A Post-American Europe

A debate about the U.S. role in Europe is long overdue, but both sides have wrongly defined the issues and interests at play. In fact, the United States has the same cardinal interest in Europe today that it has had since at least the early 1900s: keeping the continent’s economic and military power divided. In practice, pursuing this goal has meant preventing the emergence of a European hegemon. Unlike the continent in the mid-twentieth century, however, Europe today lacks a candidate for hegemony and, thanks in part to the success of U.S. efforts after 1945 to rebuild and restore prosperity to Western Europe, another hegemonic threat is unlikely to emerge.

The United States should recognize that it has achieved its main goal in Europe. Having successfully ensured that no country can dominate the continent, it should embrace a new approach to the region. Under a revised strategy, the United States would reduce its military presence on the continent, Europeanize NATO, and hand principal responsibility for European security back to its rightful owners: the Europeans.

A Fine Balance

For more than 100 years, the United States has had one enduring national interest in Europe: keeping the continent’s economic and military power split among multiple states by preventing the emergence of a European hegemon that sought to consolidate that power for itself.

In World War I and World War II, Washington went to war to stop Germany from dominating Europe. NATO, founded in 1949, was designed to foreclose the possibility that a single country could take over the continent. As Secretary of State Dean Acheson remarked that year, the two world wars “taught us that the control of Europe by a single aggressive, unfriendly power would constitute an intolerable threat to the national security of the United States.”

U.S. support for NATO was a reasonable move at a time when the Soviet Union was threatening to overrun the continent, wartime memories were fresh, and Germany’s future was unclear. Yet even back then, Washington’s goal was not to take permanent responsibility for European security. Instead, NATO was intended as a temporary expedient to protect Western European states as they recovered from World War II, facilitate Western European efforts to balance Soviet power, and integrate West Germany into a counter-Soviet coalition that would also help civilize German power. In 1951, as the supreme Allied commander in Europe, Dwight Eisenhower noted, “If in ten years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed.”

To that end, Presidents Harry Truman and Eisenhower tried to pull together a “Third Force” of European power by encouraging France, the United Kingdom, West Germany, and other Western European states to combine their political, economic, and military resources against the Soviet Union. Once formed, this Third Force would relieve the United States of the duty to serve as Europe’s first line of defense. Only as it became clear in the late 1950s and early 1960s that Western European states worried as much about Germany as they worried about the Soviet Union did the United States reluctantly accept a more enduring role in the alliance.

Today, however, the situation is vastly different. For the first time in centuries, Europe lacks a potential hegemon. Fears of an imperial Germany have given way to anxieties over a stunted geopolitical role for Berlin, turning the “German problem” on its head. Other capable states, such as the United Kingdom and France, recognize that the distribution of power is not conducive to expansion.

Russia, meanwhile, lacks the resources and opportunity to mount a hegemonic challenge. With a population of 143 million people, compared with the European NATO countries’ roughly 600 million, it lacks the manpower to conquer Eurasia. The European members of NATO have an economy roughly ten times bigger and significantly more developed than Russia’s. Even the most pessimistic estimates available show that European countries spent significantly more on defense than Russia even before the costly invasion of Ukraine and before the resulting increases in European defense spending. According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, Russia spent roughly $75 billion in 2023, whereas NATO’s European members together spent over $374 billion.

Of course, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated its willingness to use force, a pronounced interest in dominating Ukraine, and a capacity to sustain high-intensity operations. What it has not demonstrated, however, is a meaningful capability to project military power across long distances. Not only was the initial Russian thrust toward Kyiv beaten back, but also much of the combat since has occurred within a few hundred miles of the Russian-Ukrainian border. The result has been appalling destruction, but it hardly provides evidence of a military ready to sweep across the continent.

If, after more than two years of fighting, Russia has been unable to defeat an economically and militarily weaker Ukraine, it does not pose a hegemonic threat to Europe. And although Russia could certainly try to replenish its military capabilities, European states’ responses to the conflict have shown a willingness to counter opportunities for future aggression. Today’s Russia is a shadow of the Soviet threat.

Take the Win

With no candidate for European hegemony lurking, there is no longer any need for the United States to take the dominant role in the region. Without Washington at the helm, Europe today would have normal international politics—which, admittedly, includes the prospect of some interstate conflict at the periphery—without opening the door to a hegemonic challenge.

