US, Europe and NATO
President Donald Trump is now fully engaged in finding an end, at least of hostilities, in Russia’s Ukraine war. Trump’s involvement in Europe is to uphold the Transatlantic Alliance which is one of the foundational elements of US foreign and strategic policies after the Second World War. The military manifestation of this Alliance is NATO which was initially formed in 1949 to meet the challenge to the West from the Soviet Union. He wanted that European countries should increase their contributions to NATO and that has happened.
The instinct of US founding fathers regarding the new country’s foreign and security policies was very different from US’s current compulsions and, therefore, structures in these areas. They were, as George Friedman wrote in an article more than ten years ago “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with none,” taking that as the defining strategy of the founders. I think it is better to say that was the defining wish of the founders but not one that they practiced to extremes”. The emphasis on not going in for “entangling alliances” came from the third US President, the cerebral, Thomas Jefferson.
In order to avoid “entangling alliances” the US did not get engaged in European affairs though it kept its doors open to immigrants from European countries in the 19th and the early part of the 20th centuries. The obverse of this policy was its Monroe doctrine spelt out in 1823 when the US proclaimed that while it would not interfere in Europe or in European colonies it would regard as the intervention of European countries in the Western hemisphere as a security threat. As the US became more prosperous and improved its military strength it gathered greater ability to implement the Monroe doctrine. Certainly, in the 20th century it had gained that prowess. At the same time its instinct to keep far away from the interests and affairs of Europe’s colonial powers, either on that continent, but also in their colonies remained firm.
This refusal to get engaged in European affairs changed as the First World War progressed. US sympathies lay with the Allied powers and it supplied Britain with even munitions but went no further till 1917. President Woodrow Wilson was compelled then to ask Congress to authorise the declaration of war against Germany because that country broke its agreement not to attack US shipping and also tried to entice Mexico within its fold. US troops landed in Europe and proved a significant factor in turning the war in favour of the Allied powers. Wilson then became a prime mover to establish a League of Nations to manage global relations to rule out the possibility of future great wars. However, US isolationist tendencies again kicked in. The US Senate refused to endorse Wilson’s initiative. The League of Nations was established but without Washington.
As fascism and Nazism rose in Europe in the 1930s, the US watched but did not get involved. In 1940 when Britain was on the ropes and Churchill rallied the people to fight he spoke openly that the liberation of the ‘old world’ from the scourge of Hitler and Mussolini would only come when the US joined the war. Yet it held back till Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in December 1941. The US declared war on Japan and Germany did so on the US. The might of the US proved a decisive factor. Its industrial base churned out weapons of war. Its military transformed itself into an effective fighting machine to take on the Axis powers with the contribution of other Allied countries and defeat them. The Soviet role in the Allied military victory achieved in Europe in May 1945 and against Japan in August 1945 was also considerable. The Japanese surrendered after the US dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Unlike after the First World War in 1945 the US was ready to assume the role of the world’s pre-eminent country and begin the era of Pax Americana. It was clear the age of colonial Europe was going to get over and the US had to fill its shoes. However, it soon became enmeshed in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. This led to Europe being divided into the US and the Soviet camps but what is significant is that both camps were led by nuclear states. This ensured that Europe became peaceful though it was of a cold variety. Also, the US had to build alliances—what its founders wanted it to abjure—worldwide to contain communism. The Cold War ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. That could have led to the US again leaving Europe to its own. However US and Europe were enmeshed economically, technologically and militarily in a manner that the US did not have that option.
Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022 once again demanded US involvement to handle its consequences. While Biden’s and Trump’s approaches on how to deal with it have widely differed. The former wanted that European security architecture be restored and Russia withdraw its aggression. Trump who is basically against foreign involvements—he would approve the Jeffersonian approach---is also aware that he cannot abandon Europe or Ukraine. Europe too knows that it cannot construct a post-Ukraine security architecture without the US. The recent White House meeting demonstrates that.
It is notable that for a major part of the last century and, now in this century, Europe cannot do without the US especially when it is faced with a security crisis. The Europeans are unhappy with this situation but it is one they have to live with.
