Western defence ministers left their conference in Brussels on February 12 in horror after the new US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth,  , told them , they may no longer depend on the US to ensure their security.
Hegseth stated that he was there” to express explicitly and unequivocally that the United States of America is not mainly focused on the protection of Europe.”
He even insisted that Western states provide the “overwhelming” share of money for Ukraine in the future. The US has been the largest recipient of Ukrainian military assistance, with US assistance, weapons, and financial aid essential in assisting Kyiv in thwarting the Russian war.
Hegseth’s responses are in keeping with the position of the US senator, Donald Trump, on the NATO intercontinental military empire. Trump has repeatedly urged its members to improve their defence spending because he believes NATO is a burden on the US financially.
But Hegseth’s notes may also be seen as a mark of America’s waning devotion to the conditions of Nato’s founding treaty. Article 5 of the 1949 agreement, signed by the US, Canada, and a number of western European countries, mandates that member states stand up for one another in the event of an military assault.
The US has the biggest army in NATO and the biggest hoard of nuclear weapons. But, on the face of it, attempts to resurrect the alliance appear to have caused a significant change in Europe’s security landscape following the cold war.
However, those who are familiar with the political climate surrounding NATO and the US’s role in protecting Europe may soon learn that this action follows in the footsteps of others who have fought hard to achieve since the Cold War.
Changing over time
NATO was put under enormous pressure to adapt to the new world attempt in 1991 as a result of the Soviet Union’s decline. Some in Washington were yet to be thinking about a rising China, but they were concerned that the US’s financial commitments to Western Europe during the Cold War would not remain.
Almost all Allied states were able to reduce their military spending at this time thanks to the so-called “peace income,” a popularized by former US president George H. W. Bush and past UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
The alliance actively participated in maintaining a no-fly area over Yugoslavia in 1992, almost as soon as Western Nato countries were reducing their forces and deploying specialist soldiers.
A novel Nato was becoming evident. It was changing from a social protection group to one of social security, where conflicts were fought within NATO’s borders.
This cooperative security agreement was effective up until 2001 when George W. Bush’s management entered the White House and engaged the US in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11 in the US, NATO resorted to Article 5 and went back to the process of social defense.
Some Western countries, including the new, smaller NATO says like Estonia and Latvia, sent soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to be there when the US needs us so that they will be that when we need them, according to the consistent explanation I heard in the European state.
However, Barack Obama’s administration introduced a “pivot to Asia” in 2011 before the war in Iraq and Afghanistan were through. The US’s intention was to shift its focus away from China’s Western hemisphere mostly.
By this stage, China had become the second-largest economy in the world and was quickly developing its defense. Incredibly, the US changed its mind in German cities as a result of this policy change. They thought it was the US’s decision to decide that its own stability did not reside in Europe as it has since 1945.
Therefore, in 2014, Russia invaded Crimea and the Donbas in eastern Ukraine. The expansion to Asia appeared to have stopped. However, as US military installations were closed across Europe, US involvement and investment in Western defense remained stagnant. The second Trump presidency followed the pattern established by Obama.
President Joe Biden, who became president in 2021, used the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to demonstrate to European officials that the US also saw its own stability in Europe and that it would support Ukraine.
However, the US remained persistent in urging Western nations to invest in their own defense. Over the past few years, the UK, Poland, and France have all pledged to raise their defence spending, but overall, the total cost of European NATO states has remained stagnant.
There has been a long-held conviction in the US that Europe is “freeriding” on British strength. This freeriding was permitted to continue while the US saw its personal safety in Europe.
However, as the US’s perspective has changed and the focus is now being put on thwarting China, it has been eager to suggest that European defense should significantly fall under the purview of Europe itself.
Nato won’t leave without a hitch. It is much more probable to vanish slowly with a whimper. After all, who did Trump match on his next morning in business? Never NATO but the Quad: an alliance between Australia, India, Japan and the US in the Indo-Pacific.
Professor of International Security at the University of Bath, David J. Galbreath
The Conversation has republished this essay under a Creative Commons license. Read the original post.