As the NATO Summit nears, is the US–European security relationship dead, on life support or still in business?

As a former university professor, I used to tell my students that although international politics were always turbulent and unpredictable, there were two factors that those responsible for the affairs of state relied upon to steer a safe course through to more stable times ahead. One was that if new dangers suddenly threatened the transatlantic alliance, particularly in the form of surging military threats, the democracies on the inside would have a strong incentive to move closer together. Their internal resilience and sense of a shared security community would be tested but ultimately prevail. The opposite paradigm would also be true: that the transatlantic alliance could be riven by economic disputes, backsliding on democracy and bitter debates on fair burden-sharing; but as long as the external environment remained relatively stable, and no adversaries were able to take advantage of the divisions within the democratic camp, the transatlantic alliance would pull through eventually. This was certainly the case with President Trump’s first term in office, when the US President began to question the value of NATO and cast doubts on the US defence commitment to the alliance – not a message that was comfortable to listen to. But the allies were progressively withdrawing from Afghanistan at that moment rather than stepping up their engagements ‘out of area’, they were also winding down in Iraq, and although Putin had seized Crimea in 2014, the front lines in the Donbas were relatively stable. Talk of massively arming Ukraine or of putting European troops on the ground in that country or of doubling European defence budgets would have seemed very pie-in-the-sky. The Middle East was quiet too, Iran was, for a while at least, freezing its nuclear programme and China was not rehearsing almost-weekly amphibious operations on how to invade Taiwan. Trump made a lot of noise (as usual) but the Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council (in the hands of committed Atlanticists) got on with the day-to-day task of supporting NATO. So the nightmare scenario of new dangers on the outside going hand-in-hand with a collapse of common purpose and solidarity on the inside was thankfully avoided. My students did not need to panic or order books on how to survive a nuclear war from Amazon. At least, not just yet.

Fast forward five years and that time of relative stability has disappeared, probably for many years to come. Europe today stands in a geopolitical nutcracker. To the east, Vladimir Putin has not only invaded Ukraine in a manner that inevitably poses a wider threat to NATO member states, but has also put Russia on an industrial war footing, reminiscent of the way in which the Soviet Union churned out tanks and missiles by the thousands. Yet, to the west, we now also have a US President who has repeatedly questioned the value of NATO, blamed the Alliance for Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, threatened to withdraw the US security guarantee from certain allies who are delinquent in his view and warned the Europeans that they must now take over the conventional defence of European territory themselves. He has insisted that they raise national defence spending to 5% of their GDP, a figure well above what the US spends itself (3.4%). It would be challenging enough if one of these broadsides against NATO were happening at any given time. It would be easier for allies to restore deterrence against Russia if the US were willing to commit wholeheartedly to NATO and increase its forces and heavy equipment stockpiles in Europe. And it would be easier to rebalance NATO in favour of greater European responsibilities if Russia were not pursuing an expansionist policy that has underscored the Europeans’ continuing dependency on US capabilities, both for deterrence and war fighting. Certainly, the transition to greater European self-reliance could be carried out more slowly and the costs of rearmament, spread over several years, would be less damaging to European budget deficits or the welfare spending that European voters are so attached to.

