Europe and the Unthinkable

Europeans now confront what remained unthinkable until a few short years ago—a NATO without the United States.

By Gregory F. Treverton, excerpted from a longer piece by Treverton and Thomas Arms

Note: The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of SMA, Inc.

It is ironic for those of us who wrote about strategy and served in government before 1992, but NATO retained its relevance despite the end of the Cold War. Its armies first became a model, and its organization an aspiration, for the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. Then it became the core of coalitions of the willing in the Balkans and elsewhere on Europe’s edges. If anyone still doubted the organization’s importance to global order, Vladimir Putin ended those doubts with his brutal assault on Ukraine and, with it, that order’s norms of sovereignty and non-intervention.

The United States has always been more than just the largest country in NATO, with by far the largest defense budget. It has been NATO. The alliance’s supreme commander (SACEUR), for instance, has always been an American. Those of us Americans who served in government used to quip, only half-jokingly, that we Americans liked NATO because we ran it. America’s European partners didn’t always like that state of affairs but they grew accustomed to it, and America’s dominance muted historic rivalries among European members. So, imagining the alliance without the United States is as hard for them as for America’s NATO hands.

The issues facing European NATO without America range from budgets and military capacities to command arrangements to military industrial bases and the ability to ramp up arms production. Looming over all is the nuclear question. During the Cold War, NATO struggled to make credible its threat to use nuclear weapons, first, if need be, to stop a Soviet attack on Western Europe. The issue receded but never really went away with the end of the Soviet Union.

Now, Putin has dramatically revived it with his nuclear bluster, most recently when he threatened in his annual State of the Nation address at the end of February to use nuclear weapons against NATO members that deployed forces to Ukraine. That arrived just as Europeans came to face the reality that the next American president may well be someone who tells Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” with NATO members who don’t pay up. A NATO without America would raise existential questions about whether British and French nuclear forces could deter Russia, whether a kind of MIND (in the coinage of my friend and colleague, Tom Arms), or minimum deterrent, could substitute for the Cold War’s MAD, or mutual assured destruction.

Parsing the Issues

Calls for a European force or greater European independence in security matters predate the creation of NATO. The withdrawal of Britain from the EU was oddly both a blow and a boon to those seeking greater European defense integration. Britain was the second largest defense spender in NATO. It was the unsinkable aircraft carrier off the coast of Europe. Its nuclear deterrent was committed to the defense of NATO. But at the same time, it repeatedly blocked moves to greater European defense integration because it feared it would weaken the American commitment to Europe.

The election of Donald Trump—and his anti-NATO stance—was an even greater impetus towards European defense cooperation. After Trump withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron took the lead in formally calling for a European army. His proposal was immediately endorsed by leading politicians from Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the EU.

The EU has a security organization with command-and-control structure. It is in its infancy and has no military organization that comes close to the well-established NATO formations. But in 2019 Germany and the Netherlands activated the 414 Tank Battalion, the first to include soldiers from two EU countries. This has been described as the first step towards a European army. In her 2021 State of the Union Address, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “What we need is the European Defense Union…The European Union is a unique security provider. There will be missions where NATO or the UN will not be present but where Europe should be.”

Then came February 24, 2022, and the Russian attack on Ukraine.

Trump’s offer to Vladimir Putin to “do whatever the hell you want” with any NATO member that fails to devote two percent of its GDP to defense only underscored what Europeans see as a growing undercurrent of isolationism, where the first A in MAGA is America, not Alliance. In 2023, 65 percent of Americans wanted their country to play a leading or major role in foreign affair, down from 79 percent two decades earlier.[1] That is accompanied by a sense that Americans see Asia as the biggest threat. The Europeans echo concerns in the United States that even the greatest military power in the history of the world can’t fight a two-front war in Asia and Europe. They sense the undertone in the United States that other countries take advantage of it—and perhaps specifically, in the case of Europe, of America’s military largesse—an undertone perhaps reflected in the fact that Americans overstate the extent of the country’s foreign aid by a factor of ten (it is about one percent for the Federal budget).

