“I don’t want to survive. I want to live.” – Captain McCrea, WALL·E
In WALL-E, people have been living for generations on the spaceship Axiom, well-fed, transported, and entertained by systems that no one questions anymore. They are not unhappy, but rather comfortably numb. Only when Captain McCrea realizes that mere survival is not the same as living does the film get to its core: those who are carried for too long eventually forget how to move on their own.
Europe should watch that scene more often.
For decades, Europe has comfortably relied on American security, Russian energy, and Chinese manufacturing. Globalisation was not treated as a strategic risk; it was efficient, profitable and comfortable — until the world stopped cooperating.
That moment has now arrived with brutal clarity. From tariffs to doubts over US troop levels and long-range missile deployments in Germany, Washington is reminding Europe that economic access and military protection can no longer be treated as automatic. Europe’s old model of open markets underwritten by American power is becoming less reliable, more transactional and more expensive.
As a result, strategic autonomy sounds less like an old French obsession and more like necessary insurance. But it would be a mistake to conclude that Europe must become fully independent. That is neither realistic nor desirable.
The EU is built on trade, capital flows, imported energy and raw materials, global standards and alliances. Autarky would not make Europe more autonomous; it would make it poorer and less innovative. The point is not to cut Europe off from the world, but to make sure the world cannot so easily cut Europe off from what it needs.
Defence is the most obvious test
The money is finally moving. At last year’s NATO summit, allies committed to work toward 5% of GDP in defence and security-related spending by 2035. For a continent where many governments treated even 2% as an exotic militarist fantasy, that was a political earthquake.
But money is not power. Europe lacks ammunition, air defence, long-range fires, strategic lift, drones and integrated industrial capacity. Military capability cannot be ordered online and delivered by Monday morning.
The United States still has one defence market, one federal budget, one command structure and a huge defence-industrial base. Europe has dozens of armies, procurement cultures, national champions and veto points.
This is the difference between spending power and fighting power. The planned US long-range missile deployments in Germany were meant to strengthen deterrence against Russia and fill a gap in European deep-strike capabilities.
If Washington now walks that back, Europe does not simply “Europeanise” the missing capability overnight. The continent can raise budgets much faster than it can build factories, train crews, integrate systems and agree on command structures.
Energy offers a more encouraging lesson. Europe cut its dependence on Russian gas much faster than most analysts expected. Yet Europe may be less dependent on Gazprom, but is now more exposed to LNG markets, Norway, Qatar, the United States and global price shocks. Renewable energy will reduce import dependence over time, but requires vast investment in grids, storage and critical materials.
One of the hardest parts of the story is the physical foundations of autonomy. Europe wants electric cars, wind turbines, batteries, drones, chips, AI and defence systems. All require lithium, copper, nickel, graphite, rare earths, semiconductors, cloud capacity, talent and capital.
The Critical Raw Materials Act, the Chips Act and the AI Continent agenda are welcome. But Europe’s starting point is weak. It wants less dependence on China, while often resisting mines, refineries and processing facilities at home. It wants technological sovereignty, but lacks the scale, venture capital depth and commercial speed of the United States and China.
The euro faces a similar problem. A digital euro may strengthen payment sovereignty, but it will not by itself turn the euro into the dollar’s equal. That requires deep and liquid capital markets, more common safe assets and, ultimately, greater geopolitical credibility.
The dollar rests not only on Treasury-market liquidity, but also on legal power, sanctions capacity, military reach and alliance networks. Without more European strategic weight, the euro can remain an important reserve currency, but it is unlikely to rival the dollar’s role at the core of the global system.
This is where Europe’s weakness reappears: national politics. Brussels can design funds, set targets and publish excellent documents. But soldiers are recruited nationally, budgets are defended nationally, permits are granted nationally and political pain is absorbed nationally. Strategic autonomy may sound European, but it is executed in Berlin, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Warsaw and The Hague.
Germany has taken historic steps to loosen the fiscal straitjacket for defence and infrastructure, but remains constrained by industrial weakness, high energy costs, coalition politics and the rise of the AfD. France has strategic instinct, nuclear weapons, a defence industry and diplomatic ambition, but also fiscal stress and parliamentary fragmentation. Poland takes the Russian threat seriously, but conflict between a pro-European prime minister and a nationalist president complicates Poland’s role as a coherent European security actor.
This is the uncomfortable truth: Europe’s autonomy is not one project, but 27 national stress tests.
Autonomy is built, not declared
Europe wants to insulate its house, replace the locks, lower the energy bill, install an alarm system and learn to box — all at the same time — while the neighbours are arguing and the old landlord is no longer as reliable as he used to be.
The pursuit of strategic autonomy will therefore be messy, expensive and politically painful. Fortunately, the EU has proven that it can act under pressure. Russian gas dependence has been sharply reduced. Defence spending is rising. The economic security agenda has become more serious. Naivety about China, Russia and even the United States has diminished.
But for now, Europe remains a player with a big wallet and limited clout. It can regulate, finance, sanction, and use market power. It is less adept at rapid escalation, military enforcement, building technology platforms or subordinating national industrial policy to European scale. Strategic autonomy does not necessarily fail if Europe remains dependent on allies. It fails if it remains vulnerable due to its own fragmentation.
The old model allowed Europe to live well without thinking much about survival. That luxury is gone. If Europe wants to preserve its way of life, it must rediscover the less pleasant arts of power: spending, producing, deterring, prioritising and occasionally saying no. The cost of survival can no longer be outsourced.
