanced Turnberry Trade Truce with the Trump Administration will not be repeated.

The United States will soon no longer be able to threaten Europe politically inside a more equal NATO, and European technology choices and ongoing dependencies on American technology firms for cloud computing services, cybersecurity, and AI related services will be taken on purer commercial terms. Recalling that very high percentages of US technology firms’ global non-US revenues, as they are largely excluded from the Chinese market, comes from Europe, it is unlikely that these companies would willingly participate in a future hypothetical U.S. government attempt at weaponizing American tech provision to the European economies. Reduced military dependency on the United States invariably derisks our economic relationship, too.

As the global AI race is increasingly between the United States and China, with Europe likely to be a user, rather than a producer of foundational AI models, our ability to choose between the two AI model suppliers without considering political and military dependencies is crucial for actual future European strategic autonomy.