How NATO’s overdependence on the United States for security and continued inaction despite growing threats and uncertainties can only be solved through increased cooperation with the European Union.
NATO member state leaders at the 2024 Washington Summit celebrating seventy-five years since the alliance’s formation.[1]
Although it might be best remembered for an infamous slip-of-the-tongue during an introduction, the 2024 NATO Summit in Washington, D.C. neglected to address a longstanding concern: the alliance’s increasing dependence on the United States (U.S.) for its budget and security.[2] European NATO members have been worried about the ramifications of the Russian War in Ukraine and the 2024 U.S. presidential election, leading them to further develop their own defenses.[3] However, even as the war in Ukraine propelled defense spending increases among European alliance members to meet NATO’s threshold,[4] NATO’s dependence on the U.S. is not simply a spending problem, but one of noncooperation and disunion. European alliance members largely remain individually responsible for their own defense and, due to heavy reliance on the U.S., nothing has prompted individual countries to work together.[5]
The U.S. has historically played a leading role in NATO out of necessity, given Europe’s devastation following WWII and the challenges presented for decades by the Cold War.[6] Even though the alliance has a renewed goal in supporting Ukraine, the U.S. effectively remains in charge after the Soviet Union’s breakup. NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander is an American, as is the large majority of its military equipment and intelligence.[7] Indeed, NATO’s greatest security guarantee is the U.S.’s nuclear capability—most notably, nuclear weapons placed in Europe under American custody.[8]
Practical security concerns aside, there are legal implications of NATO’s heavy dependence on the U.S. as well. While the North Atlantic Treaty, NATO’s founding document, largely treats the United States and “European States” as the major players in the alliance, it was signed in 1949 and well predates the key institutional player that NATO must now contend with: the European Union (EU).[9] Arguably, in the years following its inception, NATO acted against a more unified defense structure for Europe; however, NATO now has to contend with the EU’s regulatory structure and legal requirements before NATO parties who are also EU members can act and uphold their obligations under the North Atlantic Treaty.[10]
Both NATO and the EU have tried to facilitate cooperation through bilateral agreements such as the Berlin Plus agreement in 2002, a collection of smaller agreements that primarily allowed the EU to utilize NATO resources and assets when conducting its own defense and peacekeeping operations.[11] However, challenges remain when NATO member states attempt to work within the framework of EU laws and regulations governing the uses of force and resources, which are not geared towards defense and are mainly put in place to handle lower-level “security” matters.[12] The EU’s active setting of its own foreign policy further complicates matters, given that NATO, as a treaty organization rather than a supranational governing body, does not set a foreign policy.[13] Accordingly, the EU has been able to set up (on paper, anyways) tools for crisis management and defense that NATO cannot directly benefit from.[14] In practice, this bureaucratic jumble has led to an overall cooperation problem where European NATO members are largely focused on their own national defense. With no incentives to work together, the alliance’s reliance on the U.S. remains problematically high.[15]
Despite continued commitments from NATO and the EU to work together, in light of the now-pressing concerns arising out of Ukraine and the recent 2024 U.S. presidential election, NATO has done little to reduce its dependence on the U.S. for security; further cooperation with the EU would enable it to do so.[16]The two bodies should work more closely together to ensure they are not violating either of their founding instruments (the North Atlantic Treaty and Maastricht Treaty, respectively) and ensure European NATO states can successfully decrease reliance on the U.S. for security while complying with EU laws and regulations.[17] Ultimately, while this may be a matter of (regional) international law, it has real implications for the safety and security of hundreds of millions of people on the ground—the very people the leaders of these member states swear to serve and protect.
[1] Kent Nishimura, Photograph of heads of state at NATO's 75th annual Summit, in Michael Williams, Biden and NATO Leaders Participate in Family Photo, CNN (July 10, 2024, 1:11 PM), https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/nato-summit/index.html.
[2] See Steven Sestanovich, How NATO’s Summit Sends Signal to Critics, Council on Foreign Rels. (July 1, 2024, 8:53 PM), https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/how-natos-summit-sends-signal-critics. U.S. President Joe Biden made headlines around the world when he mistakenly introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin,” leading to calls for him to drop out of the 2024 United States Presidential Election, which he did about a month later. See Andrew Roth, Dan Sabbagh & Pippa Crerar, Biden introduces Zelenskiy as “President Putin” at NATO Summit, Guardian (July 12, 2024, 12:33 AM), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/11/biden-calls-ukraine-zelenskiy-president-putin-nato (providing footage of this incident from the Summit and a discussing its implications).
