Abstract
The emerging dynamics between President Trump, NATO and EU promises to constitute a fascinating new narrative of the changing contours of the international order in this millennium. President Trump has completely reversed American policy towards NATO.
As a businessman, Trump has made it clear that henceforth US funding and support would be linked to the US getting a ‘good deal’ from its NATO partners. NATO had earlier anchored itself to the benchmark goal that 2% of a country’s GDP should go to defence spending.
President Trump is yet to establish close and friendly relations either with NATO Secretary General or leaders of NATO Member States. Trump’s public embrace of autocratic rulers has caused resentment within NATO.
On CSDP the earlier European approach was to lean heavily on the Americans to fund NATO. The friction between the goals of NATO and CSDP increased under the Trump Presidency because of Trump’s insistence on burden sharing of resources and funds among NATO Member States. The CSDP and NATO have overlapping mandates which could be complicated in crisis situations. An independent CSDP remains the core issue causing friction. The U.S. and other non EU weapons producing countries (chiefly Norway and soon the U.K.) also believe that CSDP is manipulating the rules of defence procurement in favour of companies based on EU soil.
Is the US justified in attacking CSDP? Many EU Member States believe that protecting European defence industries is a small price to pay for ensuring that a NATO under American leadership not get involved in small regional wars, as an example, in Francophone Africa.
Brexit is casting a long shadow. EU and NATO would need to realign themselves from a strategic perspective. NATO and the EU need to prepare for a strategic scenario post Brexit. Following Brexit, 80 percent of NATO defence spending will come from non-EU members. This would shift the onus of decision making within NATO away from the EU.
One of the greatest challenges for NATO and the EU is America’s new narrative on Iran and North Korea. EU and NATO are slowly waking up to the new reality that there will be no “business as usual”. If NATO’s military deterrence loses its credibility, this will undermine the credibility of both EU and NATO and endanger international peace and security.
What could the EU and NATO do next? Are there any “low hanging fruits” that could be picked in the near future? The EU and NATO understand that there can be no ‘business as usual’. The new global narrative on security would depend on how NATO and EU respond to America’s changed narrative. A timely response is the need of the hour.
Keywords
Introduction
The emerging dynamics between President Trump, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) promises to constitute a fascinating new narrative of the changing contours of the international order in this millennium. NATO and the EU are grappling to address the challenges posed to the Transatlantic Alliance by the Trump Presidency. Both organisations had gone through turmoil and change after the tectonic events which unfolded in the last 2 decades of the twentieth century. American presidents from Truman onwards had traditionally underlined the importance of the Transatlantic Alliance for the security of Europe. President Trump has completely reversed the American policy towards the NATO (Mukherjee, 2018). Nor is it clear that he understands the dynamics of the EU and its importance to the Western Alliance, a union painstakingly built after the revival of the European economy through the Marshall Plan. At present, he seems to be focussed on a Franco-American partnership through President Macron, having cold shouldered Prime Minister May and the UK, earlier the bridge between America and Europe.
The present global order emerged dramatically with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the former USSR and the reshaping of Europe itself after the end of the Cold War. Bipolarity ended and the USA remained the only superpower. A triumphant and resurgent West celebrated the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, a new and stronger NATO and an EU now open to membership to erstwhile allies of the former USSR (Mukherjee, 2018). Europe and the NATO spoke openly and jubilantly of the decline of Russia and invited the newly independent Baltic States to join the NATO. In post-Cold War Europe, the NATO serves as a natural military deterrent to an increasingly militaristic Russian Federation under Putin.
Trump and NATO
It has been said that the Trump White House and the American Commander-in-Chief tend to regard the utility of the Alliance in transactional terms, rather than from clear strategic and military perspectives, based on a narrow reading of USA’s national interests. On the campaign trail, Trump described the organisation as ‘obsolete’! As a businessman, Trump has made it clear that henceforth US funding and support would be linked to the USA getting a ‘good deal’ from its NATO partners. Trump would also like the NATO to focus on ‘new’ and ‘emerging’ challenges which, in the absence of additional resources provided by the USA, looks difficult.
