French President Emmanuel Macron, center, and Defense meet soldiers of Operation Barkhane, France's largest overseas military operation, in Gao, northern Mali, Friday, May 19, 2017.

French President Emmanuel Macron, center, and Defense meet soldiers of Operation Barkhane, France's largest overseas military operation, in Gao, northern Mali, Friday, May 19, 2017. AP/CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON

The Coming Split in NATO

Trump wants our European allies to build their military strength. What will it look like if they do?

One of President Donald Trump’s chief complaints about America’s European allies is that they don’t spend nearly enough on defense; he has again raised the issue on Wednesday at the nato summit. Granted, Trump is hardly the first American president to point to miserly military spending on the part of fellow nato member states. This has been a sore spot in transatlantic relations since at least the 1970s. But the vociferousness of his complaints, and his transactional approach to alliances writ large, appears to have had an effect all the same. European powers are thinking harder about how to build their military strength and how they might use it in concert, even in—especially in—cases where the United States won’t be there to lend a hand.

In his seminal 2002 essay “Power and Weakness,” Robert Kagan, the esteemed foreign-policy analyst, warned of a widening transatlantic divide over the exercise of military power. Whereas Europeans saw themselves “moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation,” Americans saw the world through a darker lens, in which “international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might.” In short, “on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.” And that is why it was the United States that was always dragging a reluctant Europe into policing conflicts.

Now, however, we are on the cusp of a reversal. Americans, on the populist right, the socialist left, and most points in between, have lost their appetite for armed intervention, and the country’s chief conflict in the coming decades is likely to be a protracted cold war with an increasingly powerful Beijing. Europe, meanwhile, has no choice but to look southward, to the fragile states of Africa, which hold the key to its future. As Trump forces Europe to think about a future in which it provides for its own security needs, he may be pushing it toward a more Martian future, in which it is European militaries that go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

Just last month, nine of Europe’s nato members declared their intention to work together on a “European Intervention Initiative,” or “EI2,” that is being championed by French President Emanuel Macron. Since the start of his presidency, Macron has been touting the idea of a pan-European security force capable of intervening in crises in North Africa and the Sahel, and it appears to be inching closer to reality.

To get there, though, Europe would first have to invest heavily in building its capabilities, as Sven Biscop, writing in Foreign Affairs, explains: “The main gap between the European and American arsenals has to do with strategic enablers—tools and resources such as intelligence and surveillance, transport, and precision-guided munitions, which allow countries to project military force safely and swiftly.” Without these strategic enablers, European strategic autonomy, as envisioned in Macron’s EI2, is but a mirage. For now, it is the United States that provides these strategic enablers to its allies, and that can always choose not to provide them. If Europe is to truly share in the burden of ensuring global security, it will have to pool its resources and replicate some of America’s existing capabilities. In short, the training wheels will have to come off.

The Trump administration, schizophrenic as ever, is both urging European nato allies to boost their military spending while condemning their tentative efforts to build up their own Europe-wide strategic enablers. Biscop attributes American wariness towards European strategic autonomy to a straightforward domestic consideration: fear that European governments will favor European defense contractors over their U.S. counterparts. But this underscores the deeper question: Does America really want a more independent and capable Europe? If it does, well, U.S. defense contractors might have to take it on the chin. Moreover, the United States must accept that such a Europe could, at some point in the distant future, serve as a check on American power, a prospect that some Europeans will relish and that many Americans will dread.

A more likely outcome, to my mind, is that a more autonomous Europe will devote itself almost exclusively to Africa. A decade or so from now, I suspect it is the European powers that will find themselves mired in armed conflicts, peacekeeping missions, and state-building efforts in the world’s most volatile regions, and the United States that will, regrettably, be standing aloof. Europeans will spend more on defense not in response to hectoring from Trump or his successors. Rather, they will do so out of necessity. The European Intervention Initiative, conceived in the wake of France’s military operations in Mali, is a sign of things to come.

Between 2010 and 2050, the working-age population of sub-Saharan Africa will grow from half a billion to more than 1.3 billion. That booming young population could be channeled into productive work at home, or, failing that, could seek it elsewhere. If current patterns persist, the economists Gordon Hanson and Craig McIntosh anticipate that the number of African migrants residing outside the continent will almost triple over this period, growing from 4.6 million to 13.4 million, and that most will settle in an aging Europe. Civil wars, climate change, and other looming calamities could spur emigration well beyond these projections.

Already, European states are devoting a growing share of their budgets to controlling migration, with a special focus on forging partnerships with African states willing to establish migrant processing centers on their territory, such as war-torn Libya. Their deeper challenge, however, lies in ensuring that African states have the institutional capacity they need to foster economic opportunity at home. Even ambitious migration advocates, such as Gerald Knaus of the European Stability Initiative, envision relatively modest annual inflows of African workers, perhaps in deference to the increasingly restrictionist sensibilities of the European public. At a time when the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany commands roughly as much public support as Germany’s storied Social Democratic Party, if not slightly more, talk of drastically ramping up immigration seems delusional.

Yet the alternatives to opening Europe’s borders will be daunting in their own right. Last year, researchers at the Center for Global Development released a working paper on the prospects for manufacturing in Africa, and their findings were sobering. With the important exception of Ethiopia, they found that industrial labor costs in most African states were far higher than one would expect when judging by their overall level of development. The upshot is that while export-oriented manufacturing has greatly reduced poverty in much of East Asia, Ethiopia might be the only country in sub-Saharan Africa suited to that development path. Other African states will have to make use of their labor abundance in other ways—for example, by developing their tourism sectors and by transforming themselves into destinations for wealthy expatriates. In other words, either Africans will come to Europe in search of employment, and Europeans will remake their societies to accommodate them, or Europeans will come to thriving African states in search of a higher quality of life, fueling the expansion of the local service-sector workforce in the process.

Unlike the 19th-century scramble for Africa, in which imperialists carved up the continent for their own purposes, this 21st-century infusion of European capital would have to be a cooperative venture, with African policymakers and entrepreneurs taking the lead. What they’d have in common, however, is that the question of security would be ever present: The European Intervention Initiative would be there to undergird the European Investment Initiative. New alliances and new rivalries would emerge. A rising Ethiopia, which is projected to have a population of 191 million in 2050, might eventually become as central to European security as a declining Russia, the population of which is expected to shrink to 133 million, is today.

As for the United States, expect it to concern itself more with Chinese and Indian power than with managing the stresses and strains associated with Africa’s demographic expansion. While Europe projects power in Africa, the U.S. will endeavor to preserve its relevance in East and South Asia, the new center of gravity of the global economy. And as the security interests of the U.S. and Europe diverge in the coming decades, perhaps Europeans will remember the Trump presidency as the moment they began to forge a more independent future.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.