And yet Washington refuses to take the win. Having foreclosed the possibility of a European superpower emerging, NATO’s eastward expansion has created new interests involving weak, vulnerable states that are much harder to secure. This creates political pressure for the United States to remain in Europe on the grounds that Europe cannot defend itself.

Still, for all the attention paid to the question of whether Europe can defend itself, it is peculiar that “Europe” is rarely defined. The effort to unite European countries into a larger political unit originated with noble aims: former French Prime Minister Robert Schuman described the goal as making “any war between France and Germany not merely unthinkable but materially impossible.” Despite European integration, however, the nation-state continues to dominate European politics. France and Latvia are both European countries, but their defense needs—and relevance to the United States—differ.

It is unsurprising, then, if one includes the small and vulnerable countries that border Russia in the Europe to be defended, Europe may not be able to easily defend itself. Tellingly, war games over the last decade have strongly suggested that in the event of a conflict with Russia, the United States and its partners would still struggle to prevent some of its more vulnerable members from facing significant damage.

On the other hand, if “Europe” means something in line with traditional U.S. interests—keeping the core areas of military and economic power on the continent divided—the matter is less daunting. Again, the distribution of military and economic power today is such that there are many states that, together or alone, could prevent Russia from achieving hegemony. Nuclear weapons provide another deterrent: France and the United Kingdom have their own nuclear arsenals, and other countries in Europe—Germany in particular—could easily acquire ones if they felt threatened enough. How one defines Europe determines how easily Europe could defend itself. But the central U.S. interest in Europe is not at risk.

Back to Basics

Amid growing demands at home and in Asia, a course correction is in order. The idea would not be to isolate the United States from Europe but to shift the U.S. role from provider of first resort to balancer of last resort.

First, the United States should start withdrawing some of its troops from Europe, forcing the responsibility for providing the conventional forces needed to secure Europe back onto European shoulders. Right now, the United States has roughly 100,000 troops stationed on the continent, with the largest concentration in Germany. A good place to start the drawdown would be with the 20,000 additional troops deployed by the Biden administration in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Once those troops are pulled out, Washington should signal its intent to resume the withdrawal of 12,000 troops from Germany, a plan that Trump approved and Biden froze. Two structured rounds of withdrawal would drive the point home: Europe’s most powerful countries need to step up. Eventually, the additional U.S. forces and equipment in Europe could be progressively drawn down, shifting the burden of Europe’s conventional deterrence needs to Europeans.

Making these moves now would take advantage of Europeans’ evident willingness to do more for their own defense since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Germany exemplifies this newfound interest. The initial Russian offensive was enough to shock Germany into canceling the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and announcing plans to spend an additional $108 billion on defense over four years as part of its Zeitenwende, or “turning point.”

Although the way Germany has spent these funds prevented the Zeitenwende from generating serious military power, its leaders have embraced the need to rebuild German capabilities—some of the country’s most popular elected officials, such as Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, are proponents of rearmament. Capable states such as France, Poland, and the United Kingdom have followed a similar course. Withdrawing troops and materiel, the tangible expression of U.S. leadership, would accelerate this process by requiring European states to bear responsibility for their defense and preventing them from continuing to lean on the United States.

At the same time, policymakers should realize that Europe cannot quickly fill shortfalls in certain areas. In particular, the U.S. nuclear umbrella and its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities would take time to replace under even the best circumstances. Accordingly, Washington should continue to provide Europe with assistance in these areas for several years while helping Europe rectify capability gaps over the long term. Just as the United States provides intelligence and assistance in identifying targets to states that are not treaty allies like Ukraine, so can it credibly promise to provide these services to NATO members, even as it draws down its conventional forces. This may also involve reevaluating U.S. opposition to Germany’s acquiring nuclear weapons, although it is unlikely that Germany would reach for the bomb in any conceivable scenario.

The payoff here would be significant. One 2021 analysis by MIT professor Barry Posen estimated the budgetary savings of shedding the conventional deterrence mission in Europe at $70 billion to $80 billion per year. Given inflation and the additional forces and efforts dedicated to Europe since 2022, the savings would be even bigger today.