Divisive and internal debates about resources have become common at the higher policymaking levels within the NATO because of Trump’s insistence that Washington’s allies must spend more. The Alliance had earlier anchored itself to the benchmark goal that 2 per cent of a country’s GDP should go to defence spending. Some member states are on the way to this goal. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the USA remains the pillar of the Alliance, including through financial support and military resources.
The USA would like the NATO to be even more involved in counterterrorism and the struggle against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). From the time of President Obama, Washington had been pressuring the NATO to join the anti-ISIS coalition. Among European allies, there are media reports of disquiet among the NATO’s EU member states about getting mired down in post-conflict Iraq or Syria, as was the case in Afghanistan. Many of the ‘new’ challenges such as cyber warfare or the so-called Russian disinformation campaign constitute ‘grey zone’ warfare. Are they within the remit of a military or diplomatic organisation? These issues have increased tensions with Washington.
There are also internal strains within the Alliance. The broad difference in emphasis has been managed up to now between Northern member states, whose chief worry is Russia, and those in the South, on the NATO’s Mediterranean coast, who see the wider instability in the Middle East as the prime threat. Turkey’s drift towards authoritarianism could also create problems on the Alliance’s Southern flank. These issues raise fundamental questions regarding NATO’s capacity, enthusiasm and appetite for effective nation building and conflict management.
In Trump’s first ever NATO meeting, given the challenges ranging from the ISIS to Western security, it was expected that he would explicitly endorse the mutual defence pledge which remains at the heart of the Alliance. Instead, he urged allies to sharply increase their military budgets and ‘share the burden’. This reinforced the impression that the President had failed to appreciate that NATO is to date the most important military Alliance for the West which has maintained international peace and security for over 70 years. Its value cannot be measured in simple monetary terms. The allies had hoped to hear a robust endorsement of the NATO Treaty’s Article 5, which commits them to a ‘one-for-all, all-for-one’ principle, the foundation of the Alliance since it was established. What they heard was a vague promise to ‘never forsake the friends who stood by our side’ after the 9/11 attacks (The New York Times, 2017).
The anxiety within the NATO is palpable. On the margins of the Munich Conference 1 in February 2018, Robbie Gramer interviewed the NATO Secretary General (SG) Jens Stoltenberg of Norway (a non-EU member state) on the theme ‘If America Is First, Is NATO Second?’ (Gramer, 2018). The SG frankly addressed some of the issues raised by President Trump regarding the utility of the Alliance from USA’s perspective including funding, burden sharing and new challenges such as cyberattacks. Some excerpts are summarised.
On funding, NATO has delivered a very good start and is moving toward spending 2 per cent of the member states’ national GDP on defence within this decade. Eight member states have already met the 2 per cent pledge. In an acknowledgement that Trump had a legitimate grievance regarding burden sharing, he commented: ‘We are addressing burden-sharing. European allies are stepping up, both with more spending, but also with adding more troops to our collective defence in Europe’.
On the USA’s commitment to NATO and in a clear message to President Trump, the SG frankly recalled:
NATO is an alliance of 29 democracies with political leaders from different political backgrounds, with different views on many issues. But we have always been able to overcome those differences and agree on the core task of the NATO: that we stand together and protect each other because that is in the interest of the United States, North America, and Europe.
On the continuing utility of the Alliance, he said:
NATO’s core task is to protect all allies based on the idea, “One for all and all for one”. We deployed battlegroups for the first time to this part of Europe. The combat-ready battlegroups, which are multinational, send a very clear signal that NATO is there to protect [allies]. If any NATO ally is attacked, NATO is already there.
In a clear message to the Russian Federation, he emphasised: ‘The purpose is not to provoke a conflict, but it is to prevent a conflict. That is how NATO, for almost 70 years, has preserved the peace in Europe by providing credible deterrence’.
