The Coming US-European Divorce
For the past two decades, there has been a noticeable weakening of the strategic relationship between the United States and Europe, a split that threatens the future of the West, and the strategic positions of both sides. This split began to widen in the early 2000s, when a weakened threat from Russia combined with the presidency of George W Bush in the United States to drive a deep wedge between the US and many of Europe’s leading countries. Later, Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, showed little interest in Europe, choosing instead to focus the US’ attention on Asia. Now, the current US president, Donald Trump, has turned his country inward, further reducing the level of attention Europe receives in the United States.
While the United States has found its interest in Europe waning, a major development in Europe is threatening to dramatically weaken the position of Atlantists in Europe, Brexit. Of course, many of Europe’s smaller and more vulnerable countries are desperate to maintain the level of military protection that only the US can provide them. However, a post-Brexit European Union will likely be dominated by countries that prefer Europe to go it alone and to achieve a degree of strategic independence from the United States. As a result, the West could be on the verge of a major split.
It is clear that, in many European capitals, support for the United States’ leadership of the West is weakening, a sentiment that has grown since President Trump took office in Washington last year. Since the 1940s, Britain’s clear strategic role in the West was to keep the United States heavily engaged in European affairs, both to prevent the Soviet Union from over-running Europe and to prevent any continental European country from being able to dominate the continent as France attempted to in the early 19th century and Germany tried in the early 20th century. Now, Britain is preparing to withdraw from the European Union, a move that will certainly reduce British influence in the region over the near-term. At the same time, Germany’s Atlantist Chancellor Angela Merkel has been weakened by her party’s poor performance in last year’s elections in Germany. Furthermore, Central Europe’s most pro-US countries, most notably Poland, have been marginalized by the actions of their governments and the loss of their British ally within the European Union.
Instead, France has assumed a larger role within the EU and Paris clearly wants the US to have much less influence in Europe, with the EU taking its lead more from Paris than Washington. Other EU member states such as Spain and Belgium are also hopeful that the European Union can gain a greater degree of strategic independence under the leadership of a core group of continental member states.
As the European Union is slowly moving to wean itself off of its strategic dependence upon the United States, the US is also clearly paying much less attention to Europe these days. Of course, this is not a new trend, as the US has sought to shift its focus to the rising power of Asia ever since the presidency of Bill Clinton in the 1990s. In fact, given the rising threat to US hegemony from China, the United States is now clearly focused on preserving and enhancing its position in Asia, even if this means a major reduction in its focus on its European allies. As Asia’s economic and military power rises at the same time as Europe’s economic and military power wanes, the US will be forced to commit even more resources to Asia in order to maintain its position in what is clearly the world’s most important region in the 21st century. In fact, China has clearly replaced Russia as the greatest threat to the United States’ security, even as Russia has been so active in recent years in terms of threatening the US’ strategic position, both politically and militarily.
The collective West has dominated global affairs since the 16th century, with European powers first dominating the world, before ceding this control to the giant United States in the early 20th century. Despite the US’ overwhelming power advantages over the former great powers of Europe, the US choose to lead the West as an alliance of like-minded states that were able to impose political and economic norms on much of the world, particularly when the West emerged victorious from the Cold War. For the first time in many centuries, a non-Western power, in this case China, is emerging that has the potential to challenge the West’s global leadership position. This challenge could succeed should the West split, a development that appears more likely than just a few years ago.
Despite the fact that European power continues to wane, many of its leading states and political movements are seeking strategic independence from the United States. At the same time, while the US is facing an unprecedented challenge from the rising power of China, it is shunning many of its most powerful allies, including those in Europe. These two developments are a major threat to the strategic positions of both Europe and the United States. For Europe, a split from the US could leave it without a voice on the global stage, and vulnerable to growing security threats from its east and south. For the United States, a loss of some of its European allies could weaken its position as it faces strategic challenges from China and other powers. For the world, the potential split of the West could jeopardize the economic and security systems that have allowed for the incredible gains in terms of living standards and security that have spread around the world since the Second World War. As such, it is clear that the United States and Europe should strive to maintain their close relationship, but it appears more likely that a major split is coming.