Europe faces a geopolitical predicament, as the European Union’s (EU’s) summits in Brussels on March 6 and on Thursday laid bare. European capitals are preparing for US security disengagement, but each still needs to figure out what it must to do fill the expected void. This issue is especially acute for Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, which are nearest to Russian aggression and in many ways most reliant on US support at present.
There has been recent action at the EU level. The European Commission’s ambitious €800 billion defense mobilization plan, which was unveiled this month, coupled with its proposal for €150 billion in EU-backed loans, represents the most significant shift in European security posture since the Cold War. The bloc’s commitments came at the eleventh hour, after EU leaders rallied behind Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following the Oval Office blowup on March 2. Yet even with the apparent US-Ukraine reconciliation in Jeddah on March 11, broader transatlantic fissures remain that should spur CCE countries to action.
Watching Kyiv and Washington
Washington’s pursuit of peace talks with Moscow, potentially without much regard for the fairness or longevity of the peace deal, compounds this pressure. The United States’ disengagement and US President Donald Trump’s overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin, including a call on Tuesday, resurrect old ghosts for CEE countries, reviving existential anxieties about Western abandonment. Trump’s entertaining of the Russian leader’s demands for territorial concessions eerily echoes the 1938 Munich Agreement, when the United Kingdom readily abandoned Czechoslovakia to appease a revisionist power.
This US foreign policy pivot carries destabilizing consequences for Europe, Ukraine, and the broader post-Soviet region. That shift makes it imperative for European nations to rethink defense—it can no longer be viewed as a budgetary afterthought but must be treated as an industrial priority. CEE countries are well positioned to contribute significantly to this transformation despite their varying strategic alignments. But to do so, they must finally break their dependence on Russian energy and harness their manufacturing capabilities to strengthen Europe’s collective defense industrial base.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, CEE has flourished under the US security umbrella. NATO membership shielded these nations from their twentieth century fate, allowing democratic institutions to take root and market economies to modernize. But this era of stability is at severe risk.
If Ukraine is forced into an unfavorable settlement that surrenders territory to Moscow, neighboring countries will justifiably fear that they could be next as Washington reevaluates its commitments. Russia has insisted that NATO forces roll back from Eastern Europe for years, and Moscow reiterated this demand during US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia in February. This raises concerns over what kind of concessions Trump might entertain to strike a quick deal with Russia. Once again, CEE finds itself wedged between an aggressive Russia and Western allies struggling to build credible defense capacity.
The danger of further fragmentation
The commitments EU leaders made this month in Brussels will mean little without concerted action to transform the bloc’s political ambitions into genuine military capabilities. Despite NATO membership, military vulnerability persists across CEE, with defense capacities currently insufficient without US backing.
For the CEE countries, the combination of a disengaging United States and an emboldened Russia presents three critical challenges: the growing divides in its strategic orientation, its continued dependence on Russian energy commodities, and the need to modernize its defenses.
The region remains politically fragmented. The Baltic states and Poland have led a robust response to Ukraine’s plight since 2022, while the governments of Hungary and Slovakia exhibit marked pro-Russian attitudes. At the EU summit this month, Hungary stood alone in opposing the security deal, while Slovakia attempted to leverage it to restart Russian gas flows. CEE’s incomplete energy transition and Slovakia and Hungary’s foot-dragging to break free from Moscow’s gas leverage continue to complicate security calculations for the continent.
These divisions reflect a deepening rift in the region’s strategic orientation—a division between the pro-European path championed by Warsaw and the Baltics, with their clear-eyed view of Russian revanchism, and members of the pro-Moscow camp led by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose authoritarian tendencies and energy dependencies make them convenient bedfellows with the Kremlin. This courtship of Moscow comes with a price tag: democratic backsliding at home and diminished credibility in Brussels.
How CEE can seize the moment
There is another way. CEE nations’ necessary efforts to bolster their security can also help the region build up its industrial capabilities and boost its economic competitiveness. For example, several CEE countries have in recent decades developed robust industrial supply chains with Germany, in particular with the German automotive industry. This German-CEE industrial cluster can play an outsized role in addressing security challenges, and it also provides a chance to boost the economies of all the nations involved.
In some ways, this has already started. Poland’s state-owned PGZ, for example, has partnered with Germany’s Rheinmetall to produce Leopard tanks in Poznań, Poland. The Czechoslovak Group has become a crucial supplier of artillery shells to Ukraine, increasing production fivefold since 2022, while Estonia’s Milrem Robotics is developing autonomous border surveillance systems as a part of the Baltic Defense Line.
At a time when German automakers and their CEE subsidiaries are cutting jobs to an extent not seen in a long time, the legacy automotive industry could be partly repurposed into state-of-the-art factories for unmanned aerial vehicles and conventional artillery. In some cases, this may require expanding existing industries or adapting existing production lines. In other cases, the scale of the challenge will be even greater, as it will involve sophisticated capabilities that must be rapidly developed.
Moreover, despite its strategic importance and clear industrial potential, the CEE defense revival faces additional hurdles, including fiscal management, skilled labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, political fragmentation, and policy uncertainty. The success of this continental rearmament will ultimately depend on sustained political will across multiple electoral cycles and supportive economic conditions.
The prospect of US security disengagement from Europe demands more than half-measures and hopeful rhetoric. The United States pulling back from Europe’s defense would leave a void that only European countries themselves can fill. CEE nations must also navigate their fragmented political posture against Moscow and transform defense from a budget line to an industrial priority. Europe’s eastern flank is even more exposed as the West’s security architecture is being redrawn. The question is whether it will be drawn by Europe or for it.
Soňa Muzikárová is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.
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