Franz-Stefan Gady
Europe’s enduring dependency on U.S. military capabilities is not an accidental flaw but a fundamental feature of the trans-Atlantic security architecture. Since the inception of NATO in the late 1940s, the United States has served as the primary integrator—the strategic glue that sustains the cohesion of Europe’s collective defense. This U.S. role as NATO’s strategic, operational, and technological backbone has created a deep and intricate dependency, making European efforts to bolster their own defenses inherently limited unless this core support is addressed.
The debate over defense budgets, which will feature prominently at next week’s NATO summit, suggests that Europe can defend itself simply by recruiting more soldiers and accumulating aircraft, tanks, artillery, drones, and other hardware. However, counting troops and weapons is a flawed exercise. The real challenge is that Europe lacks the critical capabilities necessary for integrating and sustaining combat operations over a long time—the so-called “strategic enablers” that are almost entirely provided by the United States.
No comments:
Post a Comment