On new and emerging threats, he said:
A cyber attack can trigger Article 5 because cyber attacks can be as harmful as kinetic attacks. Cyber attacks can cause human suffering, can destroy infrastructure, and can also undermine military capabilities. We have made it clear that if we really see these cyber attacks, then we could possibly trigger Article 5. We would never exactly define where the threshold is, because we will not give that kind of information to potential adversaries’.
This is a concession that while cyberattacks could be a threat to peace and security, the NATO is only committed to triggering Article 5 ‘if we really see these cyber attacks’. No time frame for a reaction is indicated. This nuanced position on cyberattacks may not be welcome to the Trump Administration.
President Trump is yet to establish close and friendly relations either with the NATO SG or leaders of NATO member states, with the possible exception of President Macron of France. He has snubbed both Prime Minister May and Chancellor Merkel. A state visit from Merkel in the first week of May 2018 yielded nothing except polite handshakes. Media reports noted: ‘Trump and Merkel meet Head to Head but none see Eye to Eye!’ (Davis, 2018). Merkel, like Macron, unsuccessfully pressed Trump on keeping the USA within the Iran nuclear deal. Both privately expressed frustration at the concessions Trump seemed willing to make up with a recalcitrant Kim Jong-un while refusing to acknowledge that Iran has fully respected its international obligations, as indicated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections. Trump’s recent insensitive remarks on gun control, suggesting that more flexible gun laws in Europe could have resulted in fewer fatalities in the Paris terror attacks, appear to have undone the goodwill from the Macron visit.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s recent comments in an interview to the ARD (a consortium of public broadcasters in Germany), expressing his deep concern over the development of Transatlantic relations, assume great significance (‘Europe has to grow up…’, 2018). He noted: ‘The reason behind my anxiety is not because I am looking at a president with some irritating Twitter messages’. He clarified: ‘The new administration in Washington perceives Europe not as a part of a world community within which countries cooperate, but rather as an arena where every country has to find its way around’. This anxiety has increased after the unilateral abrogation by Trump of the Iran Nuclear Deal or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The President’s enthusiastic and public embrace of autocratic rulers including Saudi Arabia has caused great resentment within NATO (The New York Times, 2017). This also impacts the Alliance in crisis situations. Trump’s policies undermine the USA’s commitment to NATO and its tradition of global leadership. This reinforces worries within the NATO of the implications of this abdication of this responsibility in the background of a resurgent Russian Federation under President Putin.
EU and NATO
Inherent conflicts regarding the definition of European security after World War II inevitably led to EU efforts to develop a Common European Security and Defence Policy 2 (CSDP). This in turn led to conflict with NATO and the USA. The CSDP has a chequered history. Divisions on this issue also reflect the broader European divide between ‘old Europe’ which consists of the EU founder member states and ‘new Europe’, the so-called later entrants after the fall of the Berlin Wall ending the Cold War, who took a pro-American position vis-a-vis the NATO and CSDP. The earlier European approach was to lean heavily on the Americans to fund NATO. Enthusiastic supporters of the CSDP, especially the French and the Germans, had traditionally argued in favour of a separate military force to pursue military goals or defend military targets that were purely European and had no strategic priority to the Americans. The earlier American approach is famously encapsulated in the statement of the former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who famously put forth the three ‘Ds’ in Brussels (1988), which outline American expectations to this day: ‘No duplication of what was done effectively under NATO, no decoupling from the US and NATO, and no discrimination against non-EU members such as Turkey’ (Albright, 1988). The friction between the goals of NATO and CSDP increased under the Trump Presidency because of Trump’s insistence on the burden sharing of resources and funds among NATO member states.