[3] See Raf Casert, EU Plans to Boost Defense Industry and Move Away from US Dependency in the Face of Russian Threats, AP News (Mar. 5, 2024, 10:06 AM), https://apnews.com/article/eu-defense-ukraine-war-russia-a3fdb1d6f2ca7bd6a3e7469e5ced66dc.
[4] Although often mischaracterized by politicians as a direct contribution to NATO, NATO set a goal in 2014 for all members to spend two percent of their Gross Domestic Products (GDP) on defense. The amount of member states meeting this target has rapidly increased after Russia invaded Ukraine, although it has not been achieved by all thirty-two member states. See Clara Falkenek, Who’s at 2 Percent? Look How NATO Allies Have Increased Their Defense Spending Since Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, Atl. Council (July 8, 2024), https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/whos-at-2-percent-look-how-nato-allies-have-increased-their-defense-spending-since-russias-invasion-of-ukraine.
[5] See Max Bergmann, A More European NATO, Foreign Affs. (Mar. 21, 2024), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/more-european-nato.
[6] See id. (detailing the history of NATO’s founding and the threats that global security faced at the time—namely, the birth of the Cold War and emergence of the United States and Soviet Union as rival superpowers.)
[7] See id. (describing how the command structure and supply of NATO’s resources are largely U.S.-centric, with by far the greatest amount of its military equipment coming from the U.S.).
[8] See id. (noting that the now-normality of NATO’s U.S.-central command structure and NATO’s dependence on U.S.-supplied equipment is problematic given recent events, such as the War in Ukraine, the U.S. presidential election, and China's emergence as a technological and economic powerhouse); NATO Nuclear Deterrence, N. Atl. Treaty Org. (2020), https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2020/2/pdf/200224-factsheet-nuclear-en.pdf (discussing NATO’s nuclear capabilities and practices on general non-proliferation).
[9] See North Atlantic Treaty art. 10-11, Apr. 4, 1949, 63 Stat. 2241, 32 U.N.T.S. 243, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_17120.htm (detailing the process for European countries to accede to NATO in the future and listing the United States of America as the primary record-keeper for countries applying to join); Joint declaration on EU-NATO Cooperation, N. Atl. Treaty Org. ¶¶ 6-7 (July 10, 2018), https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_156626.htm?selectedLocale=en (“The multiple and evolving security challenges that our [m]ember [s]tates and [a]llies face from the [e]ast and the [s]outh make our continued cooperation essential . . . . We welcome EU efforts to bolster European security and defence to better protect the Union and its citizens and to contribute to peace and stability in the neighborhood and beyond.”).
[10] See Camille Grand, DEFENDING EUROPE WITH LESS AMERICA, Eur. Council on Foreign Rels. 6 (July 1, 2024), https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep61289.
[11] See Stephanie C Hofmann, Overlapping Institutions in the Realm of International Security: The Case of NATO and ESDP, 7 Persps. on Pol. 45, 45 (2009), https://www.jstor.org/stable/40407213.
[12] See Thierry Tardy & Gustav Lindstrom, The Scope of EU-NATO Cooperation, NATO Def. Coll. 10 (Sept. 1, 2019), https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep19964.6.
[13] See Colin Robinson, The European Union’s “Headline Goal”—Current Status, Ctr. for Def. Info. (May 23, 2002), https://web.archive.org/web/20120309144841/http://www.cdi.org/mrp/eu.cfm (archived from the original on Mar. 9, 2012).
[14] See Id. (discussing the policy targets of the then-new European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP)); Hofmann, supra note 11, at 49 (arguing the relationship between NATO and the ESDP is “ambiguous” and cooperation is inconsistent); Tardy & Lindstrom, supra note 12, at 5 (discussing how the Common Security and Defense Policy (CDSP), the ESDP’s successor, has led to challenges in calibrating joint efforts between the EU and NATO and lamenting that these challenges have spurred renewed calls for greater cooperation between the two bodies)
[15] See Bergmann, supra note 5 (“European countries treat defense policy as a national responsibility. Because most individual countries face few direct security threats, their governments . . . invest little in defense.”); Grand, supra note 10, at 10-12 (discussing the limited capabilities of individual European countries, and arguing that the discrepancies in the amount of military equipment and manpower available to each individual European country warrant a more unified European response).
[16] See Tardy & Lindstrom, supra note 12, at 6.
[17] See id. at 12
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