None of the above concerns take into account the many benefits America derives from membership of NATO, from the tangible addition of US military power and reach to the less tangible buttressing of American leadership in fashioning a decent global order. The sad fact is that Americans, especially MAGA Republicans, are in no mood to listen.

By the numbers, Europe is not in bad shape.[2] This year at least 18 of NATO’s 28 European members will hit the two percent target. Europe’s total defense spending will reach around $380 billion—about the same as Russia’s after adjusting for Europe’s higher prices Those numbers, however, flatter Europe. Its spending produces less combat power than meets the eye, for its armed forces amount to less than the sum of their parts. It is years away from being able to defend itself from attack by a reconstituted Russian force. At last year’s summit, NATO leaders approved their first comprehensive national defense plans since the Cold War. Those plans require Europe to increase existing (and unmet) targets for military capability by about a third. That, in turn, means Europe would have to spend around 50 percent more on defense than today, or about three percent of GDP. The only European members of NATO that currently reach that level are Poland, Estonia, and Greece, and the last’s number is bloated by military pensions.

More money is not enough. On both sides of the Atlantic, militaries are struggling to reach recruitment targets. Moreover, the increase in spending in Europe after 2014 delivered alarmingly little growth in combat capability. A recent paper by the International Institute for Strategic Studies found that the number of combat battalions had barely increased. France and Germany added one each, while Britain actually cut five. Even when Europe creates more combat forces, those often lack what is needed to fight effectively for long periods, like effective command and control capabilities, with staff officers trained to run large headquarters; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance such as drones and satellites; logistic capabilities, including airlift; and ammunition to last for longer than a week.

For these reasons, the European Union (EU) recently launched its European Defense Industry (EDI) Strategy.[3] At the moment, the United States supplies about half of the armaments required by its European allies. If Europe is to stand alone then it needs an armaments industry to supply its troops. Launching the EDI Strategy, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on EU members to spend at least half of their defense procurement budgets on European-produced weaponry. To encourage national defense ministries to “buy European,” the commission is dangling a few carrots. For a start, they are offering to exempt ministries from paying VAT (value added tax) on EU-made guns and bullets. They are also establishing a “High Level Defense Industry Group” to help coordinate procurement programs and an organization to sell the increased defense production to third countries. In that vein, the commission plans to partly finance this growth in defense industry in advance through pre-sales to non-EU armies, air forces and navies. European leaders have urged more cross-national collaboration for years, but between 2021 and 2022 collaborative defense investment in Europe amounted to only 18 percent of the total.[4] The EU has also agreed to set up a fund to buy weapons from third countries. This is mainly designed to supply Ukraine but could also be used to fill gaps in their own national armories.

The EDI plan is a good start but only that. The rub is time. During the Cold War, Europe-based conventional forces were basically just enough to hold the fort until reinforcements could be rushed across the Atlantic. With America absent from NATO, this would no longer be the case. How the conventional forces need to be restructured is a major issue, one that will take time. Moreover, about half Europe’s conventional weaponry is American. This will have to change but in the short-term it is an opportunity for American defense industries as Europe needs to re-arm now and it will take time to build up a European defense industry. Given today’s sophisticated weaponry, that will be the work of a generation. When—and if—it does, not only will America have lost a market, it will have created a serious competitor in third world markets. And while it is all well and good to have more weapons, Europe also needs tried and tested procedures to deploy them effectively.

Most defense planners agree that if America withdrew from NATO, Europe—and probably Canada as well—would be best advised to simply move into the NATO positions formerly held by the Americans. After all, over the last three-quarters of a century NATO has developed elaborate and successful command and control systems and lines of communication. Why reinvent the wheel within the EU? Yet if a NATO without the United States retained something like the existing command structure, there would be thorny questions of who got what. Centuries old rivalries are currently suppressed by America’s dominance. Can we imagine French, let alone British, soldiers serving under a German SACEUR? Current tensions between French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany Chancellor Olaf Scholz indicate just how far Europe is from an answer.

