NATO’s Missing Pillar

As war rages in Ukraine and the U.S. presidential campaign heats up, NATO leaders are grappling with how to prepare the alliance for all possible outcomes. The German and Danish defense ministers have warned that Russia could attack NATO allies “within five years.” Conflict could come sooner if Russia achieves a breakthrough on the battlefield in Ukraine. And by the end of the year, former U.S. President Donald Trump, who has urged Russian leaders to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO members who “don’t pay up,” referring to the alliance’s spending target, could be the president-elect. Meanwhile, whoever occupies the White House will continue to shift U.S. resources to the Indo-Pacific. The United States’ force posture in Europe will recede. The only question is whether that happens gradually or suddenly.

Transatlantic security is built on two pillars: U.S. power and European power. Should the United States falter in its commitment to NATO or be stretched too thinly between theaters, Europe would bear the burden of protecting the continent. As of now, however, Europe is not prepared for that responsibility. Although European governments have been increasing their investments in defense and assistance to Ukraine, some European members of NATO still fall short of the alliance’s defense spending targets. The impressive amount of equipment and ammunition that European countries have given to Ukraine has also depleted some of their own weapons stocks.

Strengthening the European pillar of NATO is the clear answer to the continent’s security problem. Yet for 25 years, the United States has been reluctant to support a larger European role within the alliance. Even as Washington urged its European allies to spend more on defense, U.S. leaders were loath to surrender the reins of transatlantic security. It is now time for that mindset to change. When allied leaders meet in Washington for NATO’s 75th anniversary summit in July, they should commit to fortifying European defense. Europe needs to invest more money to improve its military capabilities and combat power, and to get better at coordinating the efforts of individual countries. The United States must encourage such a transformation, not get in its way—and the European Union should help, too. Without a stronger European pillar of NATO, Russia will continue to threaten transatlantic security and the United States will be unable to focus its resources on China.

SECOND PILLAR OR FIFTH COLUMN?

It is commonly assumed that NATO was built on U.S. power, but in fact the commitment to collective security emerged in Europe first. In 1948, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom signed the Brussels Treaty, which contained a mutual defense clause. The treaty convinced a skeptical U.S. Congress that European countries would be dedicated defense partners in the emerging Cold War, and the United States agreed to establish NATO the following year.

Europe did rely on U.S. security guarantees throughout the Cold War. But after the Soviet Union collapsed, there were some signs that suggested that Europe might take a more active role in its own defense. Documents such as NATO’s 1991 strategic concept and the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which formed the European Union, included language about Europe assuming new defense responsibilities to strengthen the “European pillar of the Atlantic alliance.” Yet in practice, with the Soviet Union gone, Europe let its guard down. Average defense spending across European countries dropped from over three percent of GDP during the Cold War to 1.6 percent in 1995. The Balkan wars of the 1990s revealed the decay in Europe’s forces. When NATO intervened, the U.S. military did most of the fighting.

The experience in the Balkans spurred changes within the EU. In 1998, France and the United Kingdom signed the Saint-Malo declaration, which promised a shared European defense strategy for the first time and was meant to lay the groundwork for an EU military force. But even though American officials had expressed their frustration with Europe’s inadequate security capabilities during the Balkan crises, Washington was more concerned that an increasingly autonomous Europe would undermine U.S. authority in NATO and threaten alliance cohesion. The United States insisted that the EU could not adopt policies that duplicated NATO resources, decoupled European defense from NATO, or discriminated against non-EU NATO members—the “three Ds.” Talk of the European pillar fell out of fashion, and the EU’s efforts to boost its defense capacity yielded limited results.

Today, the European pillar should be a goal to pursue, not something to shy away from. A strong Europe within NATO will not divide the alliance in two or require that NATO transfer its responsibility for collective defense to the EU. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown that the two institutions secure Europe in crucial complementary ways. Only the EU can wield collective financial and industrial clout on a grand scale. EU institutions are by far Kyiv’s biggest donor and the EU has helped member states send defense equipment to Ukraine. And only NATO can organize the defense of Europe—NATO’s deterrence, backed by a promise that an attack on one member is an attack on all, allows allies to support Ukraine without fear of reprisal from Russia. Moreover, a European pillar includes NATO members that are not part of the EU, such as Norway, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

The European pillar of NATO should be seen as the sum of efforts by Europeans to strengthen the defense of Europe, regardless of which institution claims credit. Initiatives driven by NATO, the EU, bilateral cooperation, and other flexible partnerships can all reinforce the pillar.

SPEND MORE, SPEND BETTER

The first step is for European countries to increase defense spending, an area in which they have already made marked improvements. In 2014, only Greece, the United Kingdom, and the United States spent at least two percent of their GDP on defense; now 18 NATO members do. Some even exceed that target: Poland spends four percent and the three Baltic states each spend around three percent. European members of NATO will collectively invest $380 billion in defense this year, and Europe has spent far more than the United States to assist Ukraine. But some European allies have yet to reach NATO’s defense investment targets, and Europe has depleted its own inventory of weapons and ammunition by giving so much to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia now spends 7.5 percent of its GDP—a third of government expenditure—on its military.

