When Trump says NATO is obsolete and hints that the United States might not come to Europe’s defence, he isn’t merely indulging in MAGA-era theatrics. He’s laying the groundwork for a reconfiguration of global imperial responsibilities—a message received loud and clear in Brussels, Berlin, and Paris. What happens when the imperial core begins to fracture, and the old security guarantees no longer hold? In that void, the dream of a European Army finds fresh momentum. But far from being a progressive alternative to American hegemony, it signals Europe’s intent to project its own militarised form of capitalist order.
The idea of a European Army has long simmered on the fringes of EU policymaking. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine, coupled with Trump’s renewed pledge to make America First again, has dragged it into the mainstream. For the liberal centrists in power across much of the continent, the equation is simple: without the Americans, Europe must learn to defend itself. What they mean by defence, however, isn’t the protection of workers, refugees, or the climate. It’s the defence of capital, of trade routes, energy corridors, and foreign investments from the Baltic to the Sahel.
From a Marxist perspective, military integration is not a project of peace or solidarity. It is an instrument of imperial continuity. The European Union was never a counter-hegemonic bloc; it is a capitalist class project, with the army its logical extension. Arms manufacturers like Rheinmetall and Dassault are already posting record profits. The European Commission’s language of “strategic autonomy” is a euphemism for militarised accumulation, less reliant on the United States, but still firmly entrenched within global capitalism.
Russia’s belligerence offers the ideal pretext. A threat real enough to discipline any dissent. European rearmament is sold to the public as a bulwark against fascism abroad, while the domestic repressions of austerity and border militarisation continue unchecked. One need only look at the deployment of Frontex at Europe’s edges, or the language of “fortress Europe,” to see the internal logic of the external threat. This is not a turn away from imperialism, but a recalibration of it—designed to contain migration, discipline labour, and secure access to the resources European capital needs to remain competitive.
Trump’s retreat from multilateralism does not end the American empire; it demands that others pay more to uphold it. Europe’s military pivot isn’t a rejection of empire, it’s a bid to join the senior ranks of its management. With the Pacific now America’s primary theatre of concern, the old transatlantic alliance is being rewritten. Europe is preparing to become a more autonomous but still complicit node in the global security architecture.
The costs are not evenly distributed. While defence budgets inflate, welfare systems are eroded. Macron can find billions for tanks, but not for pensions. Scholz backs a ” Zeitenwende ” for German defence spending, even as renters in Berlin face skyrocketing costs. Every euro spent on rearmament is a euro not spent on housing, on climate adaptation, on public health. The working class is told there is no alternative—that security demands sacrifice. But whose security, and whose sacrifice?
The European Army, if realised, will not bring peace. It will bring intensified class conflict, internal repression, and external projection. It is the army of the European bourgeoisie, not of the European people. It offers no shelter from Trump’s America or Putin’s Russia, only another axis of imperial violence dressed in the robes of democratic legitimacy.
What’s needed is not a new imperial formation, but internationalist solidarity. A real left project would reject militarisation in all forms and instead build networks of resistance, across borders, languages, and struggles. The only true security lies not in tanks or treaties, but in the collective power of the exploited and dispossessed.
Until then, Europe may well get its army. But it won’t be ours.
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