NATO Missed a Chance to Transform Itself

Apart from the heat, the NATO summit went off without a hitch. Yes, Washington was consumed with the political whirlwind surrounding President Joe Biden. But for NATO, and the Biden administration, this was a mission accomplished: a no drama summit. NATO was back, returning to its Cold War roots deterring the Russians, adding new members, and seeing major increases in European defense spending. Nothing transformative was announced but not much was fought over, enabling the occasion to focus on celebrating NATO’s 75 years.

Yet for all the good vibes, there was also a dissonance to the summit. Biden’s commitment to NATO was clearly rock solid but the question of what comes next consumed the summit as much as Washington’s July humidity. All the lyrical tributes to the strength of NATO papered over the current brittleness at the heart of alliance: Europe’s security 75 years later still remains deeply dependent on the United States. It is not simply the potential for another Trump presidency that is keeping Europe awake at night, but also the broader embrace of isolationism on the American right, the loss of a clear bipartisan consensus in favor of the alliance, and Washington’s intense prioritization of the Indo-Pacific. Now with Biden leaving the stage, there is also the potential for a generational shift, producing a new U.S. leadership with likely less attachment to NATO and Europe. While Europe has often fretted about U.S. commitment, this is coming at a time when Europe is deeply fearful for its security.

The result is a nervous do-something energy in Europe that has revived the notion of building a “European pillar” of NATO, with many European leaders inserting the phrase into their talking points. Think tanks have been active trying to flush out the concept and laying out recommendations. But European governments have yet to translate their talking points into a plan of action.

What has been missing is direction from Washington. Given America’s central role in European security, Europe is unlikely to act unless Washington points the way. The problem is that the United States, since the end of the Cold War, has not wanted Europe to act as Europe. It has not wanted a European pillar. The United States has wanted more defense spending to be sure, but in furtherance of a U.S.-dominated alliance. What should be evident, especially now that Europe is indeed spending a lot more on defense — collectively $300 billion — is that dependence on the United States is not ultimately a spending issue. It is structural. Since no European country can play the role that the United States plays in the alliance, the only way for Europe to reduce its dependence is to act more as Europe.

The United States has lost sight of its core goal in creating NATO 75 years ago: not just to protect Europe but to build a new Europe in its image. The current moment thus presents a unique opportunity to not just make the alliance stronger and more resilient, but also to transform Europe. NATO has been the great facilitator of European integration, protecting Europe from external threats, allowing it to integrate internally. But by largely walling off defense as a sector off limits for the European Union, the United States and NATO have deprived the European Union of the fuel that has historically driven state-formation. NATO has been standing in the way of what could be a major advance of the European project, whose goal — despite Europeans almost never saying it out loud — is ultimately to build a federal European state. Defense, in many respects, represents the final frontier of European integration. A Europe integrating on defense would trigger broader fiscal, foreign policy, and democracy reforms within the European Union.

A highly symbolic summit in Washington, with an American president who is deeply committed to the alliance and carries tremendous influence in Europe, would have been a remarkable opportunity to plot a new and more sustainable course for NATO by defining such a pillar. Instead, the concept of a European pillar was ignored. The summit instead sought to perpetuate a status quo of American leadership that may not be sustainable.

From Transforming Europe…

NATO’s first Secretary-General Hastings Ismay famously, if apocryphally, said that NATO was formed to keep “the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Both the United States and Europe agreed on keeping the Russians out and the Germans down. But the goal of keeping the Americans “in” was ultimately a European, not an American, objective. The United States sought an alliance with Europe, not to serve as its indefinite security crutch.

While the United States recognized that Europe was so weak it could not realistically stay out, the goal of U.S. policy was not simply to stay in. Instead, the United States sought to in essence build a European pillar. In keeping the Russians out, a new, stronger, and united Europe could be constructed in America’s own image. NATO ultimately succeeded in keeping the Soviets out but ultimately “keeping the Germans down” was not so much NATO’s role but Europe’s. The idea was not actually to keep Germany down but to enmesh Germany into a rebuilt Europe. For the Europeans, giving up sovereign control was always difficult. This made the U.S. role essential, as Washington not only strongly backed European integration, but insisted upon it. This led West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to quip that “Americans are the best Europeans.”

The Marshall Plan was not just about kick-starting a European economic revival — it also demanded that Europe begin to integrate and break down economic barriers between countries. This was followed by the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (the forerunner to the European Community and European Union), which in 1951 integrated the sectors critical to waging war and was strongly backed by Washington. Perhaps America’s “best European” of the era was Dwight Eisenhower. As NATO’s supreme allied commander and as president, Eisenhower strongly backed the creation of an integrated European army. In 1956, Eisenhower called for a “United States of Europe,” describing “European Union, one of the greatest dreams of Western man.” Jean Monnet, one of Europe’s leading founding fathers, assessed U.S. post-war policy as “the first time in history that a great power, instead of basing its policy on ruling by dividing, has consistently and resolutely backed the creation of a large Community uniting peoples previously apart.”

