Our September edition takes the occasion of NATO's 75th anniversary to assess Europe’s role in the transatlantic alliance amid mounting Russian aggression and uncertainty about US engagement.
So much for the summer news lull.
Since The Parliament last went to print, Ursula von der Leyen, as expected, secured a second term at the helm of the European Commission. But no thanks to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who ultimately overplayed her hand and failed to emerge as a ‘kingmaker.’ Instead, that role went to the Greens, whose last-minute backing proved crucial in propelling Von der Leyen to victory during a parliamentary vote in mid-July.
Most of the Brussels bubble then duly disappeared for a month-long holiday. But the drama continued across the Atlantic, where one presidential candidate stepped down and the other narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet.
In short, the US election now appears to be a toss-up between former President Donald Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris. And the outcome could upend transatlantic relations, potentially reshaping NATO – which turns 75 this year – and Europe’s role in in the alliance.
Trump’s antipathy to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is well known and his four years in office galvanised many European countries to rethink their own security, a process that was further accelerated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“We don’t know what will happen with a Trump administration this time,” says Camille Grand, a former senior NATO official. “We will need to be more capable [of dealing with] contingencies by ourselves, [ones] in which the US won’t be as valuable as one might hope.”
Still, the US began a ‘pivot to Asia’ well before Trump came to power, under former President Barack Obama, and since then growing US-China tensions have only reinforced the strategic importance of the region for American interests.
“Any administration is going to face the tension between European security commitments on the one hand, and demands growing in East Asia on the other,” says Ian Lesser, head of the Brussels office at the German Marshall Fund – suggesting that Europeans must increasingly take responsibility for their own defence.
EU member states have dramatically upped their defence spending – with many set to meet the NATO target of two per cent of GDP for the first time – and the European Commission earlier this year launched a European Defence Industrial Strategy to co-ordinate efforts across the bloc. Von der Leyen has also vowed to install a European defence commissioner, while proposing to scale up the European Defence Fund for joint procurement of weapons.
But as the traditional guarantor of European security in the post-war period, the US still remains by far the dominant player in the now 32-member alliance, accounting for roughly two-thirds of total NATO spending last year.
Some NATO capabilities such as advanced air defence and precision strikes can’t be performed at all without US forces in the loop, giving rise to the old joke that NATO stands for ‘need Americans to operate.’ For Europe to become self-sufficient in defence, it will need to do more than increase its spending.
As Andrew Radin of the Rand Corporation notes: “Ultimately, decision making and influence on shaping operations comes from having the forces available.”
— Christopher Alessi, Editor-in-Chief