The historical background to the CSDP can be traced to the 1947 Treaty of Dunkirk between the UK and France. This was a European treaty based on a mutual assistance agreement after Second World War. It was a precursor to the Western Union Defence Organization set up in 1948 with an allied European command structure under British Field Marshal Montgomery. In 1949, the USA and Canada joined the Alliance and its mutual defence agreements through the NATO with its Article 5 on mutual defence. After the establishment of the EU, its founder member states were of the view that CSDP was the need of the hour. The EU member states were of the view that a revitalised CSDP would prioritise security and defence imperatives from an EU rather than a NATO perspective. In the context of the Lisbon Treaty, 3 where competencies 4 were divided, the CSDP has been listed as a ‘special competency’ under the Treaty. It constitutes a major element of the security and military priorities of the EU.
Formally, the CSDP is within the domain of the European Council, an EU institution attended by European heads of state. The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, currently Federica Mogherini, also plays a significant role. As chairperson of the external relations configuration of the Council, the high representative prepares and examines decisions to be made before they are brought to the Council. The NATO and its SG do not have even an advisory role!
What is the present mandate of the CSDP? In 1992, the Western European Union (WEU) adopted the Petersburg tasks,
5
designed to address the challenges associated with the possible destabilisation of Eastern Europe. The WEU had no standing army but depended on cooperation between its members. Its tasks included operations relating to:
Humanitarian and rescue Peacekeeping Combat forces in crisis management
Subsequently, at the 1996 NATO ministerial meeting in Berlin, it was agreed that the WEU would oversee the creation of a ‘European Security and Defence Identity’ within the NATO. The intention was to create a European ‘pillar’ within the NATO, partly to allow European countries to act militarily where the NATO, and particularly the USA, did not wish to participate and partly to alleviate the USA’s financial burden of maintaining military bases in Europe, which it had done since the Cold War. The Berlin Agreement allowed European countries (through the WEU) to use NATO assets if it so wished. This agreement was later amended to allow the EU to conduct such missions, the so-called Berlin Plus arrangement. The EU incorporated the same Petersburg tasks within its domain with the Amsterdam Treaty (1997). 6 The Treaty signalled the progressive framing of a common security and defence policy based on the Petersburg tasks.
The Cologne Council (1999) appointed Javier Solana, a former NATO SG, as the EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy. The EU took its first concrete step to enhance military capabilities when its member states signed the Helsinki Headline Goal 7 . This included the creation of a catalogue of forces, the ‘Helsinki Force Catalogue’, to be able to carry out the ‘Petersburg Tasks’.
In order to assuage US concerns that an independent European security pillar might result in a declining importance of NATO as a transatlantic forum and under strong American pressure, a ‘Berlin Plus agreement 8 ’ was concluded in March 2003. This allowed the EU to use NATO structures, mechanisms and assets to carry out military operations if the NATO declined to act. An agreement was signed on information sharing between the EU and the NATO, and EU liaison cells are now in place at SHAPE’s 9 strategic nerve centre for planning and operations and the NATO’s Joint Force Command in Naples. An appropriate phrase often used to describe the relationship between the EU forces and NATO is ‘separable, but not separate’ (2012); the same forces and capabilities form the basis of both EU and NATO efforts, but portions can be allocated to the EU if necessary.
The reality remains that the CSDP and NATO have overlapping mandates which could be complicated in crisis situations. President Trump is not the first US president to have strong reservations about the utility of the CSDP in a situation where NATO member states, members of the EU, are underfunding NATO. George W. Bush’s first government spent 4 years trying to block EU defence, before concluding that it was better to channel the initiative than to stop it. The friction has increased now because the Transatlantic Alliance has come under greater pressure from President Trump.
Trump’s Shadow on the EU and the CSDP
Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the respected CEO of the International Crisis Group, has appropriately noted:
NATO is about North America’s engagement in Europe, and Europeans, working with Canada, must take the initiative in proposing a vision adapted to the twenty-first century. Otherwise, they run the risk that a President who has little time for the Continent will see his European allies simply as adjuncts to an “America First” strategy—and blatantly ignore their interests. (Guehenno, 2017)
An independent CSDP remains the core issue here causing friction. A senior Pentagon official recently criticised the EU’s ‘CSDP’ for pulling forces away from the NATO. There are many warnings of a NATO divided under Trump. The US ambassador to the NATO had given a blunt warning against using NATO assets to protect European defence companies. The USA and other non-EU weapon-producing countries (chiefly Norway and soon the UK) also believe that the CSDP is manipulating the rules of defence procurement in favour of companies based on EU soil. This is damaging an already frayed transatlantic relationship (Valasek, 2018).
