With more than a year behind the start of the Russian War on Ukraine, its impact can be observed on foreign policies and security relations of actors across the globe. The crisis has majorly highlighted the increased tensions between the Western security actors on either side of the Atlantic on one hand and Russia on the other. The primary impact of the war on the relationship between the United States and Europe has been in the area of security. NATO has seen a resurgence in solidarity with a renewed focus on its core mission of collective territorial defence in Europe. The war has also reinforced the United States’ central role as the protector of European security, which has been challenged in recent times by factors such as the US shift towards China and the Indo-Pacific and discussions in Europe about the need for strategic autonomy.
Despite Europe’s efforts at achieving ‘strategic autonomy’, Russian invasion has revealed European’s overpowering dependence on the US for their security. Some European countries such as Germany have also been hesitant to assume a larger proportion of the security responsibility in their region or to reduce their energy dependence on Russia, while others such as France have expressed a desire for a more autonomous geopolitical course. With the EU growing relatively less powerful than the US in their military, economic as well as technological capacity over the last decade coupled with the European lack of strategic coherence and collective political will on crucial strategic questions, the centrality of Washington as a leadership provider as well as the security underwriter of Europe has come to the forefront. While the Europeans currently lack the means and mechanisms to determine their own policies, American leadership remains necessary in Europe as the Europeans continue to render themselves incapable at the time to lead themselves.
With the coming of the Trump administration, the US foreign policy was strategically moving towards Asia and China, and with the US domestic politics growing towards self-pre-occupation, the American commitment to European security was being widely questioned. Subsequently, with the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, a strong US-response and a US-led strategy resulted in the prospective return to traditional American leadership, familiar from the Cold War era. During the Biden administration, there has been an increasing willingness on the part of the US foreign policy to wield its expanding influence and leadership.
In terms of military strength, Europe has experienced a significant decrease relative to the US since 2008. While the States increased their military spending from $656 billion to $801 billion between 2008 and 2021, the collective military expenditure of the EU27 and the UK only increased from $303 billion to $325 billion during the same period. Moreover, the US spending on new defence technologies is observed to be over seven times more than that of all the EU Member States combined. With the backdrop of some European countries under financial crisis and migration crisis, coupled with Brexit, the loss of Britain, Europe’s second largest economy and strongest military power, the Russian invasion of Ukraine came at a moment of severe European geopolitical weakness.
According to Liana Fix of the US Council on Foreign Relations, “American leadership has been almost too successful for its own good, leaving Europeans no incentive to develop leadership on their own.” As a result, the members of the transatlantic alliance are returning to their Cold-War habits where the US takes the lead while the Europeans follow. There seems to be a lack of space or interest for independent European initiatives on either side of the Atlantic.
The need of the hour for Europe is to assume a stronger and more independent role in the Atlantic alliance by attempting to build up their own independent capabilities to assist Ukraine and to enhance their military power. For the Atlantic alliance to continue to thrive and prosper in the coming future, it is essential to have a European component that possesses military strength as well as political autonomy such that the European and American policymakers can together build a balanced and sustainable alliance.
Building a more balanced transatlantic alliance would require Europe to develop their independent capacity to support Ukraine in the war through military, economic, security as well as energy security assistance. It is further imperative for the European Union to pursue greater military capabilities of their member states in order to act autonomously within NATO, with the EU becoming the enabler of European defence and the region’s primary security actor. Along with increase in military expenditure, Europe must have an inventive and competitive defence sector possessing knowledge and skills in future strategic technologies at par with other security actors in order to create a self-governing Europe and subsequently a balanced and sustainable transatlantic security partnership.
