It’s not nice to hear what’s said about any of us in private. People sometimes express very blunt opinions.
So it was with Vice President JD Vance’s comments on the old continent in private Signal app messages accidentally given to the Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief and published on March 24, where terms such as allied “free loading” were bandied around. This very much fits with Vice President Vance’s critique of Europe. However, he and like-minded Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth nonetheless privately recognized the continuing importance of protecting US and other trade through aggressive action in the Bab-al-Mandeb strait into the Red Sea.
The administration has few vocal transatlanticists, and the major foreign policy debates between Trump’s confidants and policy planners range from Asia First strategists, Western Hemisphere retrenchment advocates, and conservative isolationists.
All of which underlines that Europe must not only consider what the continent’s security looks like without a US commitment to resisting Russian aggression, but also think about its own role in protecting the global commons.
Right now, the Trump Administration is responding more directly to the threat posed by Houthi attacks on international shipping, finally targeting the archers rather than focusing on missile interception and denial as the Biden administration did. It’s frankly a more serious strategy, both tactically and economically: rather than expending costly missile interceptors, US strikes have “targeted training sites, unmanned aerial vehicle infrastructure, weapons manufacturing capabilities and weapons storage facilities,” according to USAF Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, Director for Operations for the Joint Staff.
These new strikes are supposedly part of the coalition effort Operation Prosperity Guardian, but NATO member participation so far has been unimpressive. Other than the UK, which joined US air attacks on Houthi targets last year, the other members are Canada, Denmark, Greece, Finland, and Norway.
Canada has sent unspecified support vehicles and just three staff officers. Norway pledged 10 staff officers but no vessels. Denmark sent the frigate HDMS Inver Huitfeldt in December 2023, but a weapons system failure during a Houthi drone attack led to her returning home. The Hellenic Navy sent two frigates, while the Netherlands provided a frigate and support ship. New NATO members Finland and Sweden sent naval personnel.
The Royal Navy, still the largest fleet in Europe by displacement, sent two destroyers and two frigates, and the Royal Air Force provided the 903 Expeditionary Air Wing led by Typhoon combat aircraft and Voyager tankers.
Notably absent? The next five largest fleets in Europe, and thus the largest naval forces in NATO outside of the US and UK.
France, Italy, Spain, and Germany all declined to support the operation. The first three countries combined have four carriers or amphibious assault ships capable of deploying F–35Bs. France, Italy, and Germany have combined 10 air-defense destroyers, and the Spanish Armada has five air-defense frigates. The US Fifth and Third Fleets have provided three aircraft carriers and 17 destroyers, on top of US airpower and intelligence contributions.
Some might credit France and Italy for deploying a frigate each, but remember that they refused to join Prosperity Guardian. So this rather meager participation was hardly likely to impress Euroskeptics in the US national security field. Spain, a country that still remains very far away from the NATO expenditure goal of 2%, issued a statement rejecting unilateral action but then vetoed an expansion of the European Union’s Atalanta operation.
The cost of the Houthi attacks on the world economy isn’t agreed, but the drastic diversion of international shipping has knock-on effects — Egypt recorded a 60% fall in Suez Canal revenues last year. A decade-old World Bank study found that Somali piracy cost the global economy $18bn annually, peaking in 2011. Estimates for annual costs now hover between $7bn and $12bn.
The Houthis have far more advanced weapons than Somali pirates, and Iran is likely providing priceless technical intelligence support through its naval assets. Ships that avoid the Gulf of Aden-Red Sea route will spend more time in the Western Indian Ocean, at risk from the resurgent pirate threat. Insurance rates will continue to rise, followed by the cost of goods, and supply chains are now dragged out to distances not experienced at scale since 1869, when the Suez Canal opened.
This week’s Signal leak highlights another area of Trump Administration frustration with European security affairs. Dr. Jeremy Stöhs, Director of the Austrian Center for Intelligence, Propaganda, and Security Studies at the University of Graz, documented this in his 2018 book The Decline of European Naval Forces. More recently, Gonzalo Vázquez of the Spanish Naval War College provided more recent examples of European navies showing a worrying lack a capabilities.
Like broader criticism of Europe’s collectively inadequate defense spending, there are real complaints to be made, and the continent should not be surprised to hear the administration making them.
European naval powers have the capacity to do more right now to tackle the Houthi threat, and they should. In the longer term, NATO members with the shipbuilding and port infrastructure need to seize that advantage to spearhead Europe’s ability to protect its trade and navigation interests in the global littorals.
It is now crystal clear that times are changing. The US will no longer act as big brother for Europe, which means it must learn to develop hard power. That’s not just about defense spending and equipment, it’s about the political willingness to use it.
Michael C. DiCianna is a research fellow with the Center for Intermarium Studies at the Institute of World Politics, a contributing editor at Providence magazine, and a non-resident research assistant at the Yorktown Institute. He has worked as a consultant in the US intelligence community for several years, focusing on military affairs in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
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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