Transatlantic Security Task Force Series

November 2013

Policy Brief

Summary: While the challenge of transatlantic burden-sharing is not new, the economic or more specifically budgetary context has accelerated power shifting from West to East and led both Europeans and Americans to spend less on defense. This article argues that the convergence of the United States redesigning of its global strategy and more specifically its rebalancing toward Asia and of the contraction of European military capabilities due to the lasting economic crisis will strongly affect the transatlantic partnership and demand significant efforts to rethink the strategic division of labor between the United States and European powers.

Europeans Less Able, Americans Less Willing?

by Daniel Keohane

Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel. While this is the novelist Graham Greenes description of a relationship in The Comedians, some Europeans and Americans seem to currently share similar sentiments about NATOs future. This is because the economic crunch has accelerated some recent pre-crisis trends such as reductions in European military spending (and capability), and re-ignited some much older ones such as a growing reluctance in the United States to use military force, and a shift in Washingtons strategic focus away from Europe and its immediate neighborhood toward the Asia-Pacific. But the challenge of transatlantic burden-sharing is not new. NATO debates during the 1990s, for instance, revolved around ideas such as going global or going out of business or Americans doing the cooking while Europeans do the dishes. What is new is the economic or more specifically budgetary context (set against the background of an increasingly multi-polar world). Because of the fiscal squeeze caused by the current economic crisis, both Europeans and Americans are spending

less on defense. What does this mean for the future of transatlantic burdensharing? The End of the NATO Affair? There are at least three reasons to be pessimistic about NATO and the future of transatlantic military cooperation. First, the alliance is increasingly criticized in the United States. For example, despite its 2011 success in Libya, then U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, warned in his farewell speech that same year that if current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, future U.S. political leaders [] may not consider the return on Americas investment in NATO worth the cost. Although the current U.S. defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, is well known for his Atlanticism, the real danger could be that U.S. criticism of the Alliance (meaning Europeans) turns into apathy. Second, the figures are sobering. According to NATO data, the United States spent a whopping $731 billion on defense in 2011, accounting for almost 75 percent of NATO defense spending (up from 60 percent in

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Policy Brief
1990). The Pentagon will have to cut its budget by (at least) $489 billion over the next ten years. But the ratio with NATO-Europe will likely remain very lop-sided for the foreseeable future, since most European defense ministries also have to cut their budgets in the coming years.1 Third, Europeans are becoming less capable militarily, having moved from a military reform to austerity paradigm since 2008. While NATO-Europe spent some US$282 billion in 2011, Europeans can collectively barely deploy and sustain 100,000 soldiers for external operations (and much fewer for robust interventions). In contrast, the United States has a deployable capacity of around 400,000 troops.2 The general consensus amongst defense experts is that many European governments will soon have little more than hollowed-out bonsai armies. However, it would be wrong to say that Europeans are entirely incapable. According to the European Defence Agency, EU member states had roughly 54,000 troops deployed externally during 2011 (through NATO, the EU, the UN, and nationally) which, if taken as whole, is far more than any other country bar the United States. The New Quiet Americans Like Alden Pyle in Greenes The Quiet American, the United States appears to increasingly favor an Asian love affair over European staleness. In January 2012, the Pentagon announced that while the U.S. military will continue to contribute to security globally, we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region. This revised posture is not as new as it seems. After a decade of fighting a war on terror, and weary from the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns, the Obama administration is in some respects reverting to a strategic stance similar to the one advocated by George W. Bush before the 2001 terrorist attacks it is going back to the future of U.S. defense policy. Plus, the United States has been an Asian power since its intervention in the Philippines in 1898. The main difference between 2001 and 2013 is that the global power structure has changed. Economic prowess is shifting from West to East, and this is starting to translate into a shift in global military power. According to the
1 In real terms, the Stockholm-based think tank, SIPRI, says budgets will go down 7.5 percent in Britain by 2014/2015 and 10 percent in Germany by 2015. France will remain nominally constant from 2014-2019. 2 Plus vast numbers of so-called strategic assets and other technologies that Europeans lack, such as long-range transport planes and ships, air tankers, precision-guidedmunitions, etc.

The general consensus amongst defense experts is that many European governments will soon have little more than hollowedout bonsai armies. However, it would be wrong to say that Europeans are entirely incapable.
International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, Asian defense spending surpassed European military expenditure in 2012, whereas Chinas defense budget alone is expected to surpass NATO-Europe spending by 2020 (and perhaps the United States by 2030). It is also clear that the Asia-Pacific region increasingly matters for the U.S. economy. Although the EU and the United States have the largest bilateral trade relationship in the world, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative says that U.S. merchandise commerce with the EU fell by 1.2 percent in 2012. In contrast, U.S. trade in goods with members of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grew by 5.3 percent the same year. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the AsiaPacific area should increasingly occupy the minds of U.S. strategists. The Pentagons January 2012 announcement did cause much debate and discussion in Europe. But that debate has been almost entirely Europe-centric: would the U.S. pivot to Asia-Pacific mean U.S. disengagement from European security? Significantly, as yet there has been little discussion of a substantial European role in East Asian security. Instead, would the U.S. Pacific pivot mean Europeans have to take on much more responsibility for security in their neighborhood? A significant military role for Europeans in the Asia-Pacific region seems unlikely, but this does not mean Europeans have no security interests in that region in 2010, 28 percent of EU external trade was with East Asia, an impressive 5 percent more than across the Atlantic and they could play some useful non-military roles.