But instead, we are in a self-inflicted transatlantic security crisis. Trump’s mixed messages on NATO are undermining the Alliance’s deterrence value even while the allies are spending more on defence and sending their forces on regular NATO exercises across Europe to knock them into fighting shape. Trump’s tariffs against European allies will make it harder for them to spend on defence without harming their economies further. Politically, it will make them more protectionist and less willing to buy US equipment. Canada has already talked about cancelling orders for F35 jets and Spain has announced that 85% of its extra €10bn of defence investment will be spent in Spain and used to generate 100,000 jobs. Europeans told to defend themselves will be less willing and able to send forces to the Asia Pacific to help out the US there. The criticism of European capabilities from the US Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, is based on a false and outdated view of European armies that dates back 20 years to the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan when Pentagon officials used to jibe that ISAF (the NATO-led International Security Force) stood for “I saw Americans fight”. NATO today is much more capable and “lethal”. Twenty three allies now meet the Alliance’s 2% of GDP spending target, compared to just four when Trump was last in office, and laggards, such as Italy, Spain, Belgium and Canada, have shortened their timelines to get to 2% this year. Many allies are already way above 2%, as with Poland and the Baltic states that are moving close to the Trump benchmark of 5% of GDP. A commitment by all allies to agree on a new defence spending pledge of at least 3% of GDP at NATO’s upcoming summit in The Hague in June should demonstrate to the US the serious and long-term commitment of the allies to modernise their armed forces and take on more missions within the Alliance. The NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, has proposed that the allies should commit to a defence spending target of 3.5% of GDP, with an additional 1.5 % to be devoted to “security” more generally. Although what would qualify as “security” in this additional spending category is far from clear and would no doubt be the subject of fierce debate among the allies. Yet, as Trump, according to some reports, has threatened not to come to the NATO summit unless the allies make more defence spending pledges, this initiative might do the trick with the truculent US President. Meanwhile, the addition of Finland and Sweden has significantly enhanced the size of NATO’s ground forces as well as maritime and air assets and its defence industrial base. If we look at NATO’s current defence posture facing Russia along its eastern borders, it is much more of a European affair today than during the Cold War when the defence of West Germany was largely based on the 326,000 US troops in four divisions and 13,000 US tanks stationed there or nearby. Today, it is Germany leading in Lithuania, Canada in Latvia, the UK in Estonia, France in Romania and Italy in Bulgaria. Poland is increasing its army by 50% and has just introduced voluntary military service. Eleven European countries now have conscription and many others, like France, Germany and Denmark are investing in reserve forces or home guards or voluntary forms of national service. Germany is establishing a whole army division to protect NATO’s supply lines, critical infrastructure and military mobility across its territory in wartime. Since the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Cavoli, produced his regional military plans for the defence of Alliance territory, adopted at the NATO summit in Vilnius in 2023, allies have used multiple combined arms exercises and training schedules to practice their ability to rapidly transport forces across Europe and to be fully interoperable with their allied and local partners for forward defence. In March, Exercise Steadfast Dart demonstrated the ability of thousands of European forces to deploy to Romania and Bulgaria without US support or logistics. Not a day goes by without European allies announcing new equipment purchases, or capability investments or the formation of new industrial partnerships to jointly produce armoured vehicles, ammunition and missiles or upgrade tanks and warships. NATO is not perfect, and given the range of foreign and internal, regional and global challenges that it faces, it probably never will be. Yet, Trump administration officials need to get out of their stereotypical mindset of seeing the Alliance as an instrument whereby feckless Europeans exploit naively generous Americans to do things that are not in the US long-term security interests. NATO deserves recognition and credit for the real transformation of its military capabilities that has been carried out since the first Russian invasion of Ukraine in March 2014. The Europeans are now prone to speak in terms of US abandonment, of US unreliability and the need for European strategic autonomy to stand on its own two feet. But, to the extent that European security still depends for the foreseeable future on a significant US military commitment, they also need to communicate the message of what is actually happening inside NATO much more effectively to Trump and his supporters inside the Washington beltway.

There never was a time when West-West relations within NATO were totally harmonious. The US has naturally questioned from time to time what it puts in and what it gets out

