The New Security Math in Reykjavík

By Kevin D. Williamson

Friday, August 28, 2026

 

The small island nation of Iceland—population about that of Wichita, Kansas—will vote on Saturday on the question of whether to reinstate talks, suspended more than a decade ago, about joining the European Union.

 

This is not mainly a matter of economic calculation: As a member in good standing of the European Economic Area, Iceland already enjoys the major economic benefits of EU membership—free movement of goods, services, capital, and people—but retains control of its own currency and enjoys somewhat wider policy discretion than it would as a full EU member.

 

Both those Icelanders in favor of and those opposed to further European integration—the issue is nearly 50/50 in the latest poll, a bare majority in favor—present the question as one of sovereignty. Iceland already is obliged to follow the majority of EU rules, most of which are economic in nature—“economic” defined very broadly, encompassing environmental and consumer-rights regulations as well as those strictly related to trade and commerce—and those in favor of pressing toward full EU membership argue that Iceland’s interests would be better served, and its sovereignty made more fully operational, if the country had a vote as an EU rule-maker rather than persist as a passive EU rule-taker, beholden to Brussels but with minimal influence. Those opposed argue that Iceland, with its tiny population, would continue to have only a small voice in the European Union, while full EU membership would impose on Iceland’s sovereignty to a greater extent than does EEA membership. There are reasonable arguments on both sides.

 

My own view was, until recently, that Iceland’s arrangement probably should be what EU membership looks like for all the member states: access to a liberal trade bloc and recourse to the necessarily imperfect instruments of cross-border policy harmonization. (I never thought much of the euro and still don’t: Even back at the turn of the century, when the single currency was adopted, the existence of relatively efficient foreign-exchange mechanisms together with the serious costs and risks associated with imposing a unified monetary policy across a group of socioeconomically diverse countries seemed to me to make the euro a very mixed bag, whatever its symbolic value in forging a sense of “European” identity.) But that calculation assumed a fact no longer in evidence: the durability of a U.S.-led security alliance among the world’s liberal democracies.

 

Iceland has no military to speak of, but the country had little need for a security guarantee from the European Union when it had one from NATO, of which it is a founding member. With all due respect to our European allies, the European Union has had, and continues to have, limited credibility in war-fighting. When Iceland suspended its negotiations with the European Union in 2013, it would have seemed a preposterous fantasy that an American president might ruthlessly undermine NATO, or even abandon it, while threatening to occupy and annex the sovereign territory of another NATO country. And it still is preposterous, but it is a preposterous fact, the work of our preposterous president.

 

Of course, it does not reassure the Icelanders that our evidently senescent commander in chief says “Iceland” about every third time he means to say “Greenland,” the desired annexation of which he continually revisits.

 

Economic sovereignty is not the only kind of sovereignty in question.

 

Full EU membership would be, at best, a second-best outcome for Iceland. But second-best outcomes are all that is available when Washington effectively cedes much of the field to Moscow and Beijing—while demonstrating a persistent American inability to achieve American ends when confronting a third-rate power such as Iran. The American disability demonstrated in Iran began as a political fact rather than a military fact, but as the Trump administration wages relatively effective war against the American military—chasing out the most experienced and talented senior officers, depleting material resources, abandoning multinational training work, etc.—the American lack of resolve is becoming an American lack of capability. When we’ve run through all the missile interceptors without providing for their replacement, it will be of little comfort to know that our secretary of defense does a pretty impressive bench press for a middle-aged man.

 

Becoming the 28^th member of the European Union would not do as much to restore Iceland’s security as would the reestablishment of American credibility, but, on the other hand, joining the European Union is something Iceland can do under its own steam. There must be at least a few South Koreans, some of them military commanders, who wish that their country had a similar option. Germany and France may not field the fiercest militaries in the world, but many threatened nations would rejoice to have such allies, the financial and technical support of which has done a good deal more to help Ukraine survive than has, say, J.D. Vance’s insipid hectoring of Volodymyr Zelensky.

 

A lifeline isn’t as good as a battleship, but one makes do as one must, and Iceland, which is closer to Russian Arctic territory than Chicago is to Boston, has not much room for error.