Military experts suggest that the core strength of NATO is its ability to consolidate varied threat perceptions among member states. They caution that an independent European army could risk creating fractures, leading to less rapid resource mobilization.

Speaking with FRANCE 24's Mark Owen, Jean-François Bélanger, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Military Operations at the Royal Danish Defence College, explains that "what NATO does really well at the moment is aggregate the different threat perceptions of its members" and a standalone European army risks of provoking a fracture "where security will become more regionalised" at the expense of rapid mobilisation of resources.