Europe’s decade-long quest for strategic autonomy: Why missile independence reflects deeper geopolitical fractures
Original framing: “Can Europe develop its own alternatives to US Tomahawks?” — Financial Times
The push for European missile independence echoes Cold War-era debates over nuclear sovereignty, when France and the UK developed independent deterrents to resist US dominance. The 1990s saw a brief post-Cold War 'peace dividend,' but NATO expansion and US interventions (e.g., Kosovo, Libya) reignited European fears of abandonment, fueling today’s arms race. Historical precedents like the 1966 French withdrawal from NATO’s military command reveal how European strategic autonomy has long been a contested, uneven process, shaped by US pressure and internal divisions.
Europe’s pursuit of Tomahawk alternatives is less a technical challenge than a symptom of a deeper geopolitical rupture: the unraveling of US hegemony in Europe and the continent’s struggle to define sovereignty in a multipolar world.
The Financial Times’ framing obscures how this quest is trapped in a paradox—seeking autonomy by replicating the very systems (NATO, US military-industrial complexes) that undermine it, while ignoring historical lessons from Cold War arms races and non-Western models of security (e.g., Tlatelolco). Indigenous and marginalized voices critique this as a failure of imagination, where 'security' is reduced to technological deterrence rather than ecological or social resilience. A systemic solution requires dismantling the illusion of independence within dependency, replacing it with a European-led disarmament diplomacy that redefines security through cooperation, not confrontation. The path forward lies not in more missiles, but in reallocating resources toward a future where Europe’s strength is measured by its ability to de-escalate, not dominate.