Part Three of our critical analysis of European defense.
The coalition of the willing
The twin shocks from 2022 to 2025—the war in Ukraine and Trump’s political comeback—have thrust defense issues to the forefront of European politics with a level of urgency unseen since 1954.
During the first half of 2025, the EU rolled out three initiatives, each worthy of scrutiny given that all seem to fall into fundamental pitfalls. The initial measure, the ReArmEU plan, suspends fiscal constraints to boost military expenditure and creates a 150-billion-euro fund—SAFE—through Commission market borrowing, which is allocated to member states as loans. The structural weakness is evident: SAFE offers credit, not aid, requiring repayment with interest, which highlights the differences between fiscally healthy nations and heavily indebted ones. By promoting fragmented national spending, this approach risks worsening the segmentation of Europe’s defense industry instead of uniting it.
The second approach involves the so-called coalition of the willing, initiated by France and the UK to aid Ukraine without direct American support. However, it has largely been ineffective: European states have failed to muster enough resources for a viable force, and the dominance struggles typical of intergovernmental initiatives have delayed any progress. This further confirms that intergovernmental cooperation in military affairs often leads to stagnation rather than strength; sovereign negotiation by each country results in the lowest common denominator, equating to military impotence. The third approach strengthens bilateral agreements—the Nancy, Kensington, and Aachen treaties—solidifying some cooperation but inherently falling short of creating a truly unified strategic body.
All three initiatives share a fundamental flaw: none tackles the two principal constraints directly. This suggests a deliberate avoidance of addressing the core problem.
ReArmEU emphasizes spending increases but leaves decision-making sovereignty untouched, preserving fragmentation; the coalition bypasses formal institutions, replicating pure intergovernmentalism with all its inefficiencies; bilateral treaties add connections without creating a central authority. Each also operates under the long shadow of American withdrawal—reacting to losing external control but failing to build an internal alternative. This vacuum allows past challenges to resurface.
The suggestion to revive the 1952 CED Treaty—recently advocated by Federico Fabbrini and introduced as a parliamentary motion by Representative Del Barba in April 2025—has a rationale that deserves recognition before being dismissed. Strategically, the EDC offers clear benefits over current options: a shared budget that could correct ReArmEU’s imbalances; exclusive jurisdiction over defense industries to eliminate duplication; a unified army under a single command providing deterrence absent in the coalition; and supranational bodies authorized to make binding decisions.
The legal reasoning is particularly clever. Since four of the six original signatories ratified the treaty and it was never formally terminated, it remains valid for those states under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Consequently, it could be activated with ratification from only the two remaining nations—Italy and France—an exceptionally low hurdle compared to the unanimous ratification required for treaty amendments. Historical precedents confirm that agreements can come into effect decades after signing: for instance, the European Convention on the Return of Minors (1970) only came into force in 2015; the U.S. Constitution’s 27th Amendment was ratified in 1992, 203 years after its proposal.
The proposal’s strength lies in bypassing procedural obstacles. With just two ratifications needed rather than unanimity, obstructive countries—Orbán’s Hungary and neutral states—would no longer be able to stall progress. A coalition of willing parties could advance without waiting for impossible consensus. This is a notable aspect: it acknowledges that European defense cannot emerge from within the existing EU constitutional framework and seeks a solution through a treaty among member states outside that framework. In this way, the proposal expresses a realism about institutional barriers that the notion of strategic autonomy often overlooks.
Resurrection, yes, but in a European graveyard
Nevertheless, a detailed examination reveals that the proposal does not break free from the existing deadlock—rather, it perpetuates it. Let’s analyze the two sides of the problem. Internally, avoiding the unanimity of twenty-seven states shifts but does not remove the political will hurdle: ratification by Italy and France remains necessary, and as admitted by the proponent, ratification in France is politically sensitive. The 1954 failure still influences both the Gaullist right and the left, who maintain strong anti-American sentiments, opposing the EDC because it links the European army with NATO and subordinating European forces to SACEUR.
This paradox mirrors that of 1952: the very feature that attracts most countries to the EDC—its NATO integration—is what makes it unacceptable in France. Thus, the internal barrier, previously blocked by unanimous consent, re-enters through national ratification processes.