Moreover, and despite many gloomy predictions, there are no signs yet that the US will withdraw from NATO. European leaders like President Stubb of Finland or Prime Minister Meloni of Italy, who have recently met Trump at length, report that the President is not planning a US withdrawal, but rather focusing on his long-standing message regarding European defence spending and burden-sharing in the conventional domain. There has been no talk of the US removing its nuclear shield from Europe or the naval assets of the US Sixth Fleet based in Joint Forces Command in Naples, or the US Atlantic fleet headquartered at Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Despite rumours of the US stopping its participation in NATO exercises, US units regularly show up for joint training in Poland, the Baltic states and Finland, Norway recently signed an agreement with the Pentagon to base more US Air Force F35s in the country and Poland has offered more host nation finance to base more US troops and equipment in the country. The Pentagon announced that it is sending an aircraft carrier to the annual BALTOPS exercise in June. Of course, for NATO ambassadors, the unpredictability and the daily news cycle can be nerve-wracking. A paper from the White House Office of Management and Budget proposes big cuts to US funding of international organisations like the UN and NATO. Someone in the Pentagon suggests that the US should no longer fill the post of SACEUR or that troops cuts should be made in Europe. Yet, so far, the only change that the Pentagon has actually made is to withdraw a small number of US logistics specialists from a facility on the Polish eastern border that was coordinating the transfer of weapons to Ukraine. They have not returned to the US but have been relocated elsewhere in Poland. The SACEUR idea was abandoned within 24 hours when it was met with fierce resistance, including from Republicans in Congress. To make these points is not to be complacent about the future of the US role in NATO or to suggest that all is well within the Alliance. The crisis described above is real. But it is a time for cool thinking rather than panic and for developing a longer-term perspective. Much about this crisis is not new. Back in 2011, we experienced the US “leading from behind” during NATO’s Libya campaign and a pro-NATO Republican Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, issued the allies with a stern warning about the consequences of failure to address defence spending and burden-sharing. Back in the 1970s, Henry Kissinger proposed the switch of the SACEUR command to the Europeans. The linkage of US troops in Europe and the US Article 5 collective defence commitments to European purchases of American goods, energy, trade concessions or lower taxation of US companies is not new either. The Mansfield Amendments of the 1970s already tried to establish this linkage. US troop levels in Europe have constantly been adjusted as US forces redeployed to Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, the US has imposed on NATO periodic shifts in strategy and readjusted the balance of the Alliance’s nuclear and conventional forces. In the 1990s, the US hesitated for years before committing to peacekeeping in the Balkans and pursued the opposite military strategy to its European allies. Finally, in an attempt to heal the rift, the US Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, told the North Atlantic Council that “NATO is more important than Bosnia”. The US changed course and accepted to send troops to Bosnia to buttress the Europeans. There never was a time when West-West relations within NATO were totally harmonious. The US has naturally questioned from time to time what it puts in and what it gets out. And the Europeans have remained loyal to the theory of the US political scientist, John Ikenberry, that they are constantly balancing between the fear of US domination and the fear of US abandonment. So much of what we see from Trump today follows a familiar pattern. Previous generations of Alliance diplomats have had to juggle these contradictions and clashing forces, manage the frequent crises and disputes and keep NATO in business. That is once again the task now. What should the European strategy to preserve NATO be?

In first place, to recognise that the key change is not the reduction of US support for NATO or Article 5 but more the reduction of US support for security in the grey zone. Since the 1990s, the Alliance has viewed security in its neighbouring or partner countries around the periphery of Europe as existential for its own security. Hence, the long duration stabilisation missions in Bosnia and Kosovo, the support for Moldova and Georgia, the European counterterrorism operations in the Sahel, NATO’s intervention in Libya and more recently the allies’ massive military assistance to Ukraine to help it resist Putin’s aggression. These interventions were inspired by values such as respect for international law and human rights, but also based on a more pragmatic understanding that keeping these countries as independent partners, anchored as far as possible to the West, would keep threats at bay and lessen the burden on NATO. Hence, the fighting ability of a non-NATO army in Ukraine became vital to the defence of NATO territory itself. By indicating that it is reducing support for Ukraine and even threatening to give up its efforts to achieve a durable ceasefire and peace agreement, or by showing little interest in Georgia, the Western Balkans or conflicts in Africa, the US is leaving security in the grey zone to the Europeans. This may be short-sighted and handing Russia and China a victory on a plate at a time when many countries in the grey zone still look to NATO and EU membership and their populations do not want to be part of Russia’s sphere of influence. Moreover, US Realpolitik is not always convincing when it claims that Ukraine has lost the war and must therefore accept a Russian diktat. Ukrainians who have kept Russia at bay for over three years would not accept that conclusion. But clearly, for Europeans thinking about their future defence priorities, filling the security gap in the grey zone and building a strong network of security partnerships with their neighbours, including by keeping EU and NATO enlargement on the table wherever possible has to be top of the list.