… to Staying In

NATO and the European Community proceeded on separate tracks during the Cold War, with NATO organizing Europe’s defense and the European Community integrating Europe’s economies. But following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the European Community took the step to form the European Union in 1993. The formation of the European Union triggered a more than decade-long treaty or constitutional reform effort on how it would function. While this would leave the European Union far short of a federal state, it did mean that the union, as scholars have noted, became more and more state-like. The European Union bestowed a common European citizenship, sought to forge a common foreign and security policy, would eventually establish its own diplomatic service with an E.U. “high representative” or a foreign and defense minister, and undertook military missions in the Balkans and to combat piracy and terrorism. Thus, the European Union from a U.S. and NATO perspective was starting to impinge on NATO’s turf.

The Clinton administration supported the European Union’s creation but was uneasy about the future of NATO and the broader role of the United States in European security. The Clinton administration ultimately doubled down on NATO, seeing it as means to stabilize Europe and nervous an untethered European Union would go in a Gaullist direction. NATO’s eastward expansion paved the way for the European Union to expand as well, allowing it to become a colossus, taking on a true continental scale. But the United States also effectively came out against the European Union becoming an independent defense actor. The pivotal turn happened in the run up to the Washington summit 25 years ago. At St. Malo in December 1998, French President Jacques Chirac and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair had agreed on a historic new path for E.U. defense to create a 60,000 strong E.U. force. Just days later, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright expressed U.S. concerns in a speech at NATO, now known as the “3 Ds,” declaring there should be “no duplication” with NATO. While Albright’s policy left some room for the European Union on defense and likely was not intended to be interpreted rigidly, after 9/11, U.S. policy became set in stone — Europe’s future received little attention from senior policy makers and essentially any E.U. defense effort was interpreted by U.S. officials as amounting to “duplication.”

Given the dependence of Europe, especially eastern Europe, on the U.S. security guarantee, the United States could divide and rule, cajoling certain states to block efforts at the E.U. level. Rarely did the United States have to say anything. Its opposition was known and that created a general chilling effect on E.U. defense proposals.

Ultimately, U.S. opposition to European defense integration represented a reversal of its post-war strategy toward Europe and Eisenhower’s vision. America’s priority with NATO ultimately became to stay in. The United States has wanted to preserve its influence, which meant instead of “keeping the Germans down,” NATO was in the position of de facto keeping “Europe” down. Yes, the United States wanted individual European states to do more on defense, but not “Europe.” As a result, while the European Union has been able to advance certain defense initiatives such as research and development, ultimately all of its efforts are quite limited in scope and funding and thus quite marginal to broader European defense efforts. European integration has taken great leaps in just about every area except defense.

This has created an odd situation. Europe is increasingly consolidating, operating more and more as one, but not in defense. European defense today no longer makes much sense as currently structured. From a pure military perspective, Europe is a fragmented mess, largely held together by the U.S. role. With 30 bespoke militaries, operating all sorts of different kit, it is highly questionable whether a collection of European countries could deploy together to defend Europe without the United States. Europe is now dramatically increasing spending but this is not focused on addressing collective European gaps and reducing Europe’s reliance on the United States. In other words, it is not focused on building a European pillar.

The Appeal of the European Pillar

Washington, however, has much to gain from a strong European pillar, and it is past time for the United States to start supporting it. Why?

The first reason is practical. European defense integration would produce tangible benefits to the NATO alliance. The way E.U. integration works is not by setting an end goal, such as creating an army. Instead, it works to solve tangible problems and fill clear gaps. Europeans for instance procure all different military equipment — the European Union could mobilize funds more effectively to make joint procurements. Few, if any, E.U. member states can afford the big-ticket enabling systems on their own that are essential to any fight — instead, the European Union could provide funds and make those procurements. Perhaps it could even operate its own fleets of air tankers, building on the European Defence Agency’s Multinational Multi-Role Tanker Transport Fleet initiative, and transport planes. European militaries need to rebuild ammunition stockpiles — the European Union could pay for more of that, building on the European Commission’s €500 million Act in Support of Ammunition Production program designed to stimulate the production of critical ammunition. Furthermore, with NATO focused on Russia, the European Union would keep its out-of-area focus, dealing with neighborhood problems where the United States, and therefore NATO, has little interest in acting. That creates some duplication but ultimately would leave the European Union as the backbone of a European pillar within NATO.

