/ world today news/ Recently, I have gained some notoriety in my niche and among nerdy foreign policy circles. It all started with a Rolling Stone essay claiming that one of my obscure studies on NATO reform had made its way into the inner debate circle of the incoming Republican administration.
“Trump’s idea echoes some of the arguments laid out in a policy brief published in February by researcher and conservative writer Dr. Sumantra Maitra, titled ‘U.S. Drift from Europe to Latent NATO,'” the Rolling Stone essay said. They add:
“Sources familiar with the matter say this document was indeed circulated among Trump’s inner circle earlier this year.
“There were some ideas in it that [бившият] president liked,” says a former Trump administration official who remains in close contact with the 2024 campaign.”
The New York Times reported this, citing Constanze Stelzenmueller, director of the Brookings Center on the United States and Europe, who is alarmed by the second Trump administration’s stance on NATO; followed by the Financial Times.
They all mentioned the concept of “latent NATO” by name, without explaining it much. Here’s the Financial Times’ Sylvie Kaufman: “Trump-linked think tanks that advise the US to distance itself from Europe and promote the concept of a ‘latent NATO’ have finally inspired a brainstorming session in Brussels to strengthen the alliance’s European pillar.”
“Sleeping/Latent NATO” should be a wake-up call for Europe. Only 11 months to go.”
An effort to explain the position at least a little was made in the ECFR, which divided the Republicans into three tribes: “primatists, restrictionists and prioritists” (the clue is in the names) and categorized a “latent” NATO within the country of restrictionists.
“The restrictionists’ alternative agenda is to create a new security architecture in Europe that is not centered on the US.
This would mean withdrawing most American troops from Europe and revising NATO’s rules to create a “latent NATO,” that is, a European-led NATO in which the Americans play only a supporting role.
But what is a dormant NATO, and why is it the only way forward for any Republican administration?
To understand this, we need to consider three assumptions.
Assumption one dictates that NATO is designed not only to protect Europe, but also to neutralize the European great powers and deter any attempt to create a continental hegemon to oppose the United States. These goals are fundamentally contradictory.
On the one hand, Americans will not allow their government to be subordinated to any power in the Western Hemisphere. It is not politically feasible and no candidate who advocates it will win an election. On the other hand, Americans are not socially engineered for imperialism with a global imperial officer class, and therefore are not interested in paying the price in blood and money that empire requires, nor do they profit from any inappropriate form of globalism that is currently practiced.
This puts US grand strategists in a quandary where reconciling these two goals – Europe to be both whole and subservient and Europe to defend itself, with America there only as a balancer of last resort – looks difficult.
Assumption two is that Europe is not united and will never be united without force. The European Union is a potential trade and political rival of the United States, and although it is a political entity that inserts itself as an unwelcome guest in various multilateral forums, it is an entity that exists only thanks to the material reality of the American military presence on the continent.
This makes it doubly interesting when the EU wages punitive tariff wars against US companies or threatens to punish Twitter; it is essentially with the tacit approval of the American regime.
In a world without American military power acting as the glue to hold Europe together by force, the European Union will break into several pieces as older powers and territorial interests return to form.
It’s a doomsday scenario, but if the EU ever actually finds itself in a position to threaten the US or plans to side with China in its economic war against the US, all the US has to do is pull the security rug from under its feet of Europe and let it fall apart.
The reason is simple. Wealthy but demographically weak Western Europe wants to shift the burden of security to the United States. Eastern Europe, on the other hand, wants to bind the US to its ethnic conflicts.
NATO expansion not only ended Europe’s ethnic wars; it did so by neutering great powers and destroying “nationalism,” including that of the United States.
This brings us to the next number three. The structural forces that enabled American hegemony no longer exist. America is broke, with a debt of 33 trillion dollars: perhaps the greatest threat to the United States. Simply put, America is on the brink of economic collapse, and the bloated government and defense budgets are just one reason.
This, added to the unprecedented rise of a peer rival to the East, means that the challenge facing the US will not be solved by singing songs about decades gone by, but by thoroughly restructuring the established alliance system. Burden sharing is over. Weight shifting is in order.
In this light, the idea of a “latent NATO” is relevant. The brief is easily accessible for all to read. Contrary to consensus, he does not call for a complete US withdrawal from the European continent – not at all.
This idea firmly maintains the American nuclear umbrella over Europe, maintaining air power and bases in Germany, England, and Turkey (thereby keeping the ultimate deterrence button firmly and solely in American hands), as well as an American navy tied to European seas ( thus neutralizing any future threats to maritime trade). What it does do, however, is shift the weight.
Dormant NATO halts all future NATO expansion. It keeps NATO on ice, as the name suggests, only to be activated in times of crisis. It invalidates the awakening of the NATO bureaucracy, independent, self-sustaining and often hostile to conservative values and American interests.
Most importantly, it coerces Europe by fixing a time frame after which armor, logistics, artillery, intelligence and infantry pass into European hands both in combination and in command, leaving America only as a fireman to be called upon. in times of need. Anything short of American nuclear and naval power will be Europe’s security burden.
This is the most realistic possible compromise short of a complete withdrawal. Europe must understand that they cannot be sacred to America while they live on the backs of American prosperity and generosity.
Secretary Robert Gates made a prophetic statement in 2011 when he warned:
“The stark reality is that there will be a diminishing appetite and patience in the US Congress – and in US policy writing – for spending ever more precious funds on behalf of nations that are clearly unwilling to commit the necessary resources or make the necessary changes or to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.
Nations are clearly eager and eager for American taxpayers to shoulder the growing security burden left by cuts to European defense budgets.
Indeed, unless current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are halted and reversed, future US political leaders – those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience it was for me – may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO as one worth the price.
That time has already come and gone. The only reason the Europeans are not paying their fair share in their defense is that so far the Americans have warned of a world without America in it without specifying any timeline. NATO Dormant fills this gap and provides a final, workable alternative. Future US administrations may not be so generous.
Translation: SM
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