The United States' security ties with Europe are fraying due to a strategic shift towards deterring China in the Indo-Pacific and a full-scale war against Iran, compelling Europeans to bolster their own defense against Russia. While Europe can assemble conventional forces to reduce reliance on large-scale U.S.
ground forces within a decade, it cannot adequately reproduce critical U.S. military enablers like command and control, logistics, cyberwarfare, strategic intelligence, ISR, targeting, and air/missile defense. These capabilities, built over decades and costing trillions of dollars, are essential for the NATO way of war, as demonstrated in Ukraine. To secure reliable access to these enablers, Europe should propose a new transatlantic bargain where European allies cofinance the U.S. enabling infrastructure, creating financial incentives for Washington to remain engaged. This arrangement would stabilize the alliance, accelerate Europe’s learning curve, and allow Europe to focus on conventional rearmament against Russia, while providing the United States with resources to compete with China. Critics may view this as transactional, but the alliance has always had such a dimension.
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