Different visions for Europe

Following U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe could no longer rely on others, by which she clearly meant that Europe could no longer rely on the United States.

The statement undoubtedly arose in part from her personal friction with Trump. Part of it had to do with politics: Trump is unpopular in Germany, and the German public, particularly the left, has had doubts about the German-American relationship. The country has federal elections in September, and Merkel is under pressure. Her statement generated support from segments of the population that don’t normally support her.

But underneath personality and politics, there is a geopolitical reality that has been in place since 1991 and is now emerging fully into view. This reality is that Europe is fractured and, as a whole, its interests have diverged from those of the United States.

Beneath his unusual demeanour during the trip, Trump was representing a view – a rational view – that is increasingly common in the United States. This view holds that NATO was created as a coalition of countries with identical interests: preventing the Soviet Union from invading and occupying western Europe. NATO was successful because its purpose was clear, there was a deep consensus, and although the U.S. carried much of the burden of defense, other European countries, particularly Germany, carried a share of that burden proportionate to their ability – and would bear the brunt of a Soviet invasion. The alliance made sense.

The alliance persisted after the fall of the Soviet Union and expanded to include the countries that had been Soviet satellites. The political purpose of expansion – helping to integrate new countries into the West – was understandable, but without an obvious adversary, NATO as a primarily military alliance no longer made sense. The laser precision of the bloc’s Cold War mission was replaced by a vague mission and an uncertain vision.

In the meantime, 9/11 launched the United States into a series of wars in the Middle East. Whether they were wise is immaterial at this point; they were the primary military focus of the U.S. But though the Americans’ invocation of Article 5 (the principle of collective defense) committed NATO to the war in Afghanistan, how much individual members contributed was up to them. And in Iraq, where Article 5 was not invoked, many NATO members chose not to participate at all. Germany played no part in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, it deployed a relatively small force with tight restrictions on combat operations.

The Americans understood the technicalities. They also understood that NATO was no longer very relevant to the problems the United States was facing. Bilateral relations took precedent over relations with NATO. The U.S. moved closer to the United Kingdom and smaller countries, particularly in eastern Europe, that were prepared to commit what they could to the wars in the Middle East. It became increasingly difficult for the Americans to think of Europe as a whole: it didn’t behave as a whole, and the Euro-American alliance didn’t extend beyond NATO’s mission – a mission that appeared to have expired.

The mission was somewhat revived by the RussoGeorgian war in 2008, and even more in 2014 with the uprising in Ukraine. The Russians appeared to be growing more aggressive. However unlikely a Russian invasion was, NATO was committed by treaty to defend the Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. It had to have forces on hand to deter or repel Russian action.

The problem was that NATO couldn’t deploy enough force for the mission – the mission for which it was founded. Even the wealthiest members, like Germany, lacked a force that could protect Europe’s eastern frontier. This left the United States in a position where, if NATO were called on to defend a member, it would be the prime mover, as it had been since the alliance’s founding. Many in Europe argued that the danger was low, but those nearer to the front line – the Balts, the Poles and the Romanians – didn’t share their confidence and had a reasonable expectation for NATO to function as designed.

To this point, the Americans were disappointed but understood that many European NATO members provided the force they wanted to provide to the wars they chose. But 2014 raised the spectre of a European war, and what the U.S. saw was many of its NATO allies, particularly Germany, offering ample advice and playing a role in diplomacy but lacking, by choice, the force to carry out their NATO obligation relative to the size of their economies.

It was then that the divide between the U.S. and NATO became a domestic political problem in the United States. The foreign policy technocrats in Washington accepted as a given that the European commitment to NATO would not evolve to reflect the economic equality between the continents. The rising nationalist segment of the American populace opposed fixed institutionalised relationships, particularly those that did little to meet the needs of the U.S. and that involved unequal burden sharing.

It was this group that Trump represented while he was in Brussels. Merkel’s response to him – essentially saying Europe should take care of itself – would shock the foreign policy technocrats, but the nationalists regarded it as simply the logical conclusion of Germany’s behaviour. They welcome Europe’s commitment to self-reliance, and they will continue their military relationship with the United