The CSDP supporters argue that EU governments would be more likely to spend money on defence if organised under the EU flag, rather than the NATO. The reality is that the EU till recently had been cutting expenditure on defence and their commitments to the NATO while expecting the USA to shoulder the deficit. Americans argue that CSDP results in diminished EU resources for the NATO. This is a legitimate worry. The EU’s new defence pact, known as Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), commits participating states to use CSDP resources if they want to develop new weapons jointly. CSDP prioritises weapons needed for EU missions, not NATO ones, thereby diverting resources which could go to NATO missions.
Is the USA justified in attacking the CSDP? Will it improve European security if the CSDP is dismantled and resources channelled through the NATO? The Trump Presidency should consider that in such an event, NATO and American resources would be automatically utilised by the EU against security threats that are purely European. Is this what the Trump Presidency desires?
Many EU member states believe that protecting European defence industries is a small price to pay for ensuring that a NATO under American leadership does not get involved in small regional wars, as an example, in Francophone Africa. These regions are considered by some EU member states as within their informal ‘sphere of influence’. They would ensure that the CSDP, which is a reality under the Lisbon Treaty, cannot be changed. As Tomas Valasek, Director of Carnegie Europe, recently noted:
The U.S. should do what previous Administrations have done for the past decade: Work with like-minded allies to encourage the promising aspects and work the usual diplomatic channels to press back against the worrying parts. This is a policy best conducted offline and off Twitter. (Valasek, 2018)
Trump’s Efforts to Reshape NATO
The new US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, lost no time in underlining the Trump Administration’s ‘turnaround’ on NATO by making a special effort to reach the NATO Headquarters for a conference of foreign ministers just hours after his confirmation by the Senate (‘Washington’s overnight express…’, 2018). Pompeo’s special effort to reach Brussels to attend was in stark contrast with his predecessor, Rex Tillerson, who stirred controversy by initially planning to skip the first NATO foreign affairs meeting immediately after his appointment. The NATO was obliged to reschedule the meeting so that Tillerson could attend. Tillerson arrived bearing Trump’s message of a demand for an increase in military spending by allies!
In the background of preparations for a historic summit between Trump and Kim Jong-un on 12 June 2018, there was intense media scrutiny of Pompeo’s visit. The change in attitude was hailed by NATO’s SG Stoltenberg as symbolic proof of Trump’s renewed commitment to the NATO which the US President once derided as ‘obsolete’. At a news conference, Stoltenberg said:
It was a great pleasure to welcome Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Brussels this morning. He actually jumped on a plane just after he was sworn in and he was able to address the North Atlantic Council, the foreign ministers of the NATO, just 12 hours and 34 minutes after his confirmation. I think that’s actually a new record and it also shows his strong personal commitment to the Alliance and it reconfirms the commitment of the United States and President Trump to the Trans Atlantic bond.
Unfortunately, Pompeo’s boss, President Trump, raised the funding issue shortly thereafter at a news conference in Washington with German Chancellor Merkel, to make the point that Germany needs to pay more. Trump said: ‘NATO is wonderful but it helps Europe more than us, so why are we paying the biggest share?’ (‘A desperate Merkel…’, 2018). In a news conference in Brussels, Pompeo also reiterated that Germany, the richest NATO member after the USA, needed to do much more to meet agreed goals regarding funding.
Pompeo’s first meeting at the NATO was a one on one with SG Stoltenberg who has worked hard to convince allies that they must work more aggressively to increase military spending to assuage American concerns. Pompeo, meeting the media in Brussels, sought to portray his presence as symbolic.
