Strategic Autonomy or Strategic Alignment? EU Responses to the 2025 US National Security Strategy

The 2025 US National Security Strategy marks a critical inflection point in transatlantic security relations, fundamentally reframing Europe's role within American strategic calculations. While reaffirming the importance of allies, the NSS portrays Europe as a relatively weakened partner expected to shoulder greater regional defence burdens, whilst simultaneously downplaying Russia as a long-term threat in favour of diplomatic stabilisation. This positioning stands in sharp contrast to EU strategic documents, which continue to cast Russia as an enduring, primary challenge requiring sustained deterrence and deepened EU-NATO cooperation. This paper examines how the 2025 NSS accelerates a shift from a "shared threat-shared strategy" model towards what I term a "sequenced burden-sharing" model, wherein Washington expects European autonomy in managing neighbourhood security whilst prioritising other theatres. Through qualitative content analysis of the NSS, EU Strategic Compass, economic security strategies, and immediate diplomatic reactions, the paper traces emerging fault lines around threat perception, alliance management, and normative governance. The paper argues that EU institutions and key member states respond to this strategic repositioning through two partially contradictory pathways: rhetorically doubling down on transatlantic unity whilst simultaneously advancing strategic autonomy initiatives and hedging against American unpredictability. Drawing on alliance politics literature—particularly patron-client dynamics and abandonment-entrapment dilemmas—combined with role theory, the analysis reveals how the NSS discursively recasts Europe's expected role from partner-shaper to subordinate implementer, whilst the EU seeks to renegotiate its actorness through instruments like the Strategic Compass. Empirically, the paper maps the first strategic "raw edges" in EU-US security relations crystallising around Russia threat assessment, intra-alliance burden distribution, and Europe's internal democratic governance. Process-tracing of diplomatic interactions following the NSS publication identifies patterns of convergence and divergence across these dimensions. Theoretically, the paper refines strategic autonomy debates by demonstrating that European autonomy imperatives are now driven not solely by retrenchment fears but by explicit American discursive devaluation of Europe as a strategic actor—fundamentally reshaping transatlantic hierarchical order dynamics. The paper contributes to understanding how major power strategic recalibrations generate reactive adaptations in alliance structures, offering insights into the evolving architecture of Western security cooperation in an era of intensified great power competition and contested liberal order.