“Everything is now thrown in the air”.
Headline: The Biden administration had hoped to use the NATO 75 Washington summit to showcase Biden as the leader of the free world, to demonstrate more equitable burden-sharing to strengthen deterrence and defence and demonstrate to Americans the importance of the Alliance to Washington’s world-wide mission. The headlines were about Biden’s “gaffes”.
Two themes ran through the debate: the crisis in American leadership and the dominance of short-term national politics over longer term Alliance strategy. The need to Biden-proof the Alliance was now as important as Trump-proofing NATO at what was the ‘waiting for America to decide’ summit. There was also a divide between practitioners and analysts over the extent of the political crisis in the US and its implications for the Alliance. The practitioners pointed to the successes of the Alliance: increased defence expenditure with 23 of the 32 allies spending 2% or more of GDP on defence, the strengthened enhanced forward presence, the accession of Finland and Sweden, and increased support for Ukraine with the “bridge” to (eventual) membership. The analysts suggested that given the depth of the political crisis and the scope and scale of emerging strategic threats, incrementalism might not be enough and that simply avoiding a political failure at the summit was not a success.
With Biden’s malaise now all too evident the Alliance was ‘waiting for Trump’ who is already threatening to sack Rutte because of his poor record on Dutch defence investment and will also need convincing that “Ukraine is still worth fighting for”. Trump is also likely to threaten to cut aid to Kyiv to force the Ukrainians to settle with Russia and thus accept the loss of its eastern oblasts. Politics in Western Europe is in no better shape. Britain has a new and untried government, France is mired in a political morass, whilst Germany announced a real terms cut to its defence budget on the eve of the summit. Europeans are also divided over the salience of the threats posed by Russia and the consequences of instability in the Middle East.
Equally, over NATO’s 75-year life span there have been 30 such summits and everyone of them faced contentions and yet most if not all made progress by taking incremental steps. Therefore, it is important to both focus on fundamentals and see NATO not simply in a Euro-Atlantic context but a global context. Europeans must now demonstrate to Americans they are sensitive to US security needs. Trump-proofing the Alliance will also demand the Allies recognise the US will pivot hard towards the Indo-Pacific and probably reduce troop numbers in Europe. The Euro-centric NATO Force Model is a clear and realistic plan to offset such force reductions so long as Europeans meet the force and resource challenge. There have been marked increases in European defence investment in the ten years of Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure as NATO Secretary-General but Europeans will also need to generate far more military effect by spending far better. It may not be NATO’s Thelma and Louise moment but there could be a cliff out there somewhere. After all, Trump does not do incrementalism.
Julian Lindley-French