I did come straight away. I was sworn in yesterday afternoon, hopped on a plane, and came straight here. There’s good reason for that. The work that’s being done here today is invaluable. Our objectives are important, and this mission matters an awful lot to the USA and the President very much wanted me to get here and I’m glad we were able to make it.
One can only hope, like Stoltenberg and the NATO member states, that Pompeo will be able to convince his mercurial boss of the underlying utility of the NATO for the security of the USA.
Trump further shocked NATO Allies at a fraught NATO Summit in Brussels on 11th July 18 when he suddenly demanded that they spend 4% of their GDP on defense, rather than the 2% agreed upon at the Wales Summit in 2014. Clashing with German Chancellor Merkel, Trump singled out Germany as Europe’s largest economy which spends only 1.24% on defense. NATO Allies have not agreed to this new demand with Bulgaria’s President acidly commenting at a news conference that ‘NATO is not a stock exchange where you can buy security!’ It remains to be seen what impact this public show of disunity would have on the strength of the Alliance
Impact of Brexit on NATO and the EU and the Transatlantic Alliance
Brexit is already casting a long shadow on NATO and the Transatlantic Alliance on security-related issues. When the UK leaves the EU on 29 March 2019, the EU and NATO would need to realign themselves from a strategic perspective. The UK is currently the largest European defence spender at NATO and a major military power with nuclear assets.
To add to the complexity of the issue, the membership of NATO and the EU overlap with 21 countries being members of both post-Brexit. Since the NATO Warsaw summit in 2016, several common security issues have been identified including maritime policing, cyber defence, strategic communications and military mobility across Europe. These could be impacted after Brexit.
From a treaty and legal standpoint, formally, after Brexit, the UK could no longer invoke help at the EU decision-making table. The EU would have no treaty obligation to come to the assistance of the UK. As a NATO member, however, the UK could formally ask for NATO’s assistance. On the other hand, the NATO has no formal obligation to protect EU countries that are not members of the Alliance, including Austria, Finland, Ireland, Malta and Sweden. Both organisations would need to consider whether non-membership lines could be informally blurred in the interest of European and international peace and security.
For the moment, however, traditional habits of support and convergence of interests remain in place. Thus, following the nerve agent attack on Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, the UK, strong declarations of condemnation were made by NATO and the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council. This was followed by an EU Summit in Brussels on 22 March 2018 where EU heads of government issued a statement of solidarity with the UK (Reuters, 2018).
The natural question which follows is how the EU would react to such incidents after Brexit? (Keohane, 2018). The UK could legitimately demand NATO solidarity but not automatic EU support. Some analysts point out that the EU should be as prepared to respond to a nerve agent attack in a non-EU but NATO member state, such as Norway or the UK in the future. The response could be based on the relevant provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) which has near-universal membership. Likewise, the NATO should be prepared for a scenario to informally coordinate a military coalition, if needed, to help a non-NATO member like Sweden or Finland in the event of an invasion from an ‘unspecified foreign adversary’ (Braw, 2017)
The NATO and the EU need to prepare for a strategic scenario post-Brexit. Following Brexit, 80 per cent of NATO defence spending will come from non-EU members. This would shift the onus of decision-making within the NATO away from the EU. An acrimonious Brexit could potentially encourage an ‘Anglosphere’ versus a ‘Eurosphere’ split, with the USA and the UK on one side and France, Germany, Italy and Spain on the other side (Keohane, 2018). Turkey, a key NATO member, has traditionally sided with the USA in such conflicts.
There is an urgent need for the NATO’s SG Jens Stoltenberg and EU High Representative Federica Mogherini to coordinate positions so as to ensure future strategic alignments. There were many media comments regarding the absence of a joint statement after the Salisbury attack (Keohane, 2018).
