By Matthew MacKenzie, Spring 2026 Marcellus Policy Fellow

Transatlantic policymakers have long debated Europe’s security dependence on the United States through the wrong framework. Washington has measured allied commitment through burden sharing: defense spending levels, GDP benchmarks, and cost distribution. The deeper problem is structural. Europe remains dependent because Washington organizes, enables, and underwrites European defense through operational primacy in NATO. Spending more does not produce independence when the system itself is built around American control. That control keeps Europe strategically subordinate by shaping how its militaries plan, build, and fight. The result is a set of European forces optimized to plug into NATO’s U.S.-led operational architecture rather than conduct independent defense. This arrangement distorts capability development and weakens incentives for European states to invest in full-spectrum defense.

A more prudent paradigm requires burden-shifting, the deliberate transfer of operational control from the United States to European allies within NATO. This should begin with a phased drawdown of U.S. forces to prevent European rearmament from remaining optional under the shelter of America’s security guarantee. Policymakers should pair this effort with the Europeanization of NATO’s command structure and transfer responsibility for planning and execution to the countries with the greatest direct stake in European security. Together, these transformations would reduce American overextension and return the alliance to its original strategic logic by positioning Europe as the continent’s primary conventional defender. In a new era of geopolitical competition and finite American resources, burden-shifting is not a luxury; it is necessary and overdue.