When It Comes to Security and Defense, Can Europe Go It Alone?

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT – Over the last few weeks, hardly a day has gone by without a fresh pledge from a European nation to boost its military spending. And nearly every day, a question is raised in a European capital that would have seemed unimaginable not long ago: When it comes to its defense and security, can Europe go it alone? 

Ever since the early post-World War II years, Europe has relied on the United States as the bulwark of its security, and the U.S. and its European allies have been knitted together via the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and an increasingly strong and intertwined economic and trade relationship. Now, in the course of just two months, many of the core assumptions undergirding those relationships have been called into question. The Trump administration has pivoted sharply towards Moscow and issued derogatory statements about NATO and various European nations. Leaders of those nations are no longer sure of an American commitment that had been ironclad for eight decades. It is in the wake of these sudden changes that several European nations – and NATO and the European Union as a whole – have moved to sharply boost spending on their militaries and defense systems.