The price of NATO’s shield: Europe’s strategic autonomy in American custody

When Russia sells uranium to the United States, it is deemed a matter of strategic necessity. But when Europe attempts to import Russian oil or gas, it becomes an act of treachery. 

Why this double standard? 

The answer, as President Vladimir Putin recently remarked, lies in sovereignty—or rather, its loss. In the first half of 2025 alone, Russia earned $800 million from uranium sales to the U.S., exceeding the total for all of 2024. Power, profit, and politics—three forces intertwined in one transaction—reveal the deeper fault lines of the global order.

Putin’s claim is more than a rhetorical flourish. Europe has, in many ways, ceded its sovereignty to Washington. What was once a transatlantic partnership of equals has evolved into a hierarchical arrangement where security patronage is exchanged for obedience. 

NATO, conceived as a defensive alliance, now functions as a mechanism through which the United States exerts disproportionate influence over Europe’s foreign and even economic policy. As one European diplomat recently quipped off record, “We provide the flag, Washington writes the script.”

This dynamic is most evident in the energy domain—the lifeblood of modern economies. The decision about where Europe can purchase its oil and gas is no longer made solely in Berlin, Paris, or Brussels. It is shaped, and in many cases dictated, by Washington’s strategic calculus. 

Even as the U.S. continues to import Russian uranium—a fuel critical to its nuclear energy sector—it pressures its European allies to “decouple” from Russian hydrocarbons, regardless of the cost to their own industries and households. The result is an energy policy that prioritizes ideological alignment over economic rationality.

The ongoing war in Ukraine has intensified this pattern. While Europe bears the brunt of the conflict—its economies disrupted, its societies unsettled—the geopolitical agenda that drives much of the West’s response originates across the Atlantic. 

This is not to diminish Ukraine’s suffering or Europe’s agency entirely, but to highlight how the United States has leveraged the crisis to consolidate its leadership within NATO and secure a pliant European bloc. The security umbrella comes at a steep price: the erosion of strategic autonomy.

For India, this European experience holds an urgent lesson. Nations that outsource their security eventually compromise their sovereignty. Dependency is never neutral; it reshapes the very architecture of decision-making. 

If India, lured by the promise of protection or partnership, were to surrender its strategic autonomy to Washington, it would find itself in a position akin to that of Europe today—an informal protectorate where foreign and economic policies are calibrated not to national interests but to the preferences of a distant capital.

India’s post-independence foreign policy—whether under Nehru’s non-alignment or today’s multi-alignment—has been animated by a single principle: autonomy. Strategic partnerships are valuable; strategic dependence is fatal. In an age of shifting power blocs, it is tempting for middle powers to “rent” security from a superpower. 

But as Europe demonstrates, the rent soon becomes tribute.

Sovereignty in the 21st century is not merely a question of territorial integrity; it is a question of decision-making independence. The true measure of freedom is not who guards your borders but who sets your policies. Europe chose security at the cost of autonomy. India must ensure it does not repeat that mistake.

As Kautilya observed in the Arthashastra, “Dependence upon another is the root of all weakness.” Today, that ancient warning rings truer than ever.