By Ulrich Speck, foreign affairs columnist at Neue Zürcher Zeitung
When NATO leaders discuss the bloc’s future next week, there will be an elephant in the room: What happens if former U.S. President Donald Trump is reelected in 2024? Even short of pulling the United States out of the alliance, as Trump came close to doing, a future U.S. president might limit engagement in Europe, driven by either isolationism or the need to shift scarce resources to the Asian theater.
Without the United States, the value of the alliance approaches zero. Deterring the Kremlin depends on credibility and power—and for the foreseeable future, those qualities can only be provided by the world’s leading military.
Europeans lack the military strength and, even more importantly, the strategic unity to deter a determined adversary. France is little trusted in much of Europe and focused elsewhere and Britain is weakened by Brexit, while Germany does not have much of a functioning military at all. Countries along NATO’s eastern and northern frontier have the will but lack the means. Without a strong and credible deterrence, Moscow would double down on regaining its Soviet-era possessions, and war in all its forms would spread beyond Ukraine.
Trump-proofing NATO is impossible, and Europe must live with a degree of dependence. But the risk of losing Washington can be diminished. In order to keep the United States engaged as the key power behind the European security order, its allies have to massively raise their share of the burden.
The key to any serious burden-sharing remains Germany—Europe’s economic heavyweight, political and geographic center, and close partner of much of Central and Eastern Europe. Germany needs to become the key backup power for the countries exposed to Russian pressure. It won’t be able to do that alone, not least because it lacks a nuclear deterrent, which remains crucial to being at eye level with the Kremlin. But Berlin could and should take over a far bigger share of the burden, stepping into the still-vacant position of “partner in leadership” that then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush offered to Germany at the conclusion of the Cold War.
A commitment to spend 3 percent of its GDP on defense—roughly doubling the 1.44 percent it spent in 2022—would be a strong signal to Russia and Europe. By stepping forward the same way that Japan has done in the Indo-Pacific, Germany would make it much harder for any U.S. leader to blame Europe for not bearing a fair share of the continent’s own defense.
A muscular Germany ready to free the United States from a large part of its European burden would not only impress the skeptics in Washington, but usher the trans-Atlantic relationship into a new era no longer defined by Cold War memories. It would turn NATO into a key element of an emerging free-world architecture involving the United States, Europe, and key Asian allies and partners, including India, Japan, and South Korea. Tokyo has already stepped into the new era—not least by doubling defense spending—while Berlin has yet to take any serious steps.
A massive investment in German defense would be far more than a symbolic tool to keep Washington engaged. It would become the basis for a healthy and sustainable balance between the United States and Europe in underwriting the European security order. Finally, it would be the prerequisite for any Plan B in case the worst comes to pass and a future U.S. president withdraws from Europe, leaving the continent on its own to face a neoimperialist Russia.