Opinion: Europe Needs a Defence Doctrine That Outlasts This Crisis

As the Iran war drags into its third month, the European Union is being forced to confront a question it has spent two decades carefully avoiding: what is Europe’s defence doctrine when the United States is preoccupied elsewhere?

The window the war has opened

The conflict began on 28 February. In the ten weeks that have followed, the US has redeployed naval and air assets from the Indo-Pacific theatre to the Persian Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean. American attention has shifted away from European security — visibly so on Ukraine, where the burden of military and financial support is increasingly carried by the EU and the UK; less visibly, but no less consequentially, in the Indo-Pacific, where Europe’s interests in maritime trade routes and rare earth supply chains are now exposed to Chinese assertiveness with diminishing American backstop.

The Trump-Xi summit in Beijing on 14-15 May reinforces the point. Whatever the joint communiqué says on Friday, the Pacific calculation in Washington has shifted decisively. A senior EEAS official put it bluntly to colleagues this week: “Our task is the same — building European capacity to act when American attention turns elsewhere.”

What “strategic autonomy” has meant — and not meant

The phrase “strategic autonomy” has been the consensus framing in Brussels since 2016. In practice, it has covered three distinct things: industrial autonomy (building European defence-industrial capacity), operational autonomy (the ability to conduct missions without US assets), and political autonomy (the will to act independently when American and European interests diverge).

On industrial autonomy, the EU has made measurable progress. The European Defence Industrial Programme, the European Peace Facility, and the Ukraine Support Loan are real instruments backed by real money — €90 billion over 2026-2027 in the latter case. On operational autonomy, the progress is partial: the EU has structures (the EU Military Staff, the Crisis Management and Planning Directorate) but lacks the ISR, long-range strike, strategic airlift and command-and-control capabilities that would make truly autonomous operations credible at scale. On political autonomy, the deficit is starkest: divergent national positions on China, the Middle East, and the future of NATO have repeatedly fragmented EU responses.

The June FAC and the autumn Council

The next inflection point is the Foreign Affairs Council in July, where defence ministers will return to the European Peace Facility mobilisation question. Beyond that, the autumn European Council is expected to take up the strategic compass review and the proposal for an “EU Defence Posture” — a document that, if drafted with the right ambition, could fill the doctrinal vacuum.

The risk is the same as in 2017, 2020 and 2022: that a moment of acute pressure produces fresh rhetoric, fresh budgets and fresh structures, but not the underlying political agreement on what Europe is willing to fight for, where, and at what cost. Without that agreement, no procurement programme — however large — will translate into deterrence.

What the doctrine needs to say

An operational European defence doctrine in 2026 needs to answer four questions, in writing and with budgetary backing:

First, where is the perimeter? Is it the EU’s external border, NATO’s article 5 area, the broader European neighbourhood, or further afield (Indo-Pacific lines of communication, the Sahel)?

Second, against what threats? Russian conventional aggression, hybrid threats, terrorism, cyber-attacks, attacks on undersea infrastructure, or all of the above?

Third, with what capabilities? Which gaps will the EU fill itself (long-range fires, integrated air and missile defence, strategic airlift) and which will it continue to rely on NATO and the United States to provide?

Fourth, under whose command? The persistent ambiguity between EU and NATO chains of command, and between Council and national authorities, must be resolved at the political level.

The cost of inaction

Building European defence capacity is expensive. Not building it, in a moment when American attention is structurally diverted, is more expensive still. The Iran war has compressed timelines that would otherwise have run over a decade. The summer of 2026 may be the last moment at which the EU can write a doctrine reactively rather than under conditions of crisis. The June and October European Council meetings must deliver — or the next one will be written by events.

The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of EuroInsight.