Second, to facilitate the creation of more European military power, the United States should drop some of its long-standing demands on how Europe arms itself. For decades, Washington has insisted that European states purchase materiel from the United States and avoid procuring forces that duplicate those of the United States. These requirements undermine domestic support for military investment in Europe and limit the continent’s ability to create and sustain its own military power. Rather than urge European states to buy American and avoid duplication, Washington should encourage European states to invest in their own defense-industrial base.

Conditions are ripe for rebuilding the European defense-industrial base: the sense of threat is high, the initial steps taken after the Russian invasion of Ukraine have borne fruit, and Europe already produces key weapons such as main battle tanks. Washington ought to lean into these dynamics. Because new military capabilities take a long time to develop, adjusting U.S. policy now would help ensure that Europe has the domestic capabilities needed to tackle the continent’s problems for decades to come.

Moreover, because modern military equipment is expensive to produce, encouraging European states to buy European would generate political pressure for increased European defense spending. Just as the concentrated economic benefits from military spending make it hard for the United States to close bases or production lines, so would the economic benefits weigh on similar decisions in Europe. By encouraging Europe to develop its defense-industrial base, Washington could also incentivize multinational coordination to allow longer production runs, lower the cost of procurement, enhance interoperability, and allow for more efficient military planning and budgeting.

Finally, the United States should gradually transform NATO into a European-run and ‑led alliance. To start, Washington should encourage the European members of the alliance to create a “European pillar” within NATO—a vehicle for members of the alliance to work out common positions on defense and security matters without American input. The U.S. president should make clear that the next supreme Allied commander will be a European, breaking with a 75-year practice in which an American has always held the post. And the United States should reduce the depth of its engagement in NATO committees, deferring to allies, for example, in policy debates within the Deputies or Defense Policy and Planning Committees, where consensus on security, political, and organizational matters is shaped.

All these steps would make clear that the United States expects the Europeans to manage the alliance on a day-to-day basis. They will be well positioned to do that: NATO’s considerable bureaucratic infrastructure makes it possible to build on habits of cooperation acquired over the alliance’s long life. U.S. policy does not need to aim at formal withdrawal from or continued membership in NATO; it simply needs to make clear that Washington’s tenure as Europe’s pacifier is coming to an end, and if European defense planners feel that leaves a hole to fill, they must fill it themselves.

In effect, the United States would return the transatlantic relationship to its roots. As an offshore power, Washington would help keep the balance but not seek to dominate the continent itself. Beyond freeing up American attention and resources, a right-sized relationship would also have a salutary effect on European strategic planning: when pushed to take day-to-day responsibility for continental security, European states would have to bear the full costs of their security choices. At a time when policymakers across the continent are pushing ambitious and costly policies—such as adding Ukraine to NATO and possibly entering the war in Ukraine themselves—turning responsibility for Europe’s security over to Europeans would reduce the incentives for these states to promote reckless policies.

Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste

The ideal moment to have shifted responsibility for Europe back to Europeans would have been soon after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, when NATO’s raison d’être disappeared, but the current moment will do. It may seem counterintuitive to suggest reducing the United States’ role as Europe’s sentry as the continent faces its biggest war since World War II. Paradoxically, however, the costs of and responses to the conflict in Ukraine make a clear-eyed strategic adjustment workable.

Russia’s intent may be malign, but its capabilities constrain it. Other European states also lack the capacity to make a play at charging across the continent. Ukraine has proved that motivated defenders can block aggressors even under adverse conditions. These are favorable circumstances for the United States. Moreover, the massive advantage Europe possesses in latent power suggests that Washington would have ample time to decide whether and when it might have to swoop back in to counter a hegemon.

Today, calls for the United States to cling to leadership in Europe ignore the opportunity and direct costs involved and Washington’s increasingly important interests elsewhere. The United States is staring down $35 trillion in debt, a $1.5 trillion annual budget deficit, a growing challenge in Asia, and pronounced political cleavages that make solving these challenges more difficult. With no indication that the fiscal picture will improve or evidence that domestic pressures are abating, policymakers need to reassess the United States’ foreign obligations. Given that the United States has accomplished its central goal in Europe, the moment has come to follow through on what the framers of its postwar strategy there intended. It’s time to take the win.