Let us not be lulled by the illusions sometimes perpetuated by the conventional and polite language of diplomacy: the presence of the United States within the Atlantic alliance has become increasingly problematic.
This is undoubtedly just as true of countries such as Hungary and Slovakia, but (and apologies if this is rude), they don’t really matter. The United States matters a lot. It is central to the functioning of the alliance, beyond even its enormous military weight. It dominates certain key technologies on which the other 31 NATO states, or the integrated command system, are dependent. It is often said that it would be simply impossible to imagine NATO without Washington.
This is the dilemma facing most European countries: they all consider that the soon-to-decline US presence creates an enormous dilemma, but they have not yet figured out how to “manage” it within the alliance.
Meanwhile, others, openly like Chancellor Friedrich Merz, or perhaps more subtly like President Emmanuel Macron, would like to see a broad overhaul of the organization.
Shortly after his party being declared the winner in the parliamentary elections, but before taking office, Merz stated that “an alternative to NATO in its current form” must be found in order to achieve independence from the US. As for Macron, anxious that France should not appear to be the gravedigger of the organization, he continues to show his attachment to it with increased military deployments, but is working to strengthen a European defense that is autonomous from the US, remaining agnostic for the time being as to the structure that would host it.
And yet the broad outline is clear enough — a NATO where the US has left or stepped back, or an organization linked to the European Union’s common security and defense policy (CSDP), but extended beyond the EU 27 to include countries like the UK, Norway, and possibly Turkey.
The dilemma regarding Washington is linked to its extreme complacency, to say the least, toward Russia. The erratic behavior of Donald Trump, of which the latest G7 summit provided yet another illustration, can only deeply disrupt the world’s main democratic alliance.
The allies need strategic stability among themselves just as much as they need to create strategic uncertainty in the mind of the enemy. It is an understatement to say that the United States today does not offer this. No one can be sure that Washington would provide the security guarantees defined in Article 5 if Estonia, Latvia or Finland were attacked. Admittedly, this is not entirely new: many had doubts about the resolve of the Biden and Obama administrations, and this was also the case outside NATO, for Japan and South Korea, and of course Taiwan.
At that time, there was already doubt. Today, there is near-certainty that the US Air Force and Marines, who would be on the front line in such a scenario, would remain in their barracks. Or perhaps will already have departed back to the US.
At NATO’s Vilnius summit in July 2023 and the Washington summit in July 2024, the United States, with the support of Germany’s previous government, effectively blocked any commitment to a date for Ukraine’s membership.
Today, under Trump, opposition to Ukraine is even more entrenched, since US military support for Kyiv appears to be doomed — indeed, aid appears to have dried up altogether. As the US position has hardened and mistrust has grown, even European intelligence sharing with the US has become increasingly considered unsafe and therefore limited.
The main question is not whether Washington will leave the organization. This seems unlikely despite Trump’s previous statements about its obsolescence. Nor is it certain that he will seek to repeal the law passed on the eve of his presidency that prohibits the US from doing so.
On the other hand, under various pretexts, the Trump administration may decide to cut the organization’s funding and oppose the use of specifically American equipment, particularly in the field of military intelligence, for certain operations, notably in Ukraine. It may slow cooperation programs. In short, it can easily block, hinder, delay and thus undermine an organization that, more than ever, needs responsiveness, rapid decision-making and ambition.
Admittedly, the United States is not the first country to pose serious questions of compatibility with the values expressed in the North Atlantic Treaty Charter, which is far too rarely mentioned in official statements, but a country that has become illiberal can only cast a shadow over the legitimacy of the alliance at a time when it is indispensable to counter revisionist countries.
Officially, therefore, Germany, and more unofficially France, have now given up on the United States. The United Kingdom is still struggling to formalize the end of the special relationship, but given its increasingly strong rapprochement with the EU, including the new defense and security agreement signed in May, this will be the condition for London’s return as a major power.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer is still taking care, even if it means devaluing his position, to make certain decisions dependent on US policy — as when he seems makes the sending of British troops to Ukraine conditional on a backstop from Washington.
Poland and other Central and Eastern European states are following the same path, despite a less close relationship. But they are sufficiently aware to understand that the relationship between Trump and Putin is neither accidental nor temporary. Yet they are in a bind — no country, especially those that do not produce any weapons, wants to replace dependence on the US with dependence on France, Germany, or the UK.
This is undoubtedly why, before imagining a decision-making and operational structure capable of breaking free from the US if necessary, the first step towards progress is not the question of burden sharing, but of benefit sharing, of a European defense.
This would also mark a return to Europe’s roots: pooling resources to achieve the best possible outcome for all. In short, it will be necessary for small European countries to benefit as much as large countries from the massive rearmament that Europe is now undertaking.
The ambition to devote 5% of GDP to defense (likely to be agreed at the NATO summit in The Hague from June 24-25, but without a clear time commitment) is a considerable opportunity for Europe to catch up with the United States and China, especially in technology. It will also be a major source of growth and employment. There can be no question of these advantages being pocketed by countries that already have a strong industry and derive significant benefits from exports.
Without cooperation in this area between European and national authorities, and industry, to define the terms of technological cooperation, location, and value sharing, European defense will be stillborn. This begins with industry, not structures.
However, Europe will need to quickly achieve strategic autonomy, and it does not really matter whether this is within NATO, in a broader European framework, or in an ad hoc framework bringing together several countries in a kind of “coalition of the willing” with a broadly shared structure.
This idea of strategic autonomy has often been misunderstood: it does not aim to destroy NATO, let alone exclude the United States if its policy coincides with that of the Europeans, and certainly not to seek an impossible third way that is complacent towards Russia, China, Iran, or their allies.
It consists of giving a group of European countries the ability to act if they so wish and if the US does not want to follow suit. This was the case in 2013 in Syria after Obama refused to enforce the red line on the regime’s chemical weapons he himself had defined. It was ultimately deemed preferable to seek a so-called agreement with Russia, which in reality did not lead to the destruction of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons, which were used again a few years later.
This autonomous policy must now be the core of the approach to Ukraine, where Europe alone has the will, albeit still imperfect, to confront Russia. The same is true of Africa, where Europe, and France in particular, will find itself increasingly alone.
The farcical and only partly hidden debate over whether President Zelenskyy should be invited to the summit is revealing — his presence was reportedly opposed by the administration and then resolved by his inclusion in the final state dinner. This despite the fact that he had been systematically invited since Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine, speaks volumes. Great damage is being done to an organization that seems incapable of resisting the arbitrariness and indecency of its leading member. This cannot continue.
Nicolas Tenzer, non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, is a guest professor at Sciences Po Paris and writes an international politics blog, Tenzer Strategics. His latest book on Russia’s war against Ukraine, Notre Guerre. Le Crime et l’Oubli : pour une pensée stratégique (Éditions de l’Observatoire, 2024) was awarded the Nathalie Pasternak Prize and has just been released in paperback. His latest book, Fin de la politique des grandes puissances. Petits et moyens Etats à la conquête du monde, was published on April 23 by the same publisher.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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