National Interest

by Ramon Marks

    The longstanding Western alliance is far more likely to evolve and accommodate US demands for a strengthened Europe.

    NATO Europeans are reluctantly facing the fact that they must assume, after more than 75 years, the primary responsibility for their own defense under the NATO framework. They can no longer expect the United States to remain their overarching protector. The controversy over Greenland has even heightened concern that the United States may withdraw from the NATO alliance altogether.

    The just-released 2026 National Defense Strategy, however, points to the opposite: the United States is not abandoning NATO. Roughly 80,000 US troops are based in Europe and there is no indication that bases will be closed or that personnel and supplies will be returned to the United States. Ironically, the biggest military base in Germany is still American, not German. US forces remain fully engaged with European allies, whether conducting joint infantry maneuvers and operations in Poland and Latvia, or conducting sorties with NATO allies’ warships in the Baltic Sea or the Mediterranean. The United States has not gone quiet in NATO.

    The 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS) makes it clear that the United States will “continue to play a vital role in NATO itself…” What has changed is that the United States is now consistently pressuring its allies to share greater defense burdens. Thanks to US diplomacy and the Ukraine war, European allies committed at the 2025 Hague NATO summit to increase defense spending to 5 percent of national GDP. The NDS reaffirms that while the United States will “prioritize incentives for allies and partners to take primary responsibility for their own defense in Europe,” the Pentagon will nonetheless continue to provide “critical but more limited US support.”

    The NDS calls for greater burden-sharing by allies is not grounded in isolationist sentiments or anger over Greenland, but rather in the hard reality that Russia is not the only global challenge the United States faces. The NDS points to the fact that the US military must be ready to deal not just with Europe, but also with the Middle East, China, the Korean Peninsula, the Western Hemisphere and even Africa, where the United States recently conducted a military operation in Nigeria against Islamic extremists.

    The United States has its hands full. Calling on NATO Europe to pick up more of its own regional load is the strategic imperative. In fact, at NATO’s founding in 1949, General Dwight Eisenhower anticipated that the US military’s dominant role in the alliance would be short-lived. He said that “[i]f 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.”

    Eisenhower’s vision for NATO and a temporary American role did not pan out, but fortunately, the alliance still endured. Placing more responsibility at this point in the hands of Europe’s military is not a temper tantrum over Greenland or a sign of growing isolationism. It is a long-needed, strategic adjustment among capable allies to help the Pentagon cope with rapidly growing challenges in other parts of the world.

    Accompanying the challenge of building European hard power is a need for Europe to tone down its aggressive use of values-based soft power. A dangerous disconnect has grown between the ambitious soft power aims pursued by the European Union in Brussels and NATO, Europe’s real military capabilities.

    The consequences of Brussels’ bungled negotiations with Ukraine over EU accession show how its overambitious use of soft power can lead to catastrophic strategic outcomes for the entire continent. Brussels utterly underestimated how Russia might react to potential Ukraine accession to the EU. George Kennan had warned for decades that any effort to integrate Ukraine into the West would be treated as a red line for Russia. In 2008, when William Burns was US ambassador to Russia, he warned in a cable titled “Nyet Means Nyet” that any Ukrainian movement toward the West could provoke an extreme Russian reaction. Even Angela Merkel had quiet concerns about any Western deals with Ukraine.

    Nevertheless, EU negotiators treated the Ukraine discussions as purely economic and regulatory matters with no potential security risks. Moscow viewed the process as a major strategic threat, designed to place Kyiv firmly in the Western camp and ultimately in NATO.

    Brussels trade diplomats then took their misjudgments about Moscow to a whole new level when they needlessly triggered a major domestic political controversy inside Ukraine over Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime minister, who had been convicted and sentenced by Ukrainian courts to seven years in prison for corruption. Brussels took it upon itself to view her prosecution as a violation of the rule of law and to call for her release as part of any EU deal with Kyiv.

    That demand sparked a polarizing political controversy in Kyiv. Ukraine’s president, Victor Yanukovych and his supporters considered Tymoshenko to be their most formidable and dangerous political rival. The EU’s push for Tymoshenko’s release played a major role in Yanukovych’s decision to halt talks with Brussels and pursue trade talks with Russia. In turn, his move toward Moscow prompted the 2014 Maidan Square protests, which forced the democratically elected Yanukovych to flee to Russia.

    Three days after Yanukovych was driven out of office, Russia sent its “Green Men” into Crimea. The EU nonetheless pressed on, accelerating its negotiations with the new government. An EU Association Agreement was signed in March 2014, shortly after Crimea was occupied.

    From that point until 2022, Ukraine’s integration into the West gained momentum. In 2019, Ukraine passed a constitutional amendment, committing the country to full EU and NATO membership. Russia launched its Ukraine invasion in 2022 and the rest is history. Total casualties in the war so far are estimated to be close to 2 million. If European allies want to prevent such horrific outcomes in the future, they will have to adopt a more careful diplomatic approach in pursuing their goals for the liberal order. Soft power is not enough to deal with Moscow.

    Short of an outright Russian invasion against an Article 5, NATO ally, the United States, with all its global responsibilities, cannot be expected to serve as a military backstop for its European allies in every situation where they overplay their soft-power hand. European allies have no choice but to increase their own deterrent military capabilities if they truly want to be a credible force for stability and progress in Europe.

    Some hopeful signs of European military resurgence are now emerging. In addition to pledges of defense budget increases, two NATO allies, Britain and France, recently cooperated on an operation that led to the seizure by French Marines of a “ghost fleet” tanker carrying sanctioned Russian oil. Taking on an even larger naval role, alongside willing European allies, to vigorously enforce Russian oil sanctions would be a step in the right direction.

    That kind of operation could give European allies greater leverage to influence affairs in their own backyard, including the Ukraine peace negotiations. At this point, they are basically bystanders in the process, watching from the sidelines as Washington controls those discussions.

    The NATO alliance will survive. The United States will not abandon NATO, even over Greenland. But to endure, the alliance must evolve. America’s allies must become peer military partners of the United States. Dwight Eisenhower was basically right. Ultimately, it will be up to a prosperous and capable Europe to assume primary responsibility for safeguarding its own regional security. A strengthened European NATO will send a powerful message to the world about the collective will of Western democracies to preserve their values and help maintain a stable world order through hard power.