Core message: Western European leaders fear that any escalation will provide Russia with an advantage and are thus muted in their response to Russian aggression . NATO has made progress in strengthening its defence and deterrence posture and it is premature to talk of ‘re-decoupling’. If there is decoupling it is economic rather than military, but history suggests the one can lead to the other.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s NATO was profoundly divided by Soviet attempts to ‘de-couple’ the US strategic nuclear arsenal from the defence of Europe. This demarche led to profound political divisions within the Alliance. This TAG Virtual Conference posed two questions. First, is the US decoupling from the defence of Europe due to global overreach. Second, are the three most powerful Western European powers, Britain, France and Germany, effectively decoupling from the defence of NATO’s eastern flank.
The general view was that if the major European allies continue to promise major increases in defence expenditure but fail to deliver or resort to more creative accounting a profound schism could re-emerge in the Alliance. Despite recent hikes in European defence expenditures, the slow pace of reform of Western Europe’s defence, technological and industrial base could deepen tensions with both the US and Central and Eastern European allies. Russia will do all it can to exacerbate such tensions.
The sheer challenge of spending more on defence across much of Europe is acute despite the warnings from intelligence chiefs of the growing threat of further direct and indirect Russian threats against Europe. Tensions clearly exist between the elite political class and security class. The essential problem is a lack of political will and the absence of leadership across Western Europe caused by a “paralysis of finance and paralysis of anxiety”.
To offset Western European weakness and appeasement multilateralism is being replaced by ‘minilateralism’ – small coalitions within the framework of the Alliance such as Poland and the Baltic States and the Scandinavian countries. Equally, a semblance of collective actions remains, as evinced by Italian F-35s escorting Russian Mig-31s which last week entered Estonian airspace illegally. A Russian demarche which was designed to test both NATO’s response and its unity of purpose.
The progress made should also be acknowledged. Finland is now a member of the Alliance and was an active participant in Exercise Atlantic Trident. It is also important not to be overly gloomy, not least because NATO’s Regional Plan is effective, the DDA and greater devolved command authority to SACEUR are just part of a series of improvements that “put NATO imn a far better place than it was in 2014”. Defence spending is on the rise and the European Defence, Technological and Industrial Base is being strengthened. The core weakness concerns how to accelerate Europe’s rearmament and that is not being addressed.
There was a warning: decoupling is a reality, and it goes much deeper than military cohesion. There is a crisis of patriotism on both sides of the Atlantic, but particularly acute in Europe with citizens seemingly less willing than ever before to defend their countries. This crisis is being fuelled by a “systemic demographic shift”. A call for greater European strategic autonomy was countered by a suggestion that the “defence of Europe is not the same as European Defence” because the latter demands a level of political solidarity that simply does not exist. Critically, NATO is the only strategic headquarters capable of credibly leading the defence of Europe.
The US is not becoming decoupled from Europe yet, although Vice President JD Vance continues to stress the differences between the US and its Allies. The Alliance is also suffering from tensions between one over-mighty mercurial leader in the US and a host of weak and irresolute leaders in Europe. This is leading to fragile relationships within the Alliance which could see not only the US decoupling from Europe but also Western Europeans decoupling from the defence of their Allies in Eastern Europe. This is certainly Putin’s dream. Southern Europe? The shared challenge of mass immigration means Western Europeans have no choice but to engage therein.
Julian Lindley-French