The Hague summit displayed a rather negative image of the “most powerful” military alliance in history and instead revealed its weakness. First, because it was a very short meeting, with an agenda reduced to a single working session during which the Allies refrained from discussing issues directly related to the security of the Euro-Atlantic area—the war in Ukraine in the first place. Secondly, because to maintain unity, the Secretary-General had to engage in a very embarrassing exercise of flattery and sycophancy towards the American President.
The latter obtained what he had come for, the promise to continue the increase in the Alliance’s military spending, which has been in a way the quest for the Holy Grail of all the American presidents since the Council meeting in Lisbon in February 1952.
To this end, the Allies have agreed to increase their defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, divided between 3.5% for forces and equipment and 1.5% for expenditures participating in the defence effort (protection of infrastructure and networks, industrial capabilities, resilience, civil preparedness, etc.). This is an ambitious goal considering that NATO hopes (but does not really believe it?) that this year all Allies will reach the 2% target agreed in 2014, more than ten years after the Wales’s summit pledge. However, this initiative is only a short-term success, above all intended to satisfy the American president. It does not solve the Alliance’s longer-term problems, particularly the question of the place of Europeans in the transatlantic relationship.
The “transatlantic bond” is indeed today sanctified by non-American allies as an expression of their dependence on the United States. They outsource their security to the Americans and in exchange, do not oppose or support their foreign policy (also abdicating sometimes their own independence in this area). Donald Trump is shaking up this dogma and maintaining an ambiguity on the guarantee offered in the event of an invocation of Article 5 of the treaty. More importantly, he also affirmed during his press conference, “the need for the other NATO members to take up the burden of the Defence of Europe and that includes the financial burden”.
It is therefore time for the Europeans to agree on a vision and an ambition to get NATO out of this impasse and to propose a rebalancing of the transatlantic relationship, and therefore a division of tasks, which would be in the interest of both parties.
To do this, they must succeed in untying the Gordian knot of European defence, which can be described as follows.
On the one hand, the Americans say they want the Europeans to take more responsibility for the defence of Europe, but are reluctant to give up the leadership to them because of a lack of confidence in their abilities and because they can obtain support for their foreign policy as well as commercial profits via arms sales. The Europeans, on the other hand, would like to be able to take on more responsibilities but are hesitating for fear of triggering an American disinterest in Europe, because they do not have confidence in their own abilities and above all, because of a lack of political will. The knot seems even more inextricably linked as President Trump maintains ambiguity about the nature of the American commitment in the event of a conflict and the volume of American forces that will leave Europe.
However, it is desirable that the Europeans succeed in untying the knot first rather than having a radical solution imposed on them. To do this, they must manage to collectively agree on their role in European security according to three dimensions: European, Atlantic and Euro-Atlantic.
The European dimension raises the question of the future of the CSDP. Today, all but four EU member states (Austria, Cyprus, Ireland and Malta) are also members of NATO. There is also a consensus that the main mission of the armed forces is the collective defence of Europe and that NATO is the only organisation capable of organising it. This, therefore, raises the question of the role of the CSDP and the interest of building a European “strategic autonomy” outside NATO. This autonomy could also, in the first instance, be obtained by “Europeanizing” the Alliance, i.e. by taking on more responsibilities and being a force for proposal. In this case, the question would also be whether the CSDP would be kept as it is or whether it should be merged into NATO.
If the principle of a “Europeanisation” of NATO were to be accepted, then the Europeans—in the geographical sense of the term now—would have to include it in the Atlantic dimension to propose a better balance within the Alliance.
In effect, this would amount to making NATO the organization it should have been and never was. It should be remembered that the Alliance was created at the request of the Europeans and that the American involvement was considered in Washington to be temporary. The objective was to allow the Western European states—France, the United Kingdom and Germany in particular—to regain their military power after the Second World War to allow the repatriation of American forces to the USA. The Europeans were then supposed to be able to ensure the leadership of the Alliance in the face of the Soviet threat.
To “Europeanize” NATO, the Europeans have the choice between creating a hypothetical “European pillar” that has been talked about since the early 1990s and which never really saw the light of day or proposing to take the leadership. To symbolize this, they should then claim the appointment of a European general officer to the post of SACEUR who could command both NATO operations and CSDP missions, if the latter were to merge into the Alliance. In this case, it would be natural for his deputy to be an American general officer who would coordinate with the American forces that would have remained in Europe, including in the nuclear field. It would also have the advantage of showing the determination of the Europeans while testing the willingness of the Americans to give up their leadership. Above all, it presupposes that Europeans are ready to take on this responsibility and have enough confidence in themselves to do so.
This assumption of responsibility within NATO will then force the Europeans to think about the Euro-Atlantic dimension. They will indeed be on the front line to deter Russia and defend themselves, with or without American support. They must therefore question their relationship with Moscow within the future security architecture that should emerge from the end of the conflict in Ukraine. Today, walls are being built again in Europe, thirty-six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the Iron Curtain. There seems to be a consensus to accept the idea that at the end of the war in Ukraine, the Alliance will have an enduring enemy on its eastern border and that the question will not be “if” but “when and where” it will attack. However, living in a permanent state of war does not really make sense at a time when the international context is hardening and becoming more complex. It is therefore cardinal that Europeans know how to develop their own vision of a new European order, even if this will be difficult. In effect, the Eastern Allies today feel, rightly, in the same state of vulnerability that the founders of the Alliance felt in the fifties and are not inclined to compromise with Moscow.
Europeans were not influential in the construct of the new Euro-Atlantic area after 1991. They must hear today the American president stressing in The Hague that ” Europe stepping up to take more responsibility for its security will help prevent future disasters like the […] situation with Russia and Ukraine “. If they accept it, the Europeans must therefore propose their vision of the organisation of the future European security architecture, and assume that it is respected, to avoid the hypothesis of a major conflict with Russia.
The answers provided to these three dimensions could thus make it possible to untie the Gordian knot of European defence. This reflection will also have to involve Canada, which could choose to disengage from Europe to focus on the Arctic issue.
There is a good chance, however, that Europeans will not have the courage to acknowledge the impasse in which NATO finds itself today and that they will continue to believe that “daddy” will always be there when they need him. But they should also ask themselves whether he will really want to protect those he considers to be economic adversaries, whose protection costs the American taxpayer money, and who are arguably able to defend themselves without any support, given the gap between the sum of their defence budgets and Russia’s.
Since the Americans want the Europeans to take more responsibility, the latter must therefore anticipate this transition. To do this, they must first assume the commitments they have just made in The Hague and then agree with Washington on a timetable for the transfer of responsibilities that they will commit to keep. Otherwise, the alternative may be that this transition is brutally imposed on them and that they are not prepared for it.
BGen (Ret’d) Frédéric Pesme was Executive Assistant to SACT (2013-2015) and Deputy Director of the Policy and Capabilities Division of NATO’s International Military Staff (2018-2022).
