Big changes are coming to America’s relationship with Europe. This was the subtext of remarks by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top Trump administration officials during the recent Munich Security Conference. Change is never easy, but the shift proposed by Rubio and others is long past due, both for the United States and its European allies.
NATO is the most successful military alliance of the modern era. But the world is very different from when NATO was launched in 1949. And like any successful relationship, NATO will have to adapt to a new era.
The changes that the Trump administration is proposing will put both the U.S. and its European allies on a more secure footing, ensuring that NATO not only endures, but that it thrives. It’s a worthy ambition.
When Americans think of “elsewhere,” the famed novelist Henry James wrote more than a century ago, they think of Europe. Indeed, in many respects, America is Europe’s offshoot. The U.S. came of age when Europe housed the preeminent powers of the world.
In his rightly lauded speech at Munich, Rubio noted that the fates of the country and continent are “intertwined.” The U.S. fought alongside its European allies in two world wars, and they worked together to stave off Soviet communism and win the Cold War. NATO, born from the ashes of World War II, was key to securing victory over the Soviets.
Lord Hastings “Pug” Ismay, NATO’s first secretary general, said that the alliance was built to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” This reflected concerns that the U.S. would retreat to isolationism, that the Soviets were the primary threat, and that, after two world wars, Germany’s hegemonic ambitions were on everyone’s mind.
The U.S. was the top partner in the alliance. Europe, after all, had been devastated by war. But it was very much a partnership, and one that was predicated on both the security challenges of the time and a U.S. doctrine that had the Soviet Union as its chief threat.
The world today is different. Both Europe and the U.S. have, to wildly varying degrees, embraced failed policies and championed flawed beliefs. Believing that the collapse of the Soviet Union created a “peace dividend,” they dramatically reduced their defense budgets, looked to “alternative energy,” and believed that international law and international institutions such as the United Nations would uphold a mythical “rules-based order.”
Yet the peace surplus never came. And now the U.S. confronts not one, but multiple, nuclear-equipped revisionist powers, China foremost among them.
The Chinese Communist Party seeks to supplant the U.S. as the world’s sole superpower. China has been engaged in the largest military buildup in modern history. Worse still, Beijing is transparently preparing for war: hoarding grain and fuel, building underground hospitals and landing barges for an amphibious invasion, rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal, laying the groundwork for sabotage on American soil, and orchestrating the largest cyberhack in U.S. history – perhaps, as former U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster speculated, to achieve a “first strike capability.”
The U.S. and its allies are ill-prepared for the threat. Over the course of recent decades, both the U.S. and Europe deindustrialized, outsourcing manufacturing abroad, often to China. Meanwhile, China is an “industrial powerhouse,” manufacturing most of the world’s goods. This represents an unprecedented challenge. Never in American history has the U.S. been reliant on its foremost foe for essential goods.
The U.S. confronts another titanic shift. For most of American history, Europe was the primary theater. After all, Europe was industrialized, and most of the world was not. This was why FDR’s decision to prioritize Europe over the Pacific during World War II made good strategic sense.
But now it is the Indo-Pacific region that will account for the majority of the world’s GDP. Whoever has mastery of the region stands to have a decisive influence across the globe. It could be the largest police state known to man, or it could be the U.S. and its allies.
This is a decisive moment, and it requires reconstituting the arrangements made on the eve of the last Cold War.
Our European friends confront pressing threats on their own continent, a revisionist Russia chief among them. Russia can’t match China’s industrial capacity, and it is very much the junior partner. But Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t lack ambition. Like numerous Russian leaders before him, he has a manifestly imperialist foreign policy, hoping to resurrect the empires of old.
A ‘NEW WORLD ORDER’ IS HERE, AND IT’S HERE TO STAY
To confront these challenges, the Trump administration has prioritized rebuilding the defense industrial base and restoring deterrence. Our European allies must do the same, increasing their defense spending, reconstituting their militaries, and turning to more reliable forms of energy.
For many, it won’t be easy. Anemic growth and generous social welfare programs will make increased defense spending difficult. It will be a challenge, but circumstances make it a necessity. Yet both Europe and the U.S. stand to benefit.
In his remarks at Munich, Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of war for policy, called for a “partnership, not a dependency.” Such an arrangement is better for the long-term interests of both. Europe will be more independent and better prepared to secure and safeguard its own interests. And NATO itself will be revitalized, better equipped to both succeed and endure in the rapidly changing global landscape.