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More broadly, Washingtons rebalancing of its military forces toward the Asia-Pacific does imply that the still-relatively rich Europeans should take much more responsibility for most of their immediate neighborhood. Considering the U.S. non-responses to the 2006 Lebanese-Israeli and 2008 Georgia-Russia wars, initial reluctance to intervene in Libya in 2011, and a minor supporting role in Mali in 2013, Washington would probably be happy to leave most future Eastern and Southern neighborhood crises to the Europeans (east of Suez is a different matter). The key point for European defense policies is that Europeans may have to increasingly act alone in the future. That creates an opportunity to strengthen transatlantic relations. The partnership will remain central to both the United States and Europe, but it will be largely based on what each party can bring to the table. The conclusion of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP) between the EU and the United States may provide considerable energy to this partnership, boosting political relations beyond the economic dimension proper, and encouraging greater transatlantic strategic convergence. The EU and the United States increasingly work on a host of international security issues together,3 such as the Iranian nuclear program. A much stronger and more effective EU-United States partnership could, in time, set strategic objectives for transatlantic cooperation, while NATO would remain a powerful military option for their implementation. For example, Europeans and Americans may adopt different approaches to providing security in different theatres, from the Middle East to South and East Asia, based on respective strengths and know-how. Whether this happens will in part depend on Europeans ability to take autonomous action, notably in their neighborhood. In turn, this will depend on European willingness to enhance their military capabilities. Enhanced European strategic autonomy would be unlikely to lead to a neat geographic division of labor between Europe and the United States But the new transatlantic bargain could contain three parts: NATO should continue to guarantee territorial defense; the EU should take the lead for operations in Europes neighborhood where the United States has no interest; and NATO would only act beyond Europes borders when the United States wished to be involved. In that context, the EU could consider developing its role in three areas: 1) protecting trade routes and access to resources; 2) responding to crises in Europes immediate neighborhood; and 3) the external aspects of internal security, such as organized crime and terrorism. For example, naval operations, like the current EU mission to tackle piracy on the waters off Somalia which was deployed in part because of the disruption to EU-Asia shipping may become increasingly important. This new division of labor probably seems fantastic to some Atlanticists, partly because they are more comfortable working through NATO, and partly because the problem in EU-United States relations is on the EU side. However,
3 Some of which overlap with NATO, like Afghanistan and Kosovo.

Washingtons rebalancing of its military forces toward the AsiaPacific does imply that the stillrelatively rich Europeans should take much more responsibility for most of their immediate neighborhood.
Our Men in Brussels: Squaring the EU-United StatesNATO Triangle Apart from shifting geo-strategic priorities, there is a growing consensus in Washington that the United States will need to use its military forces more parsimoniously in future. Notwithstanding current budgetary difficulties, the United States will remain the pre-eminent military power in the world for the foreseeable future. This is mainly because the U.S. military budget is overwhelmingly the largest in the world; thus, the countrys current technological and research and development lead will remain. That said, for budgetary, political, and geo-strategic reasons, the United States may reduce its global military presence in the future, and continue to lead from behind by increasing its reliance on others including Europeans to assume some of its current military roles, such as protection of the global commons.
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Atlanticists should worry more about EU weakness than strength. Given the combination of emerging changes in Washingtons strategic focus, some diverging transatlantic security priorities, and the growing relative weakness of European military power, NATO will not have much of a political future unless the EU becomes a stronger international actor. If the EU remains weak, then the European parts of NATO will remain weak, and everyone loses.
About the Author
Daniel Keohane is senior researcher and head of strategic affairs at FRIDE. Previously, he was a senior research fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) in Paris; senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform (CER) in London; and a research associate at the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University, in Washington, DC.

About GMF
The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) strengthens transatlantic cooperation on regional, national, and global challenges and opportunities in the spirit of the Marshall Plan. GMF does this by supporting individuals and institutions working in the transatlantic sphere, by convening leaders and members of the policy and business communities, by contributing research and analysis on transatlantic topics, and by providing exchange opportunities to foster renewed commitment to the transatlantic relationship. In addition, GMF supports a number of initiatives to strengthen democracies. Founded in 1972 as a non-partisan, non-profit organization through a gift from Germany as a permanent memorial to Marshall Plan assistance, GMF maintains a strong presence on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to its headquarters in Washington, DC, GMF has offices in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Belgrade, Ankara, Bucharest, Warsaw, and Tunis. GMF also has smaller representations in Bratislava, Turin, and Stockholm.

Contact
Dr. Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer Director, Paris Office German Marshall Fund of the United States Tel: +33 1 47 23 47 18 Email: adehoopscheffer@gmfus.org