Could Europe defend itself without America? In January 2026, NATO launched Operation Steadfast to answer that question. The operation is the largest exercise of the year, deploying around 10,000 troops from 11 member states across Central Europe. The plan involves the Allied Reaction Force, a rapid response element designed to test trans-Atlantic coordination in simulated high-intensity conflict conditions from land, air, sea, and cyber.
However, America is still assisting European NATO allies in carrying out Operation Steadfast through its financial backing. Greenland is not the reason for the exercise, as the plan was drafted last year. Brussels wishes for Europe to operate, vote, behave, and attack as a collective. Politicians claim broad “Europe-wide” threats from foreign nations to justify a stronger military alliance. Neocons believe they can eventually create a European army that will protect Brussels above all else.
The same politicians who push for European military power have been undermining capital through debt, regulation, and climate mandates that have destroyed the continent’s energy supply.
NATO was created during a period of high confidence in government following World War II. The alliance worked because the United States was economically dominant, politically unified, and willing to absorb the cost of global security. Europe, by contrast, redirected capital away from defense and into social spending, bureaucracy, and regulation.
Europe’s reliance on the United States through NATO delayed reform, encouraged dependency, and allowed politicians to sell the illusion that defense costs nothing. That illusion is now ending.
The ECM has been warning that the 2026–2032 window marks rising global conflict risk. Not because leaders want war, but because declining confidence removes the mechanisms that prevent it. Alliances fracture, miscalculations rise, and nations act in self-interest rather than collective stability. NATO is in the confidence erosion phase. Article 5 can only go forth if each member believes in the cause.