This article is the third in a five-part MSNBC Daily series, “The Future of NATO.” With the Trump administration attacking allies, removing troops from European training missions, handing Ukraine’s bargaining chips to Russia and refusing to guarantee European security even as “backstop” — we’re asking five crucial questions about the future of NATO, the U.S. and Europe.
In 1951, Dwight Eisenhower, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s first Supreme Allied Commander Europe, gave his colleagues a warning. “If, in 10 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,” he said of the U.S. effort to build a new trans-Atlantic security architecture. Almost 75 years later, Eisenhower would be disappointed.
Today, Europe is still reliant on the U.S. forces stationed across the continent and in the United Kingdom, but President Donald Trump and his advisers appear ready to break with this status quo.
Europe should welcome, not fear, U.S. retrenchment. Not only will an independent defense end Europe’s abdication of its geopolitical autonomy, but it will leave Europe more secure.
European countries were building militaries and fighting wars long before the United States entered the picture.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put it bluntly. “Stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe,” he told allied counterparts at their first meeting in February. Viewed across the Atlantic as an abandonment, the United States’ move to return Europe’s defense burden to Europe is long overdue and represents a return to the historical norm.
European countries were building militaries and fighting wars long before the United States entered the picture. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the United Kingdom, France and Germany had the largest defense budgets. In 1912, on the eve of World War I, for instance, these three European countries each spent about 30% more in real terms on defense than the United States.
This changed only in the 1950s, with the onset of the Cold War. U.S. defense spending rose quickly as American soldiers deployed around the globe with promises of protection and security guarantees for allies. Europe, in contrast, kept its defense spending considerably lower, comforted by the presence of U.S. troops and NATO’s Article 5 commitment.
By 1990, the United States was spending more than three times as much on defense as France, Germany and the United Kingdom combined. When the end of the Cold War removed the Soviet threat, Europe let its defense capabilities atrophy further, leaving the United States to carry most of NATO’s security burden.
Though it endured for seven decades, this arrangement is inherently unstable and compromises both U.S. and European interests. It is unsustainable for the United States, which faces competing global priorities and resource constraints that limit what it can and is willing to contribute to Europe’s protection. And it infantilizes Europe, effectively stripping its members of geopolitical independence and influence.
Now, Trump is demanding a return to the old, pre-World War II trans-Atlantic bargain in which Europe is responsible for funding its own defense. This is hardly unreasonable, and, in fact, it would leave Europe better off. An independent defense will allow Europe to be more empowered on the world stage and escape the risks created by Washington’s changing whims.
Europe will also be more secure if it assumes responsibility for managing its own defense rather than continuing to rely on increasingly shaky U.S. promises. Though U.S. and European leaders still call the mutual defense commitment at NATO’s foundation “ironclad,” the credibility of the Article 5 guarantee has been hollowed out over the past 35 years.
The United States’ ability and will to fulfill its role as Europe’s security guarantor have waned in big and small ways.
Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. commitments in Europe have increased. NATO added 16 members, including difficult-to-defend countries with shared borders with Russia, such as the Baltic states and Finland. Troublingly, however, new entrants were admitted without much attention to what would be required militarily to protect them, suggesting that Washington was unserious about meeting its expanded treaty commitments — or believed it would not have to.
At the same time, the United States’ ability and will to fulfill its role as Europe’s security guarantor have waned in big and small ways.
For starters, the number of U.S. military forces based in Europe has decreased sharply. In his second term, President Barack Obama cut U.S. forward presence in Europe to its lowest post-World War II levels, somewhere close to 65,000, though this number has trended back upward since. In 2022, when U.S. forces looked to transfer pre-positioned military equipment to Ukraine, they found much of it in disrepair, unready for battlefield use, revealing years of neglect. More recently, Washington acknowledged strain on its air defense capabilities and the munitions stockpiles needed in Europe but has done little to address the gaps.
Europe should read these signs for what they are. Questions about the reliability of the U.S commitment to Europe are justified given clear evidence of its limited and declining interest and investment. Moreover, it has been decades since the United States indicated a real willingness or the military capacity to fight on Europe’s behalf, and Washington has never shown an appetite to engage in combat to defend NATO’s easternmost members.
With U.S. attention and resources increasingly and irrevocably focused elsewhere, it would be foolhardy for Europe to remain dependent on American security guarantees, even in the absence of Trump’s threats and pressure campaign. Europe’s interest in defending itself in a crisis will always be greater and more credible than the U.S. interest in Europe. By becoming self-sufficient in the security domain, Europe can make sure that its defenses match the threats it faces and be assured that needed military forces and hardware will be there when required.
Of course, building an independent European defense will not be easy. It will require overcoming intra-European disagreements about threat perception and investment priorities. Still, these differences are considerably more tractable than those that have derailed the trans-Atlantic relationship of late. Importantly, Europe has the resources and technological capability to become a world-class military power, if it chooses.
Though Europe’s defense outlook today is uncertain, it may soon find what the United States learned long ago: The best defense is self-defense.