That means that the first test of European self-reliance in this new world has to be taking over the burden of arming Ukraine and guaranteeing the security of the independent, sovereign Ukraine that survives the Russian onslaught. The fact that the US has recently resumed modest military aid to Kyiv in the wake of the signing of the bilateral minerals deal should not distract European allies from this priority. Europe has certainly been doing far more than you would think listening to Trump’s speeches. Already, the Europeans plus Canada have committed $23bn in assistance to Kyiv so far this year. They are investing in Ukraine’s defence industry as domestic production is faster and cheaper. A European coalition of the willing led by the UK and France is planning on how to use European land, air and naval forces in Ukraine post-conflict to train and equip Ukraine’s army to be an effective shield against further Russian aggression in the long term. This will also mean incorporating Ukraine’s capability requirements into Europe’s own future defence industrial production. A batch of 62 defence research contracts awarded by the European Commission from the European Defence Fund this past week and worth €910mn does include Ukraine. Failure would cast a long Russian military shadow across Europe, making European rearmament more urgent and expensive and perhaps persuading some pro-Moscow European countries to break ranks and try to cut separate deals with Putin. On the other hand, saving Ukraine can enhance cooperation between the EU and important allies participating in the coalition such as the UK, Norway, Turkey and Canada, not to forget Asia Pacific partners like Australia, Japan and South Korea, which have provided financial and military assistance. A long-term European presence in Ukraine can enhance interoperability among European forces and consolidate the various multinational consortiums that have been set up to arm Ukraine, such as the Czechs leading on 155 mm shells, the Dutch and Danes on F16s, Germany on Leopard tank upgrades and the UK, France and Germany on long-range artillery and tactical air defence. The European Peace Facility with €8bn has provided training for 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers. These multinational capability building and training groups can be absorbed post-conflict into the EU’s PESCO and European Defence Fund programmes to attract EU common funding and serve Europe’s own future restocking, rearmament and training requirements. Europeans are also constructing their own defence fabric through a series of bilateral security agreements. For instance, in the past week, France has concluded two security agreements, one with Poland and the other with Sweden. The EU is negotiating a joint declaration on security with the UK, which hopefully will be ready for the first post-Brexit EU-UK Summit on 19 March.

The money for a significant European rearmament programme seems finally to be there. A few years ago, when the EU was cutting back its European Defence Fund from €8bn to just €1.5bn, and when there was no fully fledged Defence Committee in the European Parliament and member states were arguing whether the Commission could have any responsibility for defence, it was unthinkable that a fund for defence procurement loans totalling €150bn (SAFE) would today be coming into existence. Or that the Commission would be allowing member states to use Cohesion and Covid recovery funds for defence infrastructure and industrial investments or allow member states to use up to 1.5% of their GDP for defence projects over four years without this counting against their budget deficits and exposing them to EU fines. In this way, the Commission hopes to raise €650bn for common defence programmes. Other initiatives concern the relaxation of ESG rules to facilitate more investment in defence by banks, venture capital markets and pension funds. The European Investment Bank in Luxembourg has given the signal by modifying its rules to allow investment in dual-capable defence technologies. Encouragingly, the EU has agreed that its investments must follow the NATO agreed capability targets and more transparency and coordination between NATO innovation projects, such as DIANA (the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic) and the EU’s own seven-year Horizon research budget (€95.5bn) will benefit both institutions and avoid duplication.

