When President-elect Donald Trump assumes office in January, he will face the weight of America's sprawling array of international priorities and security obligations. While Trump has sometimes appeared eager to jettison longtime international relationships, perhaps no issue is so important or fundamental to US national security than our commitments to Europe. While Europe tends to attract criticism — and not necessarily unfairly — for its low levels of defense spending, its position as an anchor for peace and prosperity is a cornerstone of US national interests.
Trump, while perhaps more incendiary in his terminology, is hardly the first person to decry European "free riding" from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Indeed, Republican and Democrat US defense secretaries have expressed similar misgivings. Adm. James Stavridis, a once-rumored dark horse for Secretary Hillary Clinton's vice presidential slot, made his own concerns public about uneven NATO defense spending in Europe. Yet despite this cross-partisan consensus, almost no one in comparable positions of knowledge or responsibility have advocated abandoning the continent to its own devices. Why is that?
The simple reality is that for the United States, subsidizing the broad contours of European security — frustrating or resource-intensive though it may be — is widely regarded as a good deal. European states — within NATO and even a few outside of it — have generally been reliable contributors to regional security and US-led military coalitions. And even beyond that, US intelligence agencies uniquely benefit from active cooperation with European counterparts, which provide rich insights in service of US national security decision-making. Yet perhaps Europe's single-most important contribution is its decades-long success as a haven for liberal democracy, peace and prosperity.
In most descriptions of NATO’s founding, the Soviet Union looms large as the decisive factor in its formation and longevity. However, NATO was not developed simply as a continental bulwark against Soviet militarism, but as a conscious effort to break centuries-old cycles of ruinous interstate conflict that had, by the late 1940s, produced two horrifying world wars within living memory and an international system of imperialism and colonization that still reverberate to this very day.
American leaders, quite astutely, recognized that its post-World War I isolationism only augmented the very conditions that led to the carnage of World War II. American national security (and the cause of human freedom) could not be found by again retreating behind its oceanic moat, but by wielding its newfound superpower in the service of international integration and European security. Far from an accidental vacation from history, Europe was a proof of concept that durable, Washington-forged institutions could create a base for liberal democracy in the world’s preeminent foundry for war. Paired with the Marshall Plan and a constellation of economic, multilateral organizations, NATO provided the military muscle and political guarantees to cultivate an unprecedented period of European unity, liberalization and economic growth.
Due in no small part to NATO, the US has benefited richly from Europe’s success. Not only did Europe’s postmodern miracle mean far fewer dead young American soldiers and an explosion in transatlantic trade and economic cooperation, but it has also allowed American diplomats, merchants and entrepreneurs to focus their energies on forging a web of international links, institutions and alliances that have in many ways made the world as safe as it has ever been.
NATO remains very much an investment-grade buy for US foreign policy. With the growing specter of Russian militarism, increasing Chinese competition in East Asia and the still-extant threats of global terrorism, preserving European unity and peace is needed now more than ever. Seeking common ground with illiberal, activist powers like Russia may seem like tantalizing, short-term opportunities, but Moscow’s agreeableness is as fickle as it is underwhelming— particularly compared to the far bigger prize of European cooperation and continued harmony.
Yes, European partners can and should bear a greater share of the burden and, in many cases, are doing just that. But the truth is that even if Europe was a gardened paradise, forever aloof and insulated from the trials of interstate competition by US watchfulness, it would still be a "good deal" for American foreign policy.
Michael Cecire is an international security fellow at the New America think tank and a nonresident fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
