what’s at stake
Prodded by President Donald Trump and a revanchist Russia, Europe is spending more on defense.
Last month, NATO member states agreed to a higher defense spending target of 5% gross domestic product, a figure that includes spending on critical infrastructure in addition to military hardware. Weeks later, the European Union proposed a significant defense spending hike in its new budget.
European countries are preparing to shoulder more of their defense responsibilities as the Trump administration telegraphs plans to potentially scale back troops in Europe and pull back on US support for Ukraine — though Trump has sent mixed signals on the latter as of late.
Trump administration officials like Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby and Vice President JD Vance have advocated for reducing US commitments in Europe in favor of focusing more on geopolitical risks in Asia, including threats from China.
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who’s making the case
Rep. Bill Keating, D-Mass., a member of the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees, argued against Trump’s “transactional” approach and said the US should remain an “indispensable” ally to European partners at a Semafor event:
“Looking at it from a prism of history, you can go back before President Eisenhower and talk about the fact that the US had a policy standpoint, a view that Europe should be self-reliant on its defense. And then you had the segment with [Charles] de Gaulle where he wanted to venture out on his own, but those things still are with us.
“The reality is this: President Trump is transactional, he’s focused on numbers. And the reality that we have to deal with, those of us on the Armed Services Committee, those of us that are concerned about defense in Congress, is not to look at the rocks that we have to navigate through every day — but rather the big course here.
“Europe’s move to be more self-reliant and the US effort to still be an indispensable partner, those things coexist. And if we do this right and it’s implemented right, with the investments in Europe and the US working with our allies, it could be a win-win.”
Robert Peters, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that the US should prioritize Asia given China’s investments in its military:
“The United States should not abandon Europe — but it should prioritize threats in the Indo-Pacific. Russia is certainly a threat to the United States and its European allies in NATO — but European nations can and should take the lead for the conventional defense of Europe, given that their population is five times and their economy is 10 times that of Russia.
“China’s economy is more than two-thirds that of the United States. It has poured money into its military, such that it now has the world’s largest navy; the largest concentration of missiles; more ICBM silos than the United States; and is the fastest-growing nuclear power in the world. And there is no NATO analog in the Pacific.
“While the American military is superior to that of the Chinese, the US military is spread thin. Like the British Empire of 1938, its military is incredibly powerful, but it has global commitments. And while Britain emerged victorious in 1945, it did so at the cost of its Empire. The United States should avoid this outcome by being judicious in the application of force and enabling its regional allies to do as much as they can.
“This means that Europeans should put a multinational corps into the Baltic States to deter Russian aggression against NATO, while the United States takes the lead in deterring Chinese aggression.”
Notable
- The US “will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said of the US-Europe relationship in February.
- Big European nations won’t keep their promise to Trump on defense due to fiscal and political pressures, Gerard Baker writes in The Wall Street Journal.