Yet, the question now is how is this money to be spent for maximum military benefit? First, it has to be used collectively to avoid 27 different national defence procurement programmes within the EU leading to the usual duplication and limited economies of scale in production lines, not to speak of competition for highly priced materials and components. The collective investments must not just reconstitute stocks of existing weaponry, but serve to build up the EU’s defence industrial base and R&D and high-tech sector so that the bloc can keep pace with emerging and disruptive technologies, such as artificial intelligence, counter drone systems, precision strike, bio-technology, data fusion and new materials. Working with NATO, the EU has to decide on 10 to 20 core military capabilities or key enablers that will give it the capacity to reduce its dependency on US enablers, hold back a Russian attack without early US reinforcement and regain quickly any territory lost to Russian forces. The choice of investment priorities would be much easier for the Europeans if the Trump administration provides clarity going forward on its force posture on NATO’s eastern flank. Which troop levels will remain? What will be the commitment of US reinforcements and on which timeline? Which strategic enablers such as airlift or satellite communications will Washington leave in place? The European Commissioner for Defence, Andrius Kubilius, has estimated that it would cost the EU around €500bn to acquire its own autonomous enablers. From a European viewpoint, the key US capabilities are air and missile defence, long-range fires, equipment storage and joint information, surveillance and reconnaissance systems. Extended US nuclear deterrence is essential too as the Europeans are a long way from devising an autonomous nuclear capability, even though France and Germany have started the debate. The test of the US nuclear commitment will come soon when Washington will need to modernise its tactical B61 nuclear bombs currently deployed in five European countries. Yet, in the final analysis, maintaining a significant US presence in the NATO command structure will enable joint planning to continue and a degree of intellectual interoperability with the US as its own military transformation moves forward. It will accelerate future US reengagement under a different administration. To placate the large US defence industry, many European countries will be tempted to continue to buy equipment in the US (where 60% of Europe’s foreign purchases currently take place) or to develop joint ventures with US companies. Trump will continue to see security through a commercial and economic prism as he has demonstrated vis-à-vis Ukraine and the minerals deal. But Europe needs to be mindful that the US defence industry needs urgent modernisation as well. The Ukraine war has shown that its own production speeds are very limited, especially in land capabilities. A new factory for ammunition had to be set up in Pennsylvania. The battlefield performance of some US systems, like HIMARS artillery, has also been suboptimal or, like Patriot air defence batteries, extremely expensive vis-à-vis the cost of drones and most categories of missiles. Thus, a cheaper European equivalent of Patriot currently being developed by MBDA makes eminent sense. As US industry retools and upgrades, it will supply the US military first and foremost and Europe second or later. This may be a greater concern for the European customers of the US than worries about ‘killer switches’ in US weapons. So, Europeans need to think carefully not only how to get the most benefits for future European infrastructure, innovation and a competitive economy from massive defence investments, but also how to guarantee security of supply chains and diversified production for the core military capabilities they will rely on for effective defence. One less discussed but important aspect concerns what kind of Russian army Europeans may need to fight in the future. In Ukraine, we have seen largely the Soviet army with Soviet doctrine and equipment stocks. Will this be the army that Putin reconstitutes in the next seven to ten years, or will he opt for something completely different, less conventional, more professional and with different tactics and operational culture, new equipment and high-tech weapons? European defence planners will face the challenge of building into their capability programmes enough flexibility and redundancy to cover the various scenarios of future Russian force development.

