The sustainability of transatlantic security depends on enabling Washington to avoid a strategic choice between Asia and Europe
If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the threat of former President Trump to withdraw from NATO did not spur America’s European allies to fix the structural imbalance in transatlantic defense, what could put that security partnership on a sustainable path? During an era of U.S. global security dominance and quiescent rivals, Washington could manage to bear disproportionate burdens in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Today, military conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, aggressive Russian revisionism and growing Chinese ambitions and capacity for coercion and power projection create a real crunch for the United States that requires a more serious long-term European response.
Europeans have executed a major shift in recent years, to be sure, with Europeans plus Canada spending 62 percent more on defense now compared to 2014. But this improvement does not compensate for the deteriorating global security environment – most particularly, the U.S. need to strengthen its posture in the Indo-Pacific and prepare for the potential for conflict.
With their focus on achieving a two-percent-of-GDP spending target for defense that was set in 2014, NATO is, in defense budget terms, fighting the last war.
Source: Defense News