Case Study: Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in Douma Triggering US-led Attacks on Syria on 13 April 2018
The US-led attacks supported by the UK and France, in Douma, Syria, were a timely reminder that despite misunderstandings, the Alliance holds in the event of defending Western interests, particularly in the Middle East. This is despite public differences of opinion with Trump on upholding or rejecting the nuclear deal with Iran. The EU possibly joined the US-led attacks to reaffirm their partnership with the USA so as to persuade Trump not to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement. The EU would like to push for other punitive sanctions to limit Iran’s regional influence, while keeping the JCPOA in place.
Much information has now emerged regarding these strikes. The attacks were limited with the guiding principle being ‘risk-aversion’ with no desire to take on Iran or Russia directly. According to analysts, these strikes were meticulously planned and executed to avoid altering the overall dynamics of the conflict so that the USA is not dragged further into Syria. US military historian and political analyst Cohen had noted during the first US intervention in Iraq: ‘Air power is an unusually seductive form of military strength, in part because… it appears to offer gratification without commitment’ (Cohen, 1994). The same is true for the strikes against the Syrian regime. Cynics note that the hidden message to Assad was that, despite these limited strikes, the West was going to leave him in power.
With doubts emerging on whether chemical weapons had actually been used in Douma, the USA’s desire is to avoid further US or NATO military involvement in Syria. Trump has noted that the USA has spent US$7 trillion in the region over the last 17 years, with nothing to show for its investment. His desire is for the Saudis to foot the bill in future, amounting to about US$4 billion. There have been media reports that Saudi Crown Prince Salman has suggested to his allies in the Arab League that further operations in Syria could be co-funded by Arab states so as to continue pressure on the Syrian regime.
Ultimately, such developments cast a long shadow on the credibility of the NATO and CSDP as arrangements by the West to guarantee international peace and security.
Entering Unchartered Territory: Can It be Business as Usual?
One of the greatest challenges for NATO and the EU is America’s new narrative on Iran and North Korea. As political analyst Max Fisher points out:
The clearest narrative may be that the Americans cannot necessarily be trusted to uphold their commitments, but they can be coerced and deterred… The EU does not have the luxury of shrugging off the American President’s thinking as an inscrutable mystery. They must stitch together a narrative with which to predict future behaviour. (Fisher, 2018)
The costs of American unpredictability in the nuclear context in the case of North Korea provide a stark lesson to the international community that acceleration of a nuclear programme in open defiance of international agreements may be more profitable to a rogue state than a nuclear deal signed by several world powers including the EU, China and the Russian Federation.
With this background, it is not surprising that the EU and NATO are slowly waking up to the new reality that there will be no ‘business as usual’. If NATO’s military deterrence loses its credibility, this will undermine the credibility of both the EU and NATO and endanger international peace and security. Internal challenges facing the EU, including a eurozone crisis, which is now waning, uncontrolled immigration and the rise of populist and Eurosceptic parties are putting further strains on the Alliance. With Brexit, there is no doubt that the EU has entered uncharted territory. The EU is aware that its internal problems could develop into fundamental challenges and pose a threat to the existing order, not just for the Europeans themselves but also for the West as a whole.
The credibility of NATO has been tested by several conflicting statements by President Trump with regard to the USA’s commitment to the Alliance. What could the EU and NATO do next? Are there any ‘low hanging fruits’ that could be picked in the near future? The EU and NATO are slowly waking up to the new reality that there can be no ‘business as usual’ (Kristi Raik & Järvenpää, 2017). As Jean-Marie Guéhenno (2017) has warned:
If they (the EU) do not change course, a President who has little understanding of soft power and, in his own words, only respects ‘strength’, will not take them seriously… A European security landscape defined in bilateral talks between Russia and the U.S. is a serious possibility.
Such a scenario would strongly impact the security of Europe which is already addressing efforts by both Russian Federation and China to divide Europe. He suggests that: ‘The time has come to create a European pillar of NATO’ (Guéhenno, 2017).
A window of opportunity is now wide open for taking common collective steps together, provided the principle of collective defence is based on collective funding and common responsibility. In this new reality, the new global narrative on security would depend on how the NATO and EU respond to America’s changed narrative. A timely response is the need of the hour.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.