The Quiet Beginning of NATO’s End?

Two moves in two months suggest Europe is following a stealth strategy to secure military independence—and it looks a lot like the plan we mapped out earlier this year.

In February 2025, I published a scenario examining Europe's potential path titled "Strategic Escape: How Europe Can Secretly Prepare to Leave NATO."

It wasn’t a prediction. It was a blueprint. If Europe were to build its own military autonomy, this is how it could begin.

At the time, many saw the idea as far-fetched. Today, two of its most sensitive elements have begun to materialize.

On May 7, Germany and France announced the creation of a Joint Defence and Security Council. Framed as an initiative to streamline coordination on defense and foreign policy, it formalizes a bilateral strategic command structure — something I identified in February as a necessary first step toward an independent European Defense Force (EDF). But this was only the second domino. Back on March 6, French President Emmanuel Macron had already reopened a conversation that hasn’t been touched in earnest since Charles de Gaulle: the possibility of extending France’s nuclear deterrent to cover all of Europe.

These are not just events. They are signals. And they align almost precisely with the roadmap I laid out: institutional integration, nuclear coordination, and a public narrative that reassures NATO even as the foundations for strategic independence are built underneath it.

The scenario I described in February began with the need to make European defense autonomy strategically feasible and politically palatable. Openly declaring a break from NATO would trigger fierce resistance from the United States and divisions within Europe. So the strategy had to unfold under the radar and in small increments.

The first step: construct the institutions without declaring intent. A unified European military command would not begin as a formal army, but as a "strategic coordination center." Procurement, logistics, intelligence-sharing, and mission planning would quietly be folded into a common framework.

This is exactly what the Franco-German Council is poised to lay the groundwork for. It establishes a new layer of bilateral decision-making, resource planning, and strategic alignment—quiet steps that can evolve into the foundations of independent European command. Just as importantly, it sends a quiet signal to other European capitals: deeper defense cooperation need not wait for NATO consensus.

The same is true for Macron’s nuclear overture. The scenario I proposed required the eventual creation of a European Nuclear Command Authority (ENCA), jointly controlled by France, Germany, and the UK. That three-nation format is where Europe ultimately needs to go to ensure legitimacy, stability, collective deterrence, and to share the cost burden.

While the UK remains outside the EU, its strategic assets and defense posture make it an indispensable future partner—though political alignment may take longer than military integration. But until that structure is politically and operationally feasible, France will have to take the lead. Macron’s speech opens the door to just such a phased approach, suggesting that French nuclear weapons could, for now, protect the continent as part of a broader strategic framework—and he appears ready to assume that responsibility.

He didn’t make this offer out of ideological fervor. He made it in response to strategic anxiety: Donald Trump’s posture against NATO and the European Union.

For decades, Europe’s security rested on a single assumption: that the United States would always be there.

That assumption has fractured.

NATO’s cohesion has been shaken by political shifts in Washington, and its deterrent credibility weakened by hesitations over Ukraine. While NATO as an alliance still exists, the political will underpinning it is no longer guaranteed. Europe has begun to absorb that lesson. The movement we are witnessing is not a rejection of NATO but a hedging strategy against its obsolescence.

That hedging is being operationalized. Macron’s remarks mark the first time a sitting European leader has publicly connected nuclear strategy to continental autonomy in the modern era. And Germany’s alignment on joint command signals a foundational shift in mindset. The quiet part is being said out loud: Europe must be able to act independently.

These steps are not flashy. They are deliberately boring — institutional mechanisms, command structures, vague political frameworks. But that’s the point. Strategic independence will not arrive with a declaration.

It will arrive through momentum.

A defense council here. A nuclear overture there. Joint procurement deals. Intelligence infrastructure. One by one, the dependencies that tether Europe to U.S. power are being questioned and, in some cases, replaced. The rhetoric still insists on NATO unity. But the policy direction is unmistakably toward redundancy.

What happens next?

More bilateral or trilateral defense compacts. Increased joint weapons production. The possible creation of an independent European intelligence-sharing network. None of it needs to be branded as an "alternative to NATO" — and it shouldn’t be. The genius of the approach is its ambiguity. As I wrote in February, Europe does not need to leave NATO. It only needs to build an alternative that renders NATO obsolete by the time the U.S. realizes it.

The map was speculative. The terrain is real. And Europe has begun to move across it.