Germany and the Emerging European Security Order

As France and the United Kingdom forge a new security nexus for the European continent, Germany risks being relegated to strategic irrelevance.

When historians come to write the story of Europe’s 21st century security order, February 2025 may well mark the turning point. It was then that France and the United Kingdom jointly announced the Coalition of the Willing—a grouping that has since grown to include 34 nations—to provide security guarantees for Ukraine and deter future Russian aggression. Germany was not a co-leader. That absence, more than any single policy decision, captures something important and intriguing about where the continent’s three largest powers now stand in relation to one another. Certainly, one can argue about the plausibility of the Coalition under the given security environment. Yet the project reveals strong centripetal dynamics, within which Germany—despite its size and stature—appears increasingly marginalised.

The conventional narrative positions Germany as Europe’s indispensable anchor: its largest economy, its most reliable rule-follower, its banker-in-chief. The numbers appear to support this. According to the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker, Germany has allocated approximately €21.3 billion in aid to Ukraine since January 2022, more than any European country bilaterally, and ahead of the UK’s €18.6 billion and France’s €7.6 billion. But raw totals can obscure more than they reveal. The real question is not how much each country has given, but what kind of power it has chosen to project—and at what moment.

Germany’s record under former Chancellor Olaf Scholz was defined less by generosity than by hesitation. While the UK and France supplied Storm Shadow and Scalp cruise missiles—granting Ukraine genuine long-range strike capability—Berlin repeatedly refused to deliver its own Taurus missiles, citing fears of becoming a party to the conflict. Although Russia has repeatedly framed Berlin as an implicit party to the conflict, it can be argued that, even if Taurus missiles would not have been decisive, the decision to withhold them signals strategic hesitancy and a lack of cohesion with allied partners. Even more telling when President Macron first floated the idea of deploying Western troops in Ukraine in February 2024, it was Germany that led the opposition. The debate on strategic boldness was happening elsewhere, and Berlin was voting against it. Once more one can give Berlin the benefit of doubt that might she saw it not working anytime soon. However, she could float its own alternative solution to get along the point that Germany favours such strategic initiatives for European security, but with its own vision and strategy.

Against this backdrop, the Franco-British nexus has consolidated with remarkable speed. London and Paris co-chaired multiple Coalition of the Willing summits throughout 2025, with Macron and Prime Minister Starmer jointly presiding over key meetings on security guarantees. In January 2026, the two countries signed a Declaration of Intent with Ukraine to deploy military forces on the ground in the event of a peace deal. By co-leading this initiative, the UK has simultaneously revitalised its relationship with the EU—demonstrating that post-Brexit Britain can serve as a credible security partner for the continent precisely when it matters most.

This bilateral convergence is reshaping Europe’s broader strategic geography. The Nordic-Baltic Eight—Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Iceland—are integrating their military capabilities with increasing urgency and gravitating toward the UK-France security pole rather than the German one. When the London Summit concluded in February 2025, it was Finland’s president who immediately announced that his country and Norway were actively supporting the UK-France-Ukraine peace framework. These are not coincidental alignments. They reflect a coherent strategic logic: states facing an immediate Russian threat are rallying around the two European powers that possess nuclear deterrents, long-range strike capabilities, and the political will to use them.

None of this is to argue that Germany is not important—its economic weight and geographic centrality make that impossible. Chancellor Merz has increased military allocations sharply, nearly tripling Germany’s monthly average compared to the 2022–2024 period, and the permanent stationing of a Bundeswehr brigade in Lithuania is a meaningful signal of commitment. But there is a difference between a country that finances a security order and one that fuses strategic ideas and initiatives to define and shape it. Germany has, for most of this war, been the former. As a new European architecture takes form—defined by the Franco-British nuclear nexus, Nordic military integration, and the Coalition of the Willing—Berlin’s most pressing challenge is not budgetary. It is purely strategic: to move from a reactive cheque-writer to a brave and confident architect of the order—one in which Germany constitutes the material fulcrum, yet strategically, which continues to revolve around Paris and London.