JNS | Europe Is Becoming Israel’s Most Important Geopolitical Strategy

Mark Sachs, a director with ELNET-US, argues that even as the United States remains Israel's most important ally, shifting American public opinion and an increasingly volatile relationship between Washington and Jerusalem mean Israel can no longer rely on a single strategic relationship. He points to Russia's war against Ukraine as a catalyst that has pushed European defense spending sharply upward -- Germany increased military spending by 24% in 2025, crossing the 2% of GDP NATO threshold for the first time since 1990, while European Union member-state defense spending rose more than 30% between 2021 and 2024 -- creating new openings for Israeli defense-industrial cooperation with countries such as Germany, Poland, the Baltic states, Greece, Cyprus and the Czech Republic. Sachs also highlights the economic dimension of this shift: the European Union is already Israel's largest trading partner, with bilateral goods trade reaching $49.4 billion in 2025, and he points to energy and connectivity projects such as EastMed-Poseidon and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) as evidence that Israel is becoming indispensable to Europe's energy resilience and trade diversification. His conclusion is not that Israel should replace its alliance with Washington, but that it should build a broader European structure of support -- investing diplomatically in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe and deepening cooperation through frameworks like NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue.