Back on February 6, 2026, NATO announced a new distribution of senior leadership roles in its command structure that transfers more responsibility to Europe. For the first time in alliance history, European officers will take the reins of all three NATO Joint Force Commands, the headquarters responsible for leading operations during crises. While seemingly little more than bureaucratic shuffling, the move could signal the beginning of something more consequential: a transition from burden-sharing to burden-shifting. For decades, transatlantic debates have prioritized more equitable burden-sharing, which refers to the distribution of costs and contributions among NATO allies to achieve collective defense. Burden-shifting goes beyond defense spending and involves the deliberate transfer of operational control for continental defense toward European allies. If policymakers aspire for a Europe with the ability to defend itself, the locus of debate will need to shift from burden-sharing to burden-shifting.
What Recently Changed – And What Didn’t
Under the new arrangement, European officers will lead all three of NATO’s Joint Force Commands (JFCs) for the first time, which are responsible for carrying out operations within their respective areas during crises. The United States will retain control of NATO’s three theater component commands – maritime, land, and air – as well as the alliance’s top military post, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). Although component commands sit below the JFCs in NATO’s hierarchy, they play a larger role in day-to-day military activity: synchronizing forces, maintaining readiness, and enabling the JFCs to carry out their operations. In other words, Washington continues its role as the backbone of the alliance’s military architecture.
Still, the announcement marks progress toward a more equitable transatlantic security relationship, one that flew largely under the radar. This is because debates over European defense have long focused on burden-sharing – how much Europe spends – rather than burden-shifting: the transfer of operational control, command authority, and ultimate responsibility for its own defense. Europe has indeed increased its defense spending, and that trend must continue. But fixating on spending percentages alone overlooks the structural drivers of dependency and the conditions required for true autonomy.
The Incentives Behind European Dependence
Percentage targets like NATO’s 5% of GDP benchmark are proxy metrics that measure inputs when alliance strength ultimately rests on outputs like readiness and deployability. While useful, Europeans can spend more without fundamentally changing their posture so long as the U.S. remains the continent’s security backstop. True autonomy cannot exist without command authority.
Decades of American primacy in Europe have created a system that incentivizes security dependence. The most common explanation is the free-rider problem: America’s unconditional security guarantees, extensive military footprint, and leadership within NATO reduce incentives for European leaders to make the tough political tradeoffs necessary for rearmament. As long as leaders believe the United States will save the day no matter what, they will never internalize the full costs or consequences of under-preparedness. NATO’s command structure reinforces this dependence because strategic planning flows from the SACEUR’s office. Even with Europeans now leading the JFCs, they will largely execute plans developed by American leadership.
The Procurement Logic of Dependence
America’s primacy in NATO not only shapes incentives to spend, it shapes how European governments build their militaries. From the alliance’s inception, U.S. forces have provided its high-end capabilities at scale, from intelligence and strategic airlift to missile defense and aerial refueling. As a result, European governments have long designed their militaries to plug into U.S.-led operations rather than conduct large-scale operations independently. This creates a structural imbalance in capability development. Governments underinvest in these high-end capabilities, often called strategic enablers, because they know Washington would backfill any gaps. In some cases, European countries have lost the ability to produce them altogether. The result is a force structure optimized for participation, not autonomy.
Accountability Follows Command
Debates over dependency tend to focus on free-riding, but American leadership shapes incentives more fundamentally. Europe must pivot from burden-sharing to burden-shifting by taking operational control of its defense. Paying or plugging into the mission is not enough – Europeans need to own the mission.
As long as the United States retains operational primacy, any failure in Europe’s defense will be seen as an American failure. When leaders know they–not Washington–are responsible for military success, abstract capability gaps become urgent political liabilities. That shift in accountability forces governments to move beyond budgetary targets and make the hard choices required to ensure they are actually prepared to fight and win. In this way, operational responsibility transforms defense from a collective aspiration into a national obligation, compelling governments to invest in the capabilities, command-and-control, and readiness required to sustain their own security.
The Way Forward
Burden-shifting does not require the complete absence of American involvement in European security, but it does require abandoning the assumption that such support will always be immediate or sufficient. The United States remains a global superpower with finite resources and competing priorities, and its capabilities cannot serve as the permanent foundation of Europe’s defense.
The latest transfer of the Joint Force Commands does not fundamentally alter the U.S.-led security architecture, but it could represent a catalyst for a long-term rebalancing of operational responsibility. Once complete, European officers will hold operational command of NATO’s crisis headquarters, which could help realign responsibility with geography if built upon. Policymakers should not treat this as a symbolic adjustment, but as the foundation for a more consequential transformation.
Matthew MacKenzie is a Foreign Policy & Trade Policy Analyst at Americans for Prosperity.
