The Choices

I struggled a bit to come up with a title for this post. My original choice was “You Can’t Have It Both Ways”. An op-ed by Aaron MacLean in the Wall Street Journal expresses a view I have been waiting to hear for some time. Mr. MacLean is concerned about the implications of Europe rearming itself:

Hastings Ismay, NATO’s first secretary general, famously said that the alliance’s purpose is “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down.” The Russian leg of this stool gets the most attention, especially and understandably in light of Vladimir Putin’s aggression. But calls for greater European autonomy raise a second and more fundamental issue for American strategy—the German part of Ismay’s formula.

A net consequence of American security policy since 1945 has been the suppression of European politics: the process by which armed states consider the full range of policy ends and means. The success of postwar liberal politics, the dominance of social-democratic domestic priorities, and the progress of supranational political union—each supported by the American military—have had a pacifying effect.

Looking to Europe, many Americans complain that our costly diplomatic and military strategies have made unseriousness on the Continent possible. But is that bad for America? Do we want European states to rearm, to achieve something closer to strategic self-sufficiency, perhaps including nuclear proliferation to the east?

It isn’t Germany, specifically, that need preoccupy us—though the contributions of a unified Germany to international security over the past 150 years have been mixed. Ismay’s comment ought to remind us of the possibility of European politics more broadly. Perhaps we forget the vast slaughterhouse into which the Continent transformed on two occasions in the first half of the last century. Its wealth and leadership did little to retard and much to accelerate the industrial and pitiless cruelty, the movements of populations, the murders of whole peoples, and the conscription and sacrifice of millions. Twice, reluctantly, America sent its own youth, many of them victims of the Minotaur of European “progress.”

Our alternatives are limited.

1. We can do what we’ve done. We pledge to defend Europe. Europe dearms and uses the money it saves for other priorities. We maintain a war machine (including industry) capable of defending ourselves and Europe. We bear the costs as the price of that decision.
2. We can do what President Trump has threatened to do: if Europe doesn’t increase its military spending, we won’t defend it. That’s pretty hard to make stick and in all likelihood an idle threat.
3. We could behave like a real empire and exact tribute from European countries to defray the expenses of our military machine (see above).
4. We could pull out of NATO and leave Europe to its own devices. It’s not that important to us anymore.

My preference is the last. When Germany reunified in 1990 Lord Ismay’s formula became obsolete. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 it became surreal. Expecting the Europeans to have our best interests at heart when we don’t even do that ourselves is delusional. Whether the Europeans like it or not we’re more concerned about East Asia than we are about them.