For the past 75 years, NATO has been the de facto defender of Europe. Virtually every country on the Continent has its own armed forces, of course, and the alliance includes countries like the United States and Canada that are not, in fact, European. But when it comes to external threats against the whole, NATO has been the first and last name in collective defense.
More explicitly, NATO was created as a U.S.-secured bulwark against the Soviet Union. Indeed, the entire alliance was arrayed against the threat from Moscow. So when the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO reconfigured itself as a broader cooperative security organization – only it did so without a common enemy, leaving its 32 members more or less independent to decide for themselves what is and is not a threat to their interests. This has pulled the alliance into multiple directions by nations, or blocs of nations, that disagree on what NATO’s role should be going forward. To be sure, many members still see Russia as the primary threat to their security. Others, however, believe the organization should shift its focus to places like the Arctic, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific, where its members often share economic and political interests.
Central to all of this – NATO’s creation as well as its future – is the United States, which has led the alliance in all but name since its founding. For the past generation, Washington saw European security, especially with regard to Russia, as essential to its own security, so it was happy to foot the majority of the bill. (The U.S. supplies more than a third of NATO’s 3.4 million soldiers and nearly 70 percent of its aircraft carriers, and, separately, operates 38 military bases on the Continent.) But now it seems the U.S., under the second Trump administration, no longer sees Russia as the threat Europe does. The shift is due in part to the Russia-Ukraine war, which has exposed Russia’s military shortcomings and aggravated its economic problems. Believing further attacks on Eastern Europe are thus unlikely, Washington sees an opening to engage Russia diplomatically.
Washington’s reversal has left Europe scrambling to offset the expected losses of U.S. contributions to the NATO alliance. Crucially, nearly all NATO members have increased their military spending since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. (This is especially so among countries such as Poland and Finland, which still see Russian encroachment as the biggest threat to their national security.) And many have reached NATO’s 2 percent of gross domestic product threshold on spending. This will come in handy as Washington pivots to what it sees as a bigger national security threat: China and the Indo-Pacific.
2025 Forecast: The World Without an Anchor