A sad trend in world affairs, and one that is personal for me, is the growing rift in the Atlantic. I am not talking about the geological one under the water (which widens by more than 2cm per year), but about the geopolitical fault between the US and Europe. As a dual citizen of the US and Germany, I have taken the trans-Atlantic bond for granted throughout my life. However, it will loosen, if not snap.
These two tectonic plates of geopolitics have long been moving in opposite directions. Several European NATO members have for decades skimped on defense spending, free-riding on US military might and first frustrating, then enraging US taxpayers and policymakers. Even if some now spend more on their armies, the change might be too little, too late.
Meanwhile, Washington has been drifting from its strategic and visceral trans-Atlanticism during the Cold War. US presidents since Barack Obama have tried, and so far failed, to “pivot” from Europe and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific, where they see more important and dangerous fault lines and sense tremors all around China.
Illustration: Mountain People
Gone is that brief unipolar moment when the US was a hyperpower and could pretend to police all regions of the world. In today’s context of permanent budget crises (another is coming up) and ever more crushing debt, Washington would have to make choices.
Those would differ depending on the next president. In his first term, then-US president Donald Trump, who likes to snub the US’ allies and schmooze its adversaries, threatened to yank troops out of Germany and to withdraw from NATO altogether. In a second term, he might do that, or simply, as one think tank close to him suggests, declare the alliance “dormant.”
US Vice President Kamala Harris, by contrast, would reaffirm the US’ traditional commitments, as her lame-duck boss has done. However, unlike US President Joe Biden, she is of a generation that feels the trans-Atlantic bond in its head more than in its viscera. Moreover, Harris is surrounded by advisers and think tanks — the notorious Washington “blob” — who have distanced themselves from the post-war credo of hegemonic internationalism. The choice today is between a brute MAGA isolationism or a subtler retrenchment called “restraint.”
To consider all this, I sat down with Emma Ashford, a strategist in a team of “anti-group-think ninjas” (their term) at the Stimson Center in Washington. She has been studying scenarios of US retrenchment and their effect on Europe. Some are merely worrisome, others hair-raising.
The scenarios vary along two parameters. First, is the US retrenchment sudden and fast or gradual and slow? Second, is it intentional or unintentional — that is, taken by choice or forced by some emergency? (The threat to Europe is assumed to be the same: an aggressive and irredentist Russia.)
A Trump exit would be deliberate and discretionary, and swift. By contrast, Harris would rhetorically recommit to Europe. But like Trump, she could still be forced to retrench from the continent by contingencies.
That could happen fast: if, for example, China invades Taiwan, major war breaks out in Asia and the US needs to move soldiers, guns, ammo, ships, planes and all the rest to the Pacific overnight. Or slow: The US could have a fiscal crisis, forcing Washington to save on its troops overseas; with Asia remaining the priority, the cuts would hit Europe and gradually “hollow out” NATO.
An intentional and fast Trump pullout would be terrible for Europe. Because the details would be up to the president, northern and eastern countries such as Poland, which feel most threatened by Russia and already spend a lot on their armies, would try to flatter him into bilateral security pacts. Ashford said she imagines offers to pay for a “Fort Trump” in Poland.
This bargaining by some, but not others would compromise the remnants of NATO and the EU. Already fractious, these continental institutions would unravel into a patchwork of mini-alliances and medium-sized armies, each deficient in its own way and lacking coordination with the others. Champagne bottles would pop in the Kremlin.
A slow hollowing out of the trans-Atlantic alliance caused by a US fiscal crisis (or something similar) would not be fun either. The Europeans would continue to gab (as they have been gabbing since the 1950s) about a “European army,” and drape more summitry around their “common security and defense policy,” which already exists on paper. However, nothing would come of it, because the crisis is too slow, and every country perceives different threats. Portugal in the southwest is not all that scared of the Kremlin, while Estonia in the northeast is scared of little else.
The large countries, such as Germany, would not be ready to sacrifice their bloated welfare systems for military preparedness. The French (and the British outside the EU) would talk tough, but would not extend their own (and small) nuclear umbrellas over their European allies. The Kremlin would enjoy this show and bide its time, a bit as Napoleon once watched the Holy Roman Empire disintegrate before dissolving it.
An unintentional, but sharp rupture, such as war between the US and China in Asia, would be different. For the world, this turn of events would be disastrous, especially since China, Russia, North Korea and Iran increasingly behave like an “axis” and might coordinate. However, because there would be no point bargaining with the US president, the Europeans would grasp at once that they can float together or sink separately.
A coerced and sudden American pivot could in that way become Europe’s belated Zeitenwende, or “turning point.” With the US off to Asia, the Europeans would have to take the initiative in Brussels, in the EU and in the headquarters of NATO. They would share intelligence, weapons systems and even command and control, all to defend their shared continent. Europe would be, as the cliche goes, “forged in crisis.”
All this makes you wonder why the Europeans do not opt for a less apocalyptic scenario and get their act together without the world first going up in flames. (If you have a good answer, you deserve the Charlemagne Prize.) At minimum, the old world must finally understand what the US is talking about on the other side of the Atlantic, where the question of a breakup is not whether, but when and how.
Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for The Economist.
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