The EU Commission's lone truth-teller explains what the US really wants

"Americans are planning to fight against the EU, against our strength through unity, since in their vision the EU can become threatening to American interests," says the EU Defence Commissioner.

EU Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius is calling for a revival of the European Defence Community, an idea killed by France in 1954 but still open for ratification.

Over the past year, as Europe has experience repeated verbal attacks from the US government, the most our Atlanticist leaders like EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have been able to muster as a response is saying maybe the US is retreating from Europe and the EU needs to take care of itself.

But we should be so lucky. The US is not retreating from Europe. Trump is not an “isolationist” as our leaders keep asserting despite all evidence to the contrary. Last week’s US National Security Strategy made it clear: the US is not disengaging with Europe, it is actively interfering with European politics and trying to break up the European Union in favour of 27 MAGA-friendly puppet regimes.

But von der Leyen’s Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius has lately been committing the cardinal Commission sin of forthrightness. Uncharacteristic of the president’s cowed college of yes-men and -women, the EU’s first-ever defence commissioner has been speaking out about the threat the US poses and the need to urgently develop sovereign EU defence capable of acting independently from NATO. What’s even more astonishing about this is that he comes from the staunchly Atlanticist country of Lithuania.

“It appears from the National Security Strategy that Americans are planning to fight against the European Union, against our strength through unity, since in their vision the European Union can become threatening to American interests – a unified superstate,” Kubilius wrote on his personal blog last week. “A superstate – the same like United States became in the 1860s, when France and Great Britain were ready to fight against such a remarkable emerging American power. It appears that both France and Great Britain were prudent enough not to make a historic mistake and decided not to oppose such an emerging power, which helped both United Kingdom and France during the 20th century. Let’s hope that also today there will be enough prudence on American soil not to fight against the emerging power of European unity.”

My new book The Owned Continent is out now

Commissioner Kubilius goes on to point out that the American pretence of wanting Europe to stand on its own two feet is a ruse. In fact, the United States has worked for decades to prevent Europe from developing sovereign defence that could act independently of America, and that has been openly admitted by Trump officials.

“Antagonism towards the European Union comes not from differences in values, or real American concerns about democracy, freedom of speech or national identities in European Union or its Member States,” Kubilius writes. “The US National Security Strategy’s antagonistic language on the European Union comes not from American sentimental emotions about ‘good old Europe’, but from deep strategic considerations, very practical and very particular American strategic interests, which are in the best way described in Elbridge A. Colby’s famous book The Strategy of Denial (2021), a signed copy of which I have on my desk. E.A. Colby, President Trump’s famous foreign and security policy ideologist, now serves as undersecretary of defence (war) for policy. His main message in the book: US defence strategy should be built around the strategic goal to deny any country or regional organization of countries the possibility to have a dominating or hegemonic position on any of the continents. Because that is against particular US interests, since hegemonies can ‘disfavor and exclude the United States from reasonably free trade and access to these wealthy regions in ways that would undermine America’s core principles’.

That is why the USA is ready to confront Chinese dominance in Asia (that was said in 2021; not very clear whether this is still is a US strategy) and to confront any possibilities for the EU to become more united. Because EU unity is against USA interests. Russia deserves much less attention, because according to Colby’s evaluations – Russia cannot become a dominant power.”

Such American efforts to block EU defence didn’t start with Trump. In my new book The Owned Continent, I tell the story of when in 2000 US Defence Secretary William S. Cohen pre-emptively commanded the other ministers at a NATO summit in Brussels that “there will be no EU caucus in NATO”. In other words – don’t you dare try to establish a two-pillar NATO made up of the EU and US as equal partners. He was referring to efforts to insert a defence union into the EU constitution that was being drafted at the time. The British, always acting as Washington’s errand-runners in the EU, took up the cry and senior officials from Tony Blair’s government blasted the French for even thinking of trying to pursue EU defence – because it had upset the Americans. It apparently didn’t occur to Blair that he might be upset about the United States dictating to Europeans what they can and can’t do with their defence.

It is rare to find Kubilius’ blunt honesty from anyone in power in Europe these days, let alone in President von der Leyen’s tightly-controlled college of 27 commissioners. Commissioners who speak out against her have had a habit of falling out of figurative windows (see Thierry Breton), and those who dared to criticise Trump now apparently have to have all their speeches approved by von der Leyen’s cabinet before they can open their mouths (see Kaja Kallas after she dared to say “the free world needs a new leader” after President Trump and Vice President Vance berated President Zelensky in the oval office in February).

