NATO and the United States

By George Friedman,

The president-elect has pointed out a reality many choose to ignore.

President-elect Donald Trump deeply upset the Europeans by raising the possibility that NATO is obsolete and that the European Union is failing. This is not the first time these issues have been raised. Many in the United States have raised questions about Europe’s commitment to NATO and to its relationship with the U.S. Many Europeans also have made the observation that the EU is failing. What Trump has done is simply bring into the open the question of Europe’s relationship with the U.S.

This question has been on the table for 25 years, since the Soviet Union collapsed. NATO was an alliance with a single purpose: to protect Western Europe from a Soviet invasion. That was a clear and understandable goal in the interest of all concerned. The military structure that was created was directed toward that end. And it reflected the relative economic and military strength of each party at the time of NATO’s founding. The Europeans bore the geographical risk. Any war would be fought on their territory, and their forces would face the first wave of an attack. In the long term, American reinforcements, air power and, in an extreme case, nuclear weapons would protect Europe. The foundation of the relationship was that Europe, with the best will, could not afford to build a sufficient defensive force. The U.S. was the indispensable force that could deter and defeat a Soviet attack.

he basic structure of NATO did not change in 1991. What happened was an expansion to include the former Soviet satellite states and the Baltic states. Little military consideration was given to that expansion. Europe no longer faced a military threat. The motive behind the expansion was to bring these countries into the framework of the Western defense system to give them confidence in their independence and help support the development of democracies on the Continent.

The motivation was roughly the same as for expanding the EU. The bloc was primarily an economic entity. It expanded its membership without serious thought to its economic mission. Simply being an EU member was believed to enhance prosperity, so that even the economically weakest countries would become robust after attaining membership. The real motive was to expand the EU as far as possible, to integrate as much of Europe as possible into the political and social culture that the union guaranteed. As with NATO, EU expansion had less to do with the EU’s primary mission than with political and ideological factors.

The EU question is ultimately a European problem. The U.S. can’t save it, and it won’t collapse because of American opinion. Here, the Europeans must take responsibility for what happens. But NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It includes Canada and the United States. It is an alliance, and the U.S. has important and legitimate interests.

For 25 years, the fundamental question regarding NATO was not raised in polite company – that is, in the company of NATO countries’ leadership. That question, from the American point of view, divides into three parts. First, with the Soviet Union gone, what is NATO’s purpose? Second, how does NATO serve the American national interest? Third, given the fact that the EU has almost as large a GDP and almost 200 million more people than the U.S., why isn’t Europe’s collective contribution to NATO’s military capability larger than the U.S.’? By contribution, I don’t simply mean money, but a suitably large, trained and equipped force able to support the wars that are being fought now.

The automatic answer to the first question is that NATO’s purpose is to guarantee its members’ security. On the second question, it can’t be argued that NATO has served American interests since 1991. For the last 15 years, the U.S. has been engaged in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and other Muslim countries. Whether wise or not, these wars have been waged to different degrees under both Republican and Democratic administrations. NATO is a military alliance and one of its members, the United States, has been involved in wars for 15 years. NATO as an institution has not devoted anywhere near the military force it could afford to any of these wars.

It is true that NATO’s area of responsibility is focused on Europe, and the U.S.’ current wars are outside of this area. But from the American point of view, maintaining an alliance with a region where large-scale warfare is unlikely makes little sense. The place where the U.S. needs a large commitment from allies is outside of Europe. NATO must evolve with the needs of its members, and if it can’t, it can be seen (as Trump put it) as obsolete, an alliance created to fight a war that will not happen, and unable to fight a war that has happened.

Trump’s approach to NATO has been forced on the U.S. by the Europeans and would be on the table with a different president. NATO doesn’t function as an alliance. It is a group of sovereign nations that will respond to American requests as they see fit. The U.S. understands this, and inevitably, the veil of good manners was going to be torn away. Someone was going to point out that NATO is obsolete. Trump happened to enjoy saying it.

But whether it is a tragedy or comedy, the matter can be summed up the following way. The Europeans are wondering if the U.S. will leave NATO. The U.S. is wondering if the Europeans will join NATO. Forgetting NATO, the question is this. What is the commitment of European countries to the United States, and what is the American commitment to Europe? It is not clear that there is a geopolitical basis for this commitment any longer. Interests have diverged, NATO is not suited to the realities of today, and the U.S.’ relations with European states differ from nation to nation, as do European nations’ relations to the United States.

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