Europe’s Strategic Transformation: Implications for the Mediterranean Region

Europe’s security environment is being reshaped by US strategic retrenchment and Russian revisionism in the east, accelerating the shift toward greater European responsibility for deterrence and defence. As Europe’s political attention, military planning and resources concentrate on NATO’s eastern flank and support for Ukraine, its capacity for sustained engagement beyond those core areas is narrowing. At the same time, the Mediterranean retains critical relevance for European security as an enabling space for logistics, reinforcement and operational access to the Balkans and the Black Sea, providing depth and flexibility for deterrence along NATO’s southeastern flank. The resulting mismatch between Europe’s declining bandwidth for southern engagement and the Mediterranean’s continued strategic importance creates structural tension in European security planning, with implications for force posture, mobility and crisis response across Europe’s southern periphery.