While US wants Europe that ‘stands on its own two feet,’ it is at the same time feeding, growing biggest obstacle to that goal with its own hands
By Utku Asker
After World War II, European states built their welfare models under the US military umbrella, leaving most of the defense bill to Washington to make room for social spending.
Lasting through the Cold War and beyond, the guarantee was about more than just military protection. Even though some European countries kept a degree of military autonomy, US backing sustained a wider order, one where Washington provided security, relations ran through institutions, and European politics relied on consensus within the EU.
However, first the Russia-Ukraine war and then Trump’s demand that everyone carry their own weight in defense raised doubts about how reliable this shield really is. Naturally, the European welfare model that grew in its shadow is now being questioned too. Today, as the US starts putting conditions on its support, the ground beneath the comfortable order Europe is used to is quickly shifting.
Speaking in front of the Parthenon in Athens on Oct. 7, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Europe could “wake from its long slumber,” arguing that what the continent truly needs is to regain its lost civilizational self-confidence. Rubio’s diagnosis essentially reduces the problem to a mere lack of will, a failure to use the resources already at hand. Yet the turmoil in Europe today has a much deeper cause. When the balance of power shifts in the international system, states that rely on an outside security umbrella inevitably see their domestic orders shaken as well. The huge vacuum left by Washington’s gradual pullback will not be filled simply by adding a few extra percentage points to defense budgets. What is actually cracking is the very social contract that was carefully woven over decades beneath that shield.
What was actually built under the shield?
With the US security umbrella in place, European countries were able to take the funds they would have spent on weapons and armies and use them to finance domestic social peace and prosperity instead. Two details are worth keeping in mind here. First, the welfare state model was not just an American gift, it was also the product of Europe’s own class struggles and social democratic traditions. Second, the US took on this security burden not out of pure generosity, but to keep the Soviet Union from dominating Eurasia. Still, the “glorious” prosperity Europe achieved after World War II cannot be separated from the advantage created by that bipolar world order. Even though the Cold War ended years ago, the comfort that lingered out of political habit is now coming to an end as the global balance of power is rewritten. And it is hard to see how the welfare state model escapes this shift untouched.
In fact, Britain’s past experience shows that this equation can also work in reverse. Caught in 1968 between the cost of its young welfare state [1] and its global imperial responsibilities, London decided to withdraw from East of Suez and effectively handed over the security of the Gulf to the US. Today, Europe faces the exact opposite situation, rising military needs are putting heavy pressure on social spending. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s review of the American presence in Europe back in June, his move to tie future support to defense spending, and the rhetoric taking shape around “NATO 3.0” [2] all mean that Washington is dropping the burden it took on some 75 years ago right back into Europe. When that superpower “security subsidy” is pulled away, the gap in a domestic order built on outside backing has to be filled by the state’s own resources. And that inevitably pushes security right to the top of the budget list.
Who will pay the bill?
European governments today are caught in a tight squeeze: Building a credible defense deterrent, keeping the welfare state standing, and preserving fiscal and political stability. Nor should states be expected to achieve all three of these goals at once. Europe is at a tough crossroads where, whichever two it chooses, it will have to compromise on the third. Taking advantage of loosened fiscal rules, Germany turned to record borrowing for defense and infrastructure, effectively passing the bill on to the future. In France, efforts to curb the budget deficit amid ongoing political turmoil sent bond yields surging. This showed just how quickly the insistence on protecting both defense and social welfare at the same time can push an economy into a corner. The Netherlands, meanwhile, funded its rising defense costs directly at the expense of the welfare state. By not adjusting tax brackets for inflation, the government collected an indirect “freedom contribution” that weighed more heavily on lower-income groups, while also cutting the healthcare budget to free up money for defense.
Spain and Italy, for now, are among those choosing to keep defense as a secondary priority. Spain argues that military targets can be met with far less spending. Italy, on the other hand, used a clever accounting move. It simply renamed several existing budget items as “defense spending” to cross NATO’s spending threshold on paper [3].
The reality is clear. Whichever path a country chooses, a different group ends up paying the price. Borrowing places the burden on future generations, while cutting social benefits directly hurts retirees, patients and low-income citizens. Avoiding defense spending, in turn, undermines the trust of Eastern European allies and damages a country’s standing within NATO. As centrist parties hesitate between these hard choices, they alienate a different group of voters with every move. Ultimately, this ongoing indecision is quietly eroding public trust in mainstream politics.
What does the far-right promise?
To understand the rise of the far right, one must see that they offer a supposed “way out” of this impasse. While centrist parties struggle to tell voters the hard truth, that certain sacrifices are unavoidable, the far right reframes the issue entirely by questioning who should benefit from the welfare state in the first place. In their view, if the boundaries of welfare are drawn strictly around citizenship, cultural identity and “nativeness,” the massive funds needed for defense can easily be found by cutting the money going to migrants, Brussels, or Ukraine. Known in political science as “welfare chauvinism,” this formula holds strong appeal for the public because it shifts the entire bill onto “outsiders” and promises to preserve existing comforts without asking its own voters for any sacrifice.
Yet, these promises do not add up mathematically. The gap created by defense spending is simply
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Anadolu’s editorial policy.
