The United States will remain Israel’s indispensable ally for the foreseeable future. No other country can match its military assistance, diplomatic backing, intelligence cooperation or political intimacy that has defined the U.S.-Israel relationship for decades. But wise foreign policy begins with a simple premise: Even the strongest alliance cannot become a strategic liability.
That is now the challenge facing Israel.
The American body politic is changing in ways that Israel can no longer ignore. Public opinion has shifted sharply against Israel, especially among Democrats, independents and younger voters in both parties, constituting a dramatic reversal from long-standing U.S. opinion. Even if Washington remains formally committed to Israel’s security, the domestic foundation for that support is becoming less stable.
This is not an argument for downgrading the alliance with the United States. It is an argument for more strategic autonomy—for reducing Israel’s exposure to pressure from any single capital, however friendly. That means broadening and deepening ties with key European countries, the European Union and NATO.
Five macro trends make this case urgent.
First, an increasingly influential ideological coalition is gaining strength across the West: a mix of hard leftist groups, Third Worldists and Islamists who use the shibboleths of capitalism, oppressors/oppressed, colonizers/decolonizers and Free Palestine to craft a grand narrative that seeks to delegitimize Israel and undermine the West. In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s radical progressive slate showed how this grand narrative can become a fault line in Democratic politics.
In Britain, this alliance is radicalizing politics on the left, while Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, has become the darling of his country’s Red-Green Alliance by taking every chance to denigrate Israel. Yet Slovenia’s abrupt change from anti-Israel to pro-Israel orientation demonstrates that these forces have not completely overtaken Western governments, even as they shape the political atmosphere in which governments operate.
Second, the U.S.-Israel relationship is entering a period of sharper and more public tension than at any point in recent memory, and it goes well beyond public opinion, reaching all the way to the top. U.S. President Donald Trump vacillates between praising Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and insulting him; allows Israel’s freedom of action, then ridicules it; and goes from partnering with Israel to destroy the Iranian regime to sidelining Israel while Washington now seems hell-bent on supporting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
A mature Israeli strategy cannot be built on the hope that personalities will solve structural problems. It must assume that Washington’s support, while perhaps enduring, may also become more conditional, more partisan and more transactional.
Third, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine has transformed Europe. Germany increased military spending by 24% in 2025, according to SIPRI, crossing the 2% of GDP threshold for the first time since 1990 and setting a goal of reaching 3.1% of GDP in 2027. Poland, the Baltic states and other NATO frontline countries are spending at levels once thought politically impossible. Member-state defense spending in the European Union rose more than 30% between 2021 and 2024. This matters because Europe is becoming more security-minded, threat-conscious and open to serious defense partnerships.
Fourth, immigration and demography are changing the political map of Europe—and, with it, Israel’s national security center of gravity. Western Europe has seen migration pressures intensify identity politics and deepen the appeal of anti-Israel activism. Eurostat and the E.U. Agency for Asylum show that asylum flows remain heavily concentrated in Western and Southern Europe.
Central and Eastern Europe have generally been less transformed by these demographic trends. This suggests that Israel’s center of gravity in Europe, while still centered on the E3 group of nations, should continue shifting to Germany, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Eastern Mediterranean—countries that tend to think in harder strategic terms and are less susceptible to the ideological fashions of Western metropolitan politics.
This shift is already visible.
Greece, Cyprus and Israel have institutionalized trilateral cooperation on defense, security, energy and regional connectivity. Israeli leaders have recently described the Czech Republic as a “natural and stable gateway” to Central Europe and pointed to expanding trade, defense and research ties. These are not symbolic gestures; they are the scaffolding of a new European strategy.
Fifth, trade, energy and economic security are pushing in the same direction as geopolitics. The European Union is already Israel’s largest trading partner, with bilateral goods trade reaching $49.4 billion in 2025. Energy, infrastructure and trade routes could deepen that interdependence further. The EastMed-Poseidon project aims to connect Eastern Mediterranean and Gulf energy resources directly to European markets. The United States, Israel, Greece and Cyprus (3+1) recently signed a Memorandum of Intent to advance their strategic partnerships for energy security, defense and security, trade and diplomacy.
Enter IMEC. The India-Middle-East-Europe-Economic Corridor, which also has U.S. support, envisions Israel as a vital link in a shipping-and-rail corridor running from India through the Gulf to southern Europe and onward into Germany. In other words, Israel is not merely seeking European goodwill. It has the potential to become indispensable to Europe’s energy resilience, trade diversification and regional connectivity.
Israel should draw the obvious conclusion. It does not need a replacement for America. It needs options that will support Israeli, American and Western interests beyond a growing dependency on America.
That means investing diplomatic capital in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe; expanding defense-industrial cooperation with European countries that are rearming; strengthening trade and joint research opportunities with the European Union; and using frameworks like NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue to deepen practical cooperation in maritime security, cyber defense, interoperability and critical infrastructure protection.
The U.S.-Israel alliance will remain the cornerstone of Israeli national security. But cornerstones are not structures. As the world becomes more volatile and America becomes less dependable, Israel needs to create a broader structure of support. Europe, especially those on the Continent who think strategically, must become a larger part of this future coalition.
