Hew Strachan treats strategic culture as a source of continuity. Historical memory, institutional norms, national values and collective threat perceptions dispose a state to keep the way of war it already has. I argue that this continuity is the mechanism behind Europe’s present security gap. The culture was built on guaranteed American leadership. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the American withdrawal from that guarantee have removed the premise, and European policy has not yet replaced it with forces Europe can use on its own.
Europe’s Strategic Culture
European strategic culture took its present form in the Cold War, when stability was planned on American military and diplomatic leadership. Strachan argues that assumptions of that kind reduce flexibility once the political setting changes. Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 was that change. Planning that had treated American power projection as given left the United Kingdom and the EU member states without an autonomous response they could agree and mount.
America's Strategic Shift from Protector to Competitor
American policy has moved from protecting Europe to treating European security as conditional. The sequence runs from Obama’s pivot to Asia, through the first Trump administration’s transactional reading of alliances and Biden’s limits on escalation over Ukraine, to the second Trump administration’s open bargaining. The sequence breaks the expectation of guaranteed American engagement. European plans built on that expectation lose their premise.
Two tensions follow.
- Washington treats engagement with Europe as a bargain over shared responsibilities. Trump’s ambivalence toward NATO, and Biden’s conditions on support for Ukraine, are instances of that bargain.
- Russia’s aggression shows that the post-Cold War expectation of a diminished threat from inter-state war was wrong. Strachan’s scepticism about claims that major war had become obsolete fits the record since 2022.
Taken together, the two tensions show a strategic culture prepared for a patron and a threat that no longer match the decisions Europe has to take.
Europe's Strategic Awakening
Europe has not stood still. The EU’s Strategic Compass, adopted in 2022, and the United Kingdom’s Integrated Review Refresh in 2023 record the new setting and move past a purely reactive statement of concern. The practical signs are these:
- Higher defence spending, of which Germany’s Zeitenwende is the clearest case.
- Closer EU defence coordination, including European Peace Facility funding for Ukraine’s defence.
- A return to territorial defence and larger military deployments in Eastern Europe.
The documents and the deployments have not replaced the planning assumption. European policy still treats sustained American involvement as the condition of a serious defence effort, including where ministers say that Europe must provide for itself.
Russia and America as Mirrors
Russian conduct and American withdrawal expose different parts of the same shortfall.
Russia’s actions showed the limits of rapid deployment, the shortage of long-range precision munitions and air defence, and dependence on American logistics, intelligence and strategic capability.
America’s pivot away makes autonomy a condition of European security. Biden’s reluctance to cross stated escalation lines in Ukraine, and Washington’s priority on the Indo-Pacific, separated European expectations from American strategy. The later signals from Trump state the condition directly: unless there is something in it for America, you are on your own.
The Limits of Integration and NATO
Deeper European integration and a renewed commitment to NATO do not close the gap by themselves. Integration without forces Europe can employ on its own leaves the dependency in place. NATO’s structure still depends on American leadership, so it cannot substitute for a reorientation the United States has already made. Strachan argues that continuity without a capacity to adapt fails as strategy.
From Reactive Culture to Proactive Realism
The shortfall sits in doctrine and in the assumptions doctrine rests on. A European doctrine matched to the present setting would do three things:
- State NATO’s limits. Say what NATO cannot do once American leadership is conditional, and keep NATO as the framework for collective defence.
- Specify autonomous action. Name the capabilities and decisions Europe would use if American backing were absent, and turn that specification into operational plans.
- Restore the war case. Put large-scale inter-state war back among the cases for which forces are prepared. Cold War stability had allowed planners to treat that case as closed.
Engaging Broader Perspectives
Constructivist accounts treat strategic culture as produced by practice, which means European governments can change it. Mearsheimer’s realism supplies the reason the change cannot wait: alliance politics punish the partner that assumes the patron’s interest will hold. The two accounts disagree about what drives state behaviour. They agree that the test is capability Europe does not have to borrow.
Rethinking Doctrine for Strategic Resilience
The Integrated Review Refresh and the Strategic Compass are the first documents to name the problem. They still leave in place the gap that Russia’s aggression and America’s recalibration exposed: Europe describes autonomy more readily than it funds and commands the forces autonomy requires.
Closing the gap means treating Cold War continuity as a poor guide to the next decision, treating the Russian threat as a case to plan against, and locating peace through strength in power Europe can sustain without an external guarantee. Autonomy is that change carried into doctrine, into forces, and into the plans that use them.
Bibliography
- Strachan, Hew. The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
- European Union. "Strategic Compass for Security and Defence." 2022.
- United Kingdom Government. "Integrated Review Refresh." 2023.
- Mearsheimer, John J. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.
- Smith, Rupert. The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World. Penguin, 2005.