The second reason is more geopolitical. The European Union ultimately needs defense to accelerate the European project. This would potentially give the United States a much stronger European partner. Europe’s former great-power states, especially the United Kingdom and France, are not the powers they were in the 20th century. But the European Union, when it acts as one, is incredibly powerful. It has an economy equivalent in size to the United States and China and 450 million people. Just as major advances in the American federal project occurred when the United States had to mobilize for war, such as during the Civil War, World War I, or World War II, similar advances would inevitably occur in Europe. As scholars R. Daniel Keleman and Kathleen R. McNamara argue, “historically, political projects centralizing power have been most complete when both market and security pressures are present to generate state formation.”

If the European Union became a more prominent defense actor that might promote a significant evolution in the union. Defense requires money. Adopting a bigger a defense role would require the European Union to develop its fiscal tools and capacity. This would involve, say, leveraging its currency to borrow on capital markets or increase the size of the E.U. budget from national contributions, or even expanding its “own-resources” such as E.U. taxation.

Defense also requires greater foreign policy alignment and a more robust foreign policy apparatus. The European Union already is a foreign policy actor in the economic realm, fighting trade wars, sanctioning countries, and providing foreign aid. This has made it a more prominent global actor and partner, especially in an era of geoeconomic competition with China. A greater E.U. role in defense would link the union’s immense economic power with a hard power component. It would require faster and more stream-lined decision-making, requiring the European Union to move away from unanimity amongst countries on foreign policy decisions. All of this would make the European Union a more impactful global actor and potential partner to the United States.

Finally, building an E.U. defense pillar would require the European Union to evolve politically and enhance its democratic legitimacy. With more money and potentially more E.U.-designated forces, the union’s Byzantine structure — involving two essentially co-equal presidents — would need to evolve. While concerns about the European Union’s “democratic deficit” are overstated, a European Union with more federal resources and more involvement in defense would likely need to develop a more direct democratic connection with voters. This could involve an expansion of powers to the European Parliament or reform of European parliamentary elections to make them less focused on the politics of a national capital and more on Brussels.

The Time Is Now

Today defense integration is both necessary and popular. For decades, it has been cliche in Europe that defense is a “national” responsibility. There has been an assumption that defense might be the “third rail” of the European project. But public opinion data demonstrates overwhelming support for E.U. defense initiatives, as high as 80 percent. One academic study found that the bolder the approach, the more support it received from Europeans. This was also borne out in the European parliamentary elections, where Ursula von der Leyen’s victorious center-right European Peoples Party ran on a strong E.U. defense platform, establishing a defense commissioner and mobilizing massive funding for E.U. defense efforts. Most astonishing, there was no counter-reaction from the far-right. For most Europeans there is a clear understanding that the threat is not to their nation but to Europe and therefore a greater E.U. role is obvious.

The main obstacle to a major push for significant European defense integration is bureaucratic path-dependency, both at NATO and at the 27 different mini-Pentagons and defense-industrial complexes within E.U. member states. The result is a deeply entrenched status quo within European countries that Europe has to overcome.

Europe will find it next to impossible to change this without a solid push from Washington. This can either come in the form of a shock, a sudden shift in Washington or a new and concerted U.S. policy. Some imagine that the United States pulling back abruptly might shock Europeans into getting their act together. It might. But by then it might also be too late. There is no quick fix to Europe’s dependence on the United States, and any sudden reduction in U.S. support would leave a gaping hole in European security for some time.

What makes this summer’s NATO summit such a missed opportunity is that the Biden administration has overseen a dramatic transformation of U.S.-E.U. relations. There has been a clear recognition of the European Union’s growing global importance under Biden, with the European Union becoming an essential partner on China, economic security, and sanctions. The close relationship between Biden and von der Leyen is unprecedented. Importantly, the Biden administration has also stopped opposing E.U. defense proposals, whether on joint E.U. ammunition purchases, the European Union training and arming Ukrainians, or borrowing on defense.

But the United States also has not vocally encouraged these efforts either. For instance, the United States spent immense diplomatic effort cajoling Europe at the G7 in June to undertake a highly complicated effort to leverage frozen Russian assets to borrow $50 billion for Ukraine. But when, later that month, E.U. leaders met at a European Council summit to discuss issuing over $100 billion in Eurobonds to finance Ukrainian aid and European rearmament, the United States stood silent as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz blocked E.U. action that would have enabled a dramatic step up in European defense production.

Now is the time for Americans to become the “best Europeans” again. Washington should use its influence to call for the formation of the European pillar and push the Europeans to get on with the long generational slog of defense integration. As former Clinton administration officials Ron Asmus, Antony Blinken, and Philip Gordon wrote in 2005, “Washington needs to get over its current ambivalence about European integration and adopt a new strategy overtly supporting the EU.” That remains the case today. U.S. policy should be to seek to turn NATO into a true partnership between the United States and Europe so that on the alliance’s 100th birthday we can truly say it is stronger than ever.

Max Bergmann is the director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program and the Stuart Center on Euro-Atlantic and Northern European Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He previously served as a senior advisor in the State Department from 2011 to 2017.

Image: The White House via Wikimedia Commons