Externally, the challenge is more profound and acknowledged explicitly: France’s nuclear weapons. Unlike in 1952 when no member state possessed nuclear arms, today France alone holds them, with its doctrine granting the President sole authority over their use in defense of the nation’s vital interests. Macron’s vision of a European dimension to French deterrence does not equate to a true European deterrent. In this domain, external subordination resurfaces in a new form. Genuine European strategic independence would require transferring nuclear authority from the national level to a European institution—a step France rejects and which the silent 1952 treaty cannot mandate.
So long as Europe remains under either the American or French nuclear umbrella—never a European one—the concept of strategic autonomy will remain rhetorical.
The crucial problem lies elsewhere, and the proposal sidesteps it. Even if revived, the EDC stays fundamentally tied to NATO and the U.S. SACEUR. Its main advantage is reassuring Washington to avoid a transatlantic split; however, from the perspective of autonomy, this is exactly the 1952 flaw repeated. The European army envisioned remains an entity ultimately commanded by an external power during conflict. This returns us to the starting point. The project offers conditional autonomy: Europe can have a common army only if it remains a NATO pillar led by a power now openly hostile toward Europe. Reviving the defunct treaty thus does not resolve the impasse but confirms it. It perpetuates the original conditions that led to its failure, with the added complication that today the external partner is no longer a dependable protector but an adversarial hegemon—meaning Atlantic subordination is no longer protection but mere subjugation.
This must be carefully stated, avoiding the political will determinism earlier criticized. It is moderately likely the EDC will not be enacted soon: political instability in France, the Meloni government’s silence on the initiative in Italy, and unresolved nuclear issues all suggest this. However, history shows political landscapes can shift suddenly, and the unpredictability of Trump’s presidency could trigger changes. The point here is not to forecast failure but to demonstrate that even successful activation of the EDC would fail to deliver true European strategic autonomy, as it leaves the two fundamental barriers unchanged. The result would be a formally unified yet effectively subordinate army—precisely what Europe has now in a fragmented form under NATO.
No one has ever solved the real problem
Examining seven decades of European defense initiatives reveals a consistent pattern. From the EDC to PESCO, Petersberg to ReArmEU, every effort to establish autonomous European military capability has stemmed from a sincere desire for self-determined security—yet none has come to fruition. The comforting narrative that attributes failure to a lack of political will reverses cause and effect. The will was absent not because Europeans lacked resolve but because two structural constraints, like jaws of a vice, made non-integration logical and autonomy unnecessary.
The internal jaw is the EU’s constitutional design: a union of peoples whose twenty-seven sovereign states each possess veto power and none willing to pool that power into a collective will. The external jaw is subjugation to a hegemon—historically benevolent tutelage that made unification redundant, now open hostility making unification urgent yet unattainable. These jaws reinforce one another: internal divisions necessitate external protection; external protection discourages internal unity—for the guarantor, undesired and for those safeguarded, superfluous. Any attempt addressing only one jaw—such as the EDC revival sidestepping unanimity—finds itself crushed by the other obstacles: national ratification hurdles, nuclear sovereignty, and the link to SACEUR.
Escaping this trap demands simultaneous action on both fronts, which moves beyond this article’s scope toward deeper questions. Internally, the EU would need to evolve from a community of sovereign states into a single strategic actor—a transformation involving Europe’s constitutional essence that no technical fix can replicate. Externally, Europe must stop defining its defense as an appendage of another alliance, and instead treat it as a sovereign function—meaning confronting the fundamental issue sidestepped since 1952: who commands, and based on what interests. So long as ultimate command lies outside Europe, the European army—regardless of name—will remain an instrument subservient to a foreign power.
Viewed this way, revisiting the 1952 treaty is less a solution than a revealing symptom. It indicates Europe recognizes the urgency of its defense needs but still searches for answers within the framework that has sapped its power for seventy years. The ghost of the EDC returns because the problem it aimed to solve remains unresolved—and will not be solved by resurrecting a subordinate structure that failed in 1954.
Moreover, the EU appears destined to remain caught in a futile cycle, perpetuating internal and external conflicts it continues to fuel. But how can such a military endeavor be sustained? And how can it be maintained with a defense system that is dysfunctional? Are Brussels’ leaders perhaps willing to sacrifice projects like the EDC just to wage an unwinnable war? Is the whole enterprise nothing more than a grand illusion?
For Europe to truly defend itself, it must first embrace being a political entity capable of its own strategic will, then act independently based on that will. These are decisions no treaty can make in place of its peoples.
Until then, the European army will remain what it has always been: a concept of genuine importance, rendered ineffective by the very structure that claims to support it.
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