The Fundamental Problem in the US-European “Alliance”

For years long pre-dating the Trump administrations I or II, the alliance between the United States and Europe grew increasingly strained. Though the facile target the current administration, the divide between between Europe and the United long pre-dates the Trump administration and crosses political parties, even if under the Trump administration it reached new heights. So what is driving the divide?

Any alliance depends on two primary pillars: parties to the alliance agree on the threats and agree on how to approach the threats. Countries will only enter an alliance if they agree with another country on the potential threats or risks. If my country thinks country A is a risk but not country B but your country thinks country B is a threat but not country A, it will be very difficult for us to enter an alliance since we do not agree on which country presents the threat.

Now let us assume we both agree country presents a threat so we want to enter into an alliance, we must further agree upon issues about how to address those threats cooperatively. Assume one country wants to invade but another wants it purely for defensive purposes. Even if both countries agree on the threat, they still must cooperate and agree on a variety of issues such as what is equitable division of burden sharing, how to mitigate the threats posed, and other issues.

The fundamental problem between the United States and Europe is that the parties to the alliance do not agree upon the threats facing them and where they do agree upon the the threats they do not agree on how to address those risks. Furthermore, this gulf has been growing for some time.

It should come as no surprise that the one threat the United States and Europe both recognize is Russia. Originally created from the ashes of World War II and designed for the Cold War, both countries recognize Russia as a threat. So this case meets the first criteria but falls apart on the second criteria on how best to address those threats. The original foundation of the United States-European alliance was predicated on limiting trade as much as possible with adversaries like the Soviet Union. Many measures taken by Europe, and to be fair even the United States, would have been inconceivable to allow enemies tot undertake. Allowing the Soviet Union to operate information infrastructure like phone lines would have been considered a joke but is standard operating practice for Europe.

Dating back decades, the US government across administrations urged Europe to invest significantly more resources in their defense explicitly warning them the United States backing should not be considered a blank check to ignore security needs. The first Trump administration urged Europe eo reduce their reliance on Russia, even as Europe assured the US this guaranteed that Russia would not attempt risky events. Even more recently, the Biden administration was urging Europe to increase military support and could not expect the US to should the entire military burden. It was only after the Trump administration cut off military assistance that Europe began providing any material military aid to Ukraine to defend itself from Russia. Fundamentally, on the one risk both sides can agree on, the long standing and profound disagreements about how to deal with the risks proves an insurmountable problem.

Moved beyond the realm of Russia and the original purpose of NATO and the primary focus of the US-European alliance and there is almost no agreement on the threats facing countries or region. Europe has regularly stated that it does not see a significant threat to Europe from China or Iran nor will it actively address threats it does acknowledge in any type of timely manner.

European refusal to acknowledge the threats posed by China present very real problems for the United States and even the United States-European alliance. The United States wants to pivot resource focus to dealing with China but Europe insistence that the United States focus on Europe hamstrings a rotation to focus on East Asia. The European refusal to acknowledge the threats posed by China presents very real problems to the United States and to the alliance.

While much of the discussion focuses on the Trump administration, the fundamental problems are structural in nature not temporal or personality driven. The problems in the US-European alliance and even with Canada may be exacerbated by the current administration but the issues are long standing issues that have been raised across US administrations by Presidents from both parties. It is temping to blame the Trump administration but the reality is these are long standing deep problems that eat away at the the very reason for an alliance.

One of the bigger problems is that the western mind struggles to grasp the concept of a fundamental divide. Very often critics will claim, whether it is with the Trump administration that it is a mere issue of messaging rather than acknowledging the fundamental policy divide between the states. This is why so many struggle to grasp the fundamentally different world view of states like China, Russia, or Iran and the threat it poses. It is not a messaging problem it is a fundamentally different stance that cannot be reconciled by editing a press release.

While I hope we will see an improvement in US European relations, given the profound divergence between the two I do not hold out longer term hope.