“The biggest danger to Europe is the invitation to Putin to miscalculate”.
Trump’s Security Strategy is not a National Security Strategy and thus not a national position. It reflects a minority viewpoint albeit a minority in power. NSS 2025 reflects deep divisions within the US body politic and American society. Such divisions mean “Europe right now cannot trust the US” not least because “the US is heading into political turmoil over the next year”.
However, it is important because its purpose “is to provide some logic to the stuff coming out of the White House”. NSS 2025 also reveals the extent to which the US is becoming over-stretched and the influence of the New Right on the Administration. There is also a structural shift underway in US foreign policy and if Washington is to deal with China and Russia, Europeans must do far more for their own defence in Europe (that was also the real message of Rutte’s Berlin speech).
Europeans must bear some of the responsibility for their demotion in US “critical vital national interests” because they have repeatedly ignored warnings about US over-stretch by failing to invest sufficiently in their own defence. NSS 2025 thus reflects the growing irrelevance of Europe to Americans and in the wider world, even if Americans still support NATO and Europeans.
Europeans will not be able to defend Europe by 2027, but there are some Europeans at least beginning to respond. German defence expenditure is markedly up, although “Britain is only pretending to”. An immediate crisis beckons if Trump tries to coerce Europeans to accept a ‘peace’ in Ukraine that is unacceptable to them.
The political divisions in the US are also evident in Europe with the New Right also on the rise in response to what is perceived as failed Establishments. This ‘cultural element’ in Europe’s political struggle includes those who are pro-Putin and anti-defence. Forging a political consensus in Europe will thus be as hard as ever, particularly at a time when so many Europeans are looking inwards. Trump has “declared war on the EU and European liberalism” at a time of European weakness and division. Europeans are in the invidious position of “being under attack from China, Russia and Trump”.
Practical consequences? There will be further reductions of US troops in Europe when the National Defense Strategy is published.
Next steps? “No relationship is healthy if one side has become so dependent on the other”. Europeans must thus end their dependence on the US for whilst NSS 2025 implicitly emphasises the need for allies it also dismisses the influence of them. Therefore, if NATO is to survive the inherent grand strategic stresses with which the US must contend it is European and Canadians who will have to save it.
Julian Lindley-French