The next obvious problem is that not all members of the EU are members of NATO. Indeed, even during the Cold War, when NATO had but fifteen members, it was hard to remember that Ireland was not one, but that Benelux were three members. Now, Austria, Cyprus, Ireland, and Malta are EU members but not in NATO. Iceland, Norway, Britain, Canada, Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Turkey are members of the NATO alliance but not in the EU. Ukraine is included in the planned European Defense Industry Strategy but is a member neither of the EU nor NATO.

As in other respects of Europe becoming more sovereign in defense, Britain is a central issue. It plainly is critical to any European-only defense system but is no longer a member of the EU. The Royal Navy would almost certainly have to continue to assume most of the responsibility for guarding the North Sea, the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap, the English Channel, and the approaches to it. Britain also has the second largest defense budget within NATO. A European defense system without Britain is inconceivable.

Most importantly, if Europe is to have any kind of nuclear deterrent, it needs Britain. It has an estimated 250 nuclear warheads, many of them situated on the tips of Trident II missiles which it can launch from its four Vanguard-class submarines. France has another 250 warheads, and since 2010 Britain and France have been cooperating in the development and production of nuclear warheads.

The 2010 agreement also made clear that joint testing was to be the first step towards further nuclear cooperation. One area that has been mentioned for future collaboration is joint submarine patrols. If this proposal went ahead, it would mean that London would have to rely on French protection and vice versa. Such an arrangement could form the basis for a European nuclear deterrent force. French defense analyst Bruno Tertrais has also suggested France could invite European partners to participate in nuclear operations, such as providing escort aircraft for bombers, joining a task force with the eventual successor to the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier which can host nukes, or even basing a few missiles in Germany. He said such measure would ultimately require “a common nuclear planning mechanism”.[5]

Five hundred warheads are fewer than a tenth the size of the Russian arsenal. But it is conceivable that Europe can develop a minimum deterrence policy. After all, at the height of the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese held off Moscow with only 300 warheads. Yet, still, in the best of circumstances, Europe alone would be in a MIND, or minimum deterrence, posture. During the Cold War, the simple size of the two nuclear arsenals produced a certain gruesome stability: MAD, or mutual assured destruction, reflected that reality: even if the Soviet Union struck first, the United States retained the capacity to devastate it in response.

The two superpowers negotiated agreements to codify the awful syllogisms of that nuclear age: offense is defense and defense is offense, killing weapons is bad, killing people is good. A NATO without the United States would risk not having the “assured” of MAD. However, MIND might suffice if it were linked to a sound political structure.

Moving Forward

The task for building a NATO without America is daunting. Even with EDI, Europe is still far from a sense of urgency, despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As front-line state Estonia put it in its 2024 threat assessment: “within the next decade, NATO will face a Soviet-style mass army that, while technologically inferior to the allies, poses a significant threat due to its size, firepower and reserves”.[6]

The bulk of the task will fall on Europe, but even a MAGA-fied America probably wouldn’t break its long alliance with Britain. In the earlier days of the European Common Market, Europeans fretted that admitting Britain would also let in a fifth column—the United States. This time around, they might find that column useful if it gave a European NATO some continuing access to American capabilities, especially in intelligence. Ukraine has been a stunning illustration of just how useful that intelligence cooperation can be. In any event, the United States would be unlikely to withdraw from the Five Eyes—United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—intelligence sharing.

The possibilities that sharing might open for a NATO without America would be especially important in space. Defense experts are agreed that space will be a new and primary battlefield in any coming conflict. If our diverse and interlocking satellite systems are not adequately defended, then the enemy can destroy our economy and military capability—both of which have become heavily dependent on orbiting satellites. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the United States had 239 military satellites aloft in 2023, while France, Italy, Britain, Germany, and Spain had a total of 50. For both sides of the Atlantic, the challenge will be addressing a world in which space is militarizing and privatizing at the same time. Space used to be a government monopoly. Now, in numbers, private sector satellites dwarf government ones and are taking on military roles. In 2021, Elon Musk’s SpaceX won a $1.8 billion contract to build hundreds of spy satellites, with their take to be shared with US intelligence and military officials. Here, too, the rub is time: could a NATO without the United States—but perhaps with some continuing American intelligence help—develop the partnerships with the private sector that will be the future?

