This is a seriously, seriously good article by Soeren Kern at Gatestone. An excerpt:
On March 21, less than a month after Russia invaded Ukraine, European officials announced an ambitious plan for the EU to achieve “strategic autonomy” aimed at placing the 27-member bloc on equal footing with China and the United States. The implicit objective was to enable a “sovereign” EU to act independently of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in matters of defense and security. That plan is now in shambles.
As the war has dragged on, European unity has collapsed and efforts to transform the European Union into a European superstate — a United States of Europe — have been exposed for what they are: delusions of grandeur.
It’s long, but if you only want to read one article today, this would be a good choice.
At the end of the day, there was never a European “defense” to unite. It was always the US and Russia.