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Weekend Reads
If Russia invaded Estonia—a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member that spends more than 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense—would the United States intervene?
Since the contentious meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, this question has become more pressing for US allies and partners.
Below, Joel Scanlon explains that foreign leaders will have to make determinations about long-term US political trajectories and goals quickly, and that their efforts to hedge bets are already underway.
Key Insights
1. Defending allies has costs. But it also benefits the US.
Since the end of the Cold War, Europe in particular has prioritized its social safety net, the economic certainty of a heavily regulated but slow growth economy, and environmental spending over the most fundamental role of the state: providing for national defense. But previous American presidents also identified American national interest in maintaining the US as the credible foundation of these alliances. An irony of the Trump administration’s new foreign policy organizing principle of “peace” is that the US-led system it finds simply a burden was designed to overcome a paradox of international politics: Each state rationally pursuing its own security makes the system as a whole less secure.
2. Allies and partners need to build military independence from the US.
The first step in hedging is to build military independence, to the degree possible, from the United States. That means more military spending, and as the EU and Japan expand their defense spending and defense industrial bases, it may mean more military spending on non-US suppliers that could be cut off if an American president decides that interests diverge. It could also mean new alliance structures to complement those in Europe and Asia. Europe has the financial capability if it can unify around the Russian threat and muster the political will. It may not reach “strategic autonomy” beyond Europe’s borders, but the coalition of the willing taking shape now could defend itself from Russia in the longer term.
3. Other countries have bargaining power.
Allies and partners who no longer trust US leadership will look for new forms of political or economic leverage. Ukraine actually has more than Trump credits. It still has not signed the mineral rights deal Trump seems to covet, and is no doubt aware that Russia’s suffering economy is not getting better as the war goes on longer. Europe would be wise to seize frozen Russian assets that the Trump administration may be counting on to entice Russian cooperation in a larger project of separating it from China, and resist efforts to reintegrate Russia economically or include it in the G7. Economic and political concessions that have been teed up to preemptively assuage Trump may be better held in reserve to bargain.
Quotes may be edited for clarity and length.
Go Deeper
To prevent continued Russian aggression after a peace agreement, the US should ensure that Ukraine’s military remains strong and that international organizations do not recognize occupied territory as rightfully Russian, argues Rebeccah Heinrichs on The Lead with Jake Tapper.
On C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Nadia Schadlow explains what the future of NATO might look like in light of the Trump administration’s demand for greater European military spending.
If America’s European allies wish to regain their influence on the world stage, they will need to do more than just rebuild their militaries. “Europe will need a political structure that enables it to exercise the leadership long provided by the US,” write Peter Rough and Abram Shulsky in Politico.