Because Europe’s economy is much larger than Russia’s, European countries don’t need to match its 7.5 percent spending. But they do need to step up and agree to a new spending goal. The two-percent target was set in 1999, when NATO did not face a revanchist Russia on its borders. Allies should now commit to a bolder target, such as spending at least two and a half percent of GDP by 2030—a figure that is on par with what European countries spent during the Cold War and is commensurate with today’s threat; only five NATO member states currently meet this mark. NATO should also come up with a new way to assess members’ contributions that considers more than just their defense budgets. NATO could rate countries, like a credit agency, by taking into account spending targets, combat power, and capabilities.

Total defense investment isn’t Europe’s only problem. Many countries fail to coordinate on procurements, leaving gaps in their capabilities and increasing their dependence on the United States. European NATO members must tailor their spending to fix their most severe shortfalls, namely in air and missile defense, long-range weapons, surveillance, strategic transport, air-to-air refueling, and suppression of enemy air defenses. In the longer term, they should invest in emerging tools, such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, cybertechnology, space technology, hypersonic technology, and counter-hypersonic technology to sustain a qualitative advantage over Russia. The EU has the resources and mechanisms in place to assist with these efforts, offering financing through programs such as the European Defense Fund and the European Defense Industrial Program. EU member states are also considering the issuance of “European defense bonds” to fund investment in capability gaps and the creation of a new defense commissioner to coordinate financial and industrial initiatives.

Europe’s current reliance on the United States is not sustainable.

European countries must also be able to contribute more to the alliance’s combat forces. In June 2022, NATO announced that it would increase the number of troops at high readiness seven-fold, meaning that 300,000 soldiers are theoretically available at less than 30 days’ notice. But the force sizes and inventories of European allies have remained static or shrunk over the past decade because of underinvestment and recruitment and retention problems. To ensure that NATO can still field enough troops, allies should adjust their defense plans to generate the forces required by NATO’s new regional plans for deterrence and defense, which were agreed upon at last year’s Vilnius summit. For the first time since the Cold War, allies have specific force generation targets to meet based on their location and national strengths, such as Poland’s rapidly growing land forces and the United Kingdom’s potent air and maritime capabilities. But the onus remains on allies to deliver. Standardizing national approaches to reserve forces and conscription across NATO would also help boost personnel but would be controversial given the diversity of views on this issue among allies. NATO should also prepare for a scenario where European forces would have to take over for U.S. forces that depart for other theaters, which requires that Washington be more open with its European allies about how its plans in the Indo-Pacific could change the U.S. force posture in Europe.

European member countries need to do a better job at coordinating their defense production, too. For years, trends were moving in the wrong direction: among EU countries, collaborative defense procurement dropped from 21 percent of total procurement in 2016 to 11 percent in 2020. The EU is now trying to reverse this trajectory by setting ambitious targets for collaborative procurement and for the production and trade of defense equipment within the union through the European Defense Industrial Strategy. NATO leaders can help simply by making cooperation a political priority as they did at the 2012 Chicago Summit, where their predecessors issued a dedicated declaration to forge “a renewed culture of cooperation,” which led to more collaboration via the Smart Defense initiative. Led by then Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the scheme aimed to make allied defense more efficient by leveraging cooperation. At the time, allies had little incentive to cooperate. They do now, considering Russia’s revanchism and NATO’s renaissance.

It would also be prudent for European members of NATO to improve their high-level coordination on defense policy, especially in the event of a U.S. pullback. This role was filled during the Cold War by a ten-nation “Eurogroup,” which informally coordinated European allies’ efforts to strengthen the common defense. Today, a streamlined Eurogroup could be led by the three most militarily capable European countries—France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. This trio could bring in Poland and Italy to integrate perspectives from eastern and southern Europe. Regular ministerial consultations would ensure that European capitals are pulling in the same direction on critical issues such as deterrence, defense, capability investment, and industrial capacity.

ALL FOR ONE

Russia’s war in Ukraine has driven home that the real risk to the transatlantic alliance is a weak Europe, not a powerful one. NATO, the EU, and smaller groupings have found an organic division of labor when it comes to supporting Ukraine and Europe’s own defense, disproving Washington’s fear that steps toward European autonomy would end up supplanting NATO functions or driving wedges within the alliance.

The EU now has a critical role to play in strengthening the European pillar of NATO, given that the two organizations have 23 members in common and are bound by the principle of a “single set of forces,” which implies that the militaries of the 23 common member states are equally available to both the EU and NATO. There is also a role for smaller coalitions, such as the Joint Expeditionary Force, a British-led alliance of 11 countries that patrols northern seas, or European Sky Shield, a German-led initiative in which 21 European countries jointly develop air defenses. These groups all help to build a common strategic culture, make European militaries more interoperable, and improve overall force readiness. NATO benefits when European forces can carry out their own missions to bolster European security—and when their previous experience has prepared forces from different European countries to work as a cohesive unit within NATO.

The upcoming NATO summit in Washington should be a moment of reckoning. Europe’s current reliance on the United States is not sustainable, and a future in which the United States shifts its attention and resources elsewhere and Europe must fend for itself is not good for transatlantic security. Strengthening Europe’s contribution within NATO is the best way to withstand political uncertainty and keep the alliance firmly embedded in Europe’s security architecture. Europe must take the lead in this project, and the United States must offer its encouragement. The fact that the U.S. administration agreed to a mention of the “European pillar” in the French-American roadmap adopted during Joe Biden’s state visit to France in June seems to indicate that the idea is making headway in Washington. After all, a strong European pillar means a stronger NATO and a safer world.