Finally, in addition to the grey zone, there is another area where Europeans cannot count on much US assistance. It is the area of hybrid warfare or foreign interference campaigns, notably organised by Russia. So, it is European navies and the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force that are currently patrolling the Baltic Sea to prevent further sabotage (deliberate or otherwise) of gas pipelines and telecommunications cables. Europeans need to guard their critical physical and digital infrastructure and build a Baltic and Eastern Shield along their flanks to protect their borders. It is a European responsibility too to build resilience against shocks, whether from deliberate aggression, cyber-attacks, pandemics or climate change, and to repatriate supply chains, increase domestic production of critical minerals and chemicals, and diversify energy sources. COVID-19 and joint responses to forest fires and flooding have brought the EU’s emergency and disaster management bodies much closer together. But the key challenge going forward is to preserve the political unity among Europeans themselves. The concept of coalitions of the willing to allow a core group of the willing and able to move ahead, unfettered by the slower movers or those like Hungary, ready to use veto powers, is no doubt a good one. But it carries the risk that a future European defence union will create a division between countries in the east, which are spending up to 5% of GDP on defence and ordering major new weapons platforms, building civil protection shelters and setting up voluntary national service schemes; and countries in the West that are less attuned to the Russian threat and investing in military modernisation at a much slower pace. One half of Europe will see the EU as an organisation to place Europe on a war footing. The other half will remain wedded to the traditional concept of the EU as a peace union. Such a technology and capability divide would also be corrosive of European solidarity and replace a transatlantic debate on burden sharing with an internal European one. Commissioner Andrius Kubilius has called on Spain in particular to double its defence expenditure. The ability of France and Germany to revive their traditional leadership role on EU strategic issues and of Germany itself to equip and upgrade the Bundeswehr to become the backbone of Europe’s conventional land defence and logistics hub for NATO operations will be key in binding other large EU countries, like Italy, Spain and Romania, into a European defence union. Currently, this is becoming largely dependent on Poland for both manpower and modern land warfare capabilities. In short, the EU needs to carry all its 27 member states along with it (as well as the UK and Norway), and the ad hoc coalition structures, regional groups like the Nordics, Weimar or Bucharest Nine, and capabilities consortiums that have sprung up during the Ukraine war will need to be integrated progressively into the common funding, management and decision-making structures of the EU. There is no substitute for the Commission and its budgets when it comes to industrial policy and defence science and research. Majority voting reforms on security and foreign policy issues can no longer be avoided if the EU is to keep pace with the changing security environment around the continent.

Of course, Trump’s policies will affect the geostrategic and economic environment in which a more European NATO will have to manoeuvre. Here, there are more questions than answers after the US President’s first 100 days. Will there be a full-blown US-EU trade war or will there be a trade deal on tariffs that allows transatlantic trade to prosper? Will the current US-Russia bromance last or will Trump become increasingly disillusioned with Putin’s unwillingness to accept peace in Ukraine (except on the Kremlin’s maximalist terms), its alliance with China and support for radical regimes in the Middle East? Will the current US-China trade war take on a more military and confrontational aspect or will Trump be able to achieve a trade deal here too that stabilises the relationship? The Ukraine minerals deal shows that Trump can be pushed back and give quite a lot of ground when he is confronted with a determined negotiator. But in a world full of uncertainty, the best policy for European diplomats and defence planners is to stick steadfastly to the things that are self-evident and to avoid self-fulfilling prophecies. Trump has focused so far on dismantling US soft power advantages, as in foreign and humanitarian aid, overseas public broadcasting, support for UN agencies and downgrading human rights, war crimes investigations and conflict prevention. He has been more cautious when it comes to sacrificing US hard power or military strength. NATO, with a strong US presence and commitment is still the best guarantee of European defence. Even with all the extra efforts they are capable of making, Europeans cannot construct a defence union which would be as effective as the current NATO arrangement. As long as Trump is not actually withdrawing from the Alliance, Europeans should not talk NATO down nor write it off. What the Europeans need to do in order to keep NATO strong and the US engaged is clear: more ambitious levels of defence spending, clear military modernisation plans and a willingness to take more responsibility for forward defence along the alliance’s land and maritime borders. As long as NATO is still functioning, the Europeans need to do all in their power to preserve it. Even with a reduced US role, the network of multinational NATO commands and agencies is tried and tested, and better than what the Europeans could create themselves. The NATO summit in The Hague in June needs to send a clear signal of the Europeans’ willingness to do these things. Yet, there are equally areas where the Europeans will need to act by themselves: grey zone security and taking the lead on Ukraine, defence investments and industrial policy, and internal resilience. That is where the debate on ‘European Strategic Autonomy’ now needs to be focused.

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.