Kubilius is daring to say publicly what our leaders in Europe say privately but will not say out loud. It is also what their own intelligence services are telling them privately. A Danish military intelligence assessment leaked to the New York Times last week concluded: “The United States uses economic power, including threats of high tariffs, to enforce its will, and no longer rules out the use of military force, even against allies.” Denmark already concluded in August that the US government is running covert spying and influence operations against them in Greenland, laying the ground for a possible invasion.

Even German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in his much-heralded speech three days ago declaring the end of the Pax Americana, is still framing this as a situation of American withdrawal rather than what it really is. The Pax Americana is being replaced by an era of Bellum Americanum. Just look at the renaming of the US Department of Defence to the Department of War. The clue is in the name.

Our leaders may not be willing to say it, but any pundit who is not in complete denial has pointed it out over the past week. Over on The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last wrote last week of the National Security Strategy: “This is not America having priorities that don’t involve Europe. It is not isolationism. It is America taking sides with Russia against Europe, because one of America’s two political parties now sees Russian autocracy as preferable to European democracy.”

Mina Ålander wrote that the NSS could even be helpful for Europe, if it manages to wake people here up. “The US NSS is in its characteristic ugliness actually a useful document from a European perspective,” she wrote last week. “It codifies in policy, in black and white, what has been evident all year long: Trump and his people are openly hostile to Europe. Once it is spelled out in the NSS, European leaders cannot ignore or explain the fact away anymore. Any hope to sit this out and for things to go back to the old normal looks increasingly ludicrous and politically unviable.”

But never underestimate our current leaders’ talent for the ludicrous. Even as the NSS spells out a gunboat diplomacy strategy of using America’s military intimidation to pursue regime change in Europe to turf out centrist leaders and replace them with the MAGA-friendly far right (who the strategy describe as “patriotic parties”), those centrist leaders refuse to acknowledge that they are the object of attack. The NSS says that the US should “cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations” and “open European markets to US goods and services” – presumably by using the threat of withdrawing the security umbrella. It’s all feeling very reminiscent of the ‘century of humiliation’ Europe inflicted on China in the 19th century.

It isn’t just our leaders. The Atlanticist think tanks on this continent have also been bending over backwards to make excuses for the US government. The German Marshall Fund of the United States called the NSS a “new foundation for cooperation” and an act of “tough love for Europe”.

Asked about the NSS at one of her extremely rare press availabilities last Thursday, President von der Leyen was circumspect. After maintaining complete silence about the NSS for a whole week, all she could muster when directly asked about it by Politico was, “It is not on us, when it comes to elections, to decide who the leader of the country will be, but on the people of this country…That’s the sovereignty of the voters, and this must be protected.” That was as close as she came to criticism. She insisted she has a “a very good working relationship” with Trump (funny since he reportedly won’t even take her calls). “From the bottom of my heart, I’m a convinced transatlanticist,” she said with a smile. Sounds like exactly the type of person we need leading the EU right now.

Contrast this with the response of her counterpart over at the European Council, Antonio Costa. Already last Monday, just a few days after the NSS was published, he said at an event in Paris: “What we cannot accept is this threat of interference in Europe’s political life.” He also went the further than any leader has in suggesting that the US may be becoming an adversary. He said NATO must be urgently restructured to become a European alliance by 2027 so Europeans can “protect ourselves, not only against our adversaries, but also against the allies who defy us”.

However Costa’s role as chair of the European Council summits of prime ministers and presidents is a largely symbolic one. The real president still refuses to defend her citizens from American attacks, because she will never be able to turn off being a “convinced transatlanticist”.

So, is the NSS the alarm clock we’ve been waiting for to finally wake Europeans up out of their slumber? Maybe, but I’m not yet feeling optimistic about it. Over on his Sentinel Substack, Sam Wilkin argues that, “the closing weeks of 2025 might be remembered as the moment Europe finally awoke from the fantasy of limitless American benevolence and began to take meaningful steps towards strategic independence.”

But he also points out that the impulses of Atlanticists in Europe, who have run this continent for so long, are still deeply on the side of trying to downplay what’s happening. “Even in recent months, as President Donald Trump blew hot and cold on Ukraine, Europe’s establishment has grasped at every bit of good news and ignored the flashing red lights,” he wrote. He’s hopeful this will lead to a change of thinking very soon. “Trump’s pressure tactics have led to a realisation in Europe that having an independent defence capability means exactly that. Relying on a foreign supplier that can switch off your fighter jets is only acceptable if that country’s friendship is steadfast and unconditional. The NSS calls for Europe ‘to regain its civilizational self-confidence’. It may get its wish.”

I wish I shared Sam’s optimism. But first I need to see our European leaders actually be honest about the problem we’re facing. They should take some inspiration from the EU’s little-known defence commissioner. It is a shame that our best politicians here in Europe are the ones who are unknown.