Britain may be out of the EU, but it would remain part of NATO and be bound by Article Five—an attack on one member is an attack on all. If it had a similar treaty with the United States, if it were attacked, then the United States would have to come to Britain’s aid, and by extension that of Europe as a whole. It would be a repeat of World War I, where a series of interlocking treaties drew Germany to the defense of Austria, France to the defense of Russia and Britain to the defense of France. Or at least a Vladimir Putin couldn’t be confident that the United States would do nothing If he attacked in Europe.

If the task for Europe is daunting, the elements of that task are at hand. The watchword is hope for the best but plan for the worst. As a start, the EU should launch a coordinated multinational public relations and diplomatic campaign in the United States to underscore in the strongest possible terms the importance of Europe to America across a wide range of interests and what benefits America derives from membership of NATO.

More concretely, Europe cannot avoid increasing defense spending, not to a minimum of two percent but to three to four percent (Germany was devoting four percent of its GDP at the height of the Cold War). Setting up a coordinating committee between the EU and NATO would insure that at there is an overlap between all the interested parties and that existing command and control structures do not have to be re-invented by the EU. EDI’s commitment to greater defense cooperation in the EU could be extended to Britain; Britain’s British Aerospace Systems, for instance, could cooperate with French and German industries to develop new weaponry. And Europe could encourage American and other countries’ weapons manufacturing companies to set up production plants in Europe on a joint ownership/production basis.

In preparing for the worst, holding more Europe-only maneuvers, for instance, would at least demonstrate resolve. So, too, if the European Space Agency launched more satellites—both GPS and spy—and investigated ways of defending these satellites, that would lessen intelligence dependence on the United States. More dramatically, more Anglo-French nuclear cooperation, such as coordination of naval patrols or possibly even an Anglo-French successor to Trident to make Britain less dependent on the United States, would begin to create a truly European deterrent. At the extreme, Britain and France might emulate Cold War NATO in emphasizing that any conventional Russian attack would be met with a first strike Anglo-French nuclear attack.

It would be all the more important for a NATO without America to develop a coordinated defense strategy with the United States in Asia. More European help in that area should make American help in Europe more likely. Already, NATO has reached out to partners in the Indo-Pacific region—Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand—and leaders of those countries have attended the last two NATO summits. It should not be out of the question for NATO countries to send token troops to Japan or South Korea or the Philippines, or at least offer. Last year a company of the Scots Guards participated in Exercise Imjin Warrior 23 in South Korea to develop relationships between British and South Korean troops. This coincided with a ministerial visit to Seoul to identify new areas of military cooperation.

America in NATO was created off the back of Europe’s commitment to its own collective defense. If the Old World demonstrated its renewed commitment, then maybe even MAGA Republicans would be convinced, and Russia diverted from its expansionist course.

Gregory F. Treverton stepped down as Chair of the US National Intelligence Council in 2017. He is now Professor of the Practice at Dornsife College, University of Southern California, Chair of the Global TechnoPolitics Forum, and an SMA Executive Advisor.

[1] Jeffrey m. Jones, “Fewer Americans Want US Taking Major Role in World Affairs,” Gallup, March 3, 2023, available at https://news.gallup.com/poll/471350/fewer-americans-taking-major-role-world-affairs.aspx.

[2] “Is Europe Ready?” cited above. The numbers in this and the following paragraph are from that article.

[3] For a careful assessment, see APCO, Strategy and European Defense Industry Programme, March 2024.

[4] Sophia Besch, Understanding the EU’s New Defense Industrial Strategy, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 8, 2020, available at https://carnegieendowment.org/2024/03/08/understanding-eu-s-new-defense-industrial-strategy-pub-91937.

[5] As cited in “Is Europe Ready?” The Economist, February 23, 2024, for a thoughtful discussion of many of these issues. Available at https://view.e.economist.com/[link shortened].

[6] Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service, International Security and Estonia 2024, February 13, 2024, available at https://www.valisluureamet.ee/doc/raport/2024-en.pdf.