How can Europe defend itself against Russia without the US, or with much less of it? This question sums up the existential challenge now facing the continent.
Russia’s imperial ambitions start with Ukraine, but they don’t end there. Moscow’s hybrid attacks, its political interference in support of Russia-friendly parties and its military sabre-rattling – including a warship’s live-fire exercise 45 miles off the UK coast – all point in the same direction. A kinetic war to defend ourselves against Russia in the coming months or years cannot be ruled out. This is why European defence budgets are rising across Europe, especially in countries closer to the frontline.
Defence spending has accelerated since Donald Trump returned to office. This is less because of Trump’s jibes and insults – now extending even to far-right European leaders like Giorgia Meloni – and more that Europeans are waking up to the reality that in the event of a war against Russia, the US may not be there for them. While the US nuclear umbrella could hold – although France has launched an initiative to Europeanise its nuclear deterrent in case it does not – European governments and institutions are reckoning with the possibility that they might need to fight Russia without US conventional forces’ support or with much less of it.
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This explains the emergence of something that is unofficially being called Nato 3.0. At the Ankara Nato summit a few weeks ago, the initiative was pompously talked up – in part to placate Trump, in part to signal to Vladimir Putin that even if the US takes a back seat, a Europeanised Nato remains credible. The slogan that its supporters use, “A stronger Europe in a stronger Nato”, is misleading. Yes, Europeans will become militarily stronger, but as the US partly disengages, Nato overall will weaken. Working towards a Europeanised Nato is still sensible: even if the alliance weakens in absolute terms, it may still be strong enough to stand up to an encroaching Russia.
But here’s why we need to be cautious and work on alternatives at the same time. Take a worst-case scenario in which Russia attacked a European Nato country in the coming months or years. That country’s European Nato allies would probably come to the rescue. Eastern and northern European countries would stand by each other, of course. Even Germany has arguably made the cultural and psychological leap of acknowledging that its troops may have to fight the Russians again. Its plans to permanently station a 5,000-strong brigade in Lithuania is a signal.
If Germany were to respond, France and the UK would very likely come in too. And if these core countries stepped in, Italy and Spain would follow suit. The good news is that Europeans would probably remain united. But the bad news is that the US might not answer the call to defend Europe – and this in turn would instantly break Nato. The core pledge of the alliance’s founding treaty, article 5, says that an attack on one Nato state is an attack on all. The nature of the rupture would be the same whether it came from an explicit triggering of article 5 to which the US did not respond, or from article 5 never being triggered in anticipation of that very outcome.
A second, less catastrophic scenario is one in which there is no Russian provocation, Nato 3.0 moves forward in earnest, and in a few years’ time the alliance looks radically different to how it looks today, with the Europeans – along with Turkey and Canada – shouldering the lion’s share of the burden. But if non-US allies shoulder the bulk of the responsibilities, they will want the bulk of the rights. Europe’s defence markets would become less open to US companies, and Nato’s priorities would start reflecting European interests. Europeans would certainly not be happy to let the US call the shots indefinitely while they merely carry out orders. But it is hard to imagine any US administration, let alone one with Trump at the helm, happily giving up these rights and benefits.
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Since its inception in 1949, Nato has been organised around US capabilities, technologies and strategic culture. Europeans have been integrated into a US command structure and have adopted the US way of war. They lack the capabilities, manpower and command structures available to the US. If they had to deal with armed aggression in the near term they could not replicate Nato’s model. One way or another they would develop alternatives – but with the US still formally in Nato, albeit less committed to it, this could not happen within the alliance itself.
None of the alternatives is ideal. The EU does important work on defence industry cooperation and even has a mutual assistance clause enshrined in its treaties, but due to a range of constitutional and political constraints, I don’t believe it constitutes a feasible path forward to defence.
This leaves so-called coalitions of the willing – an idea with a problematic history that is now being resurrected. The US has led previous coalitions of the willing when it wanted to bypass formal multilateral structures like the UN. The most infamous example is the US-led coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003, without UN security council authorisation and in blatant violation of international law.
Today, coalitions of the willing have formed around critical security flashpoints – including Ukraine, Greenland and the strait of Hormuz. As in the past, their establishment is driven by the fact that existing organisations – the UN, Nato and the EU – have proven unable to deal effectively with these challenges on their own. Interestingly, this time, rather than being US-led and aimed at bypassing international law, they are European-led, bypass Washington, and are aimed precisely at affirming collective European action on key security issues in compliance with international law.
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Coalitions of the willing, however, are ad hoc and ephemeral, lacking both a system for political strategic decision-making and an operational chain of command. While participating states’ militaries are now meeting regularly to develop joint plans, these coalitions still lack the permanence needed to structurally build a European way of war, ensure its consistent adherence to international law, and to convey a real sense of confidence in the public. Institutionalising such coalitions at political level will be critical. One option would be through a European security council, an idea that was born in the wake of Brexit to keep the UK involved in European security decisions. It is being resurrected now precisely to devise ways for Europeans to address the continent’s security.
None of this should de-prioritise the Europeanising of Nato – but coalitions of the willing could be a critical insurance policy, should Nato 3.0 falter and fail.
