How would Europe cope with a departure of the US from NATO?
As Carlo Masala (BundeswehrU, Munich) argues, fully substituting for the US capabilities in NATO may be the wrong immediate objective; 'It’s not about being as good as the US, which will take us 15 years or even longer. It is just being better than the Russians'!
Framed like this, while the US leaving NATO would be undoubtedly difficult, the immediate problem(s) may be a little less daunting?
@ChrisMayLA6 I’ve felt for a long time that the west has been deluded by the myths of Russian power. I vividly remember back in the seventies/eighties all those diagrams of soviet missiles and tanks and warships and infantry. That Cold War fear is deeply ingrained. But Russia alone is a shadow of the USSR. My biggest shock was the realisation that (for all its apparent size on the Mercator map) Russia is only about 135 million people — less than two UKs and a minnow against EU’s 500m..
@ChrisMayLA6 .. Add to that, the USSR’s military capability relied heavily on Ukraine managing and servicing the nukes. There’s some doubt whether the remains of that arsenal (given up by Ukraine in exchange for security guarantees) is even serviceable. The Ukraine conflict exposed the dire state of Russia’s tanks and the weaknesses in its military organisation. Plus, the Ukraine conflict has significantly weakened Russia’s infrastructure and fighting capability after nearly 5 years.
@ChrisMayLA6 A European security alliance incorporating Ukraine as a valued source of innovation and strategic prowess may have a tough belt-tightening few years as it builds Ukraine-style border defences across the rest of the eastern flank but it’s doable given the will that an aggressive threat instills. The new alliance would have a purpose whereas NATO has come to seem like a solution for yesterday’s threats.
NATO's doctrines-of-operation were designed and created for wars using older technologies.
They are still relevant when dealing with the older tech, but they will need to be upgraded for the new types of battlefield situations.
The tank regiments that were disabled in Northern Macedonia by cutting their supply lines with civilian-grade drones carrying hand grenades into the fuel depots.
Asymmetric warfare is here to stay.
The NATO assumption is that there has been a significant military threat from Russia and/or China over the last 75 years - but the evidence for this is sparse, while the evidence of US military aggression all over the world is overwhelming. The fact that the NATO assumption transferred seamlessly from the USSR to Russia, two entirely different entities, should perhaps have alerted us to the fact that it was always more about creating an external threat than meeting one.
But what about Ukraine ? The NATO assumption hides from the western commentariat two aspects of the conflict. The first and most important is that, thanks to the magnificent resistance of Ukrainians, Russia is locked in an intractable war there. The lesson is obvious: if this is what happened in relatively poor, and poorly equipped Ukraine, never, ever, try to invade an EU country.
The second aspect is if anything even more ignored: the Russia-Ukraine situation has always been fundamentally different from that elsewhere in Europe.
I worked in Ukraine (and Russia) in the 90s and 00s, and I find most westerners are surprised to hear that the ethnic tensions between the Russian-speaking communities in the east and western Ukrainians were a major issue we had to negotiate in our work - so I was aware 20 years before the war that these divisions were not just a matter of Russian interference. I was still in contact with Ukrainians I worked with in 2014, and although they were fully on board, and indeed active in Maidan, they never pretended that the divisions in Ukraine were not real, or were no more than a matter of foreign interference. As to whether the events around Maidan were a revolution or a coup - within Ukraine, in 2016, just over half of Ukrainians thought it was a revolution, but more than a third thought it was a coup.
Crimea, in particular, has a very Russian history - it was indeed only transferred into Ukraine in 1954, but that was when both were simply regions of the Soviet Union, so little more than an administrative convenience. When the soviet system collapsed, in 1995 Crimea declared not for Ukraine, but for independence, and subsequent polls - even when supervised by western academics - have tended to indicate pro-Russian rather than pro-Ukrainian views.
The truth is far messier than western popular narratives suggest. Kyiv was once the capital of Russia. Drawing the simplistic conclusion that Russia invading Ukraine means it is itching to invade anywhere else in Europe, where the cultures, histories, languages, etc, are completely different, doesn't make any sense - especially after Ukraine has demonstrated just how difficult any such invasion can be.
If Europe is to develop a sensible defence strategy, it must not be about replacing US capability - for a future in which it now seems wars will be fought mainly by drones - but shaking off US influence - including the flawed and exaggerated conception of the Russian/Chinese military threats.
This exactly. It's arguable that the whitewashed creation story of the war in Ukraine could be the last tangible act of NATO unity, because the situation within Ukraine has always been far more complicated than Western media has presented, and the mass-repeated 'unprovoked' claims ignore that the US had been playing in the country since the 90s.
Yes, a strategic refocussing must be part of any post-US NATO framing of the security environment's threats & risks
@christineburns @ChrisMayLA6 I like the idea. European nations, UK, Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Aus, NZ etc. would be a formidable alliance.
@robcinos @christineburns @ChrisMayLA6 5 eyes would have to end though, I can tell you while the French are happy to work with all those countries they are not going to share all intel as long as it can get back to big brother
@Nicovel0 @christineburns @ChrisMayLA6 Yes. I think five eyes is as good as non-functional. No one wants to share intel with Trump. There are plausible yet unsubstantiated stories about a France/Ukraine sting operation where false intel would have gone from the US to the Kremlin.
