The U.S. Role in NATO
A relatively small American troop commitment will secure Europe and allow a safe pivot to Asia
America must keep a relatively small but robust force in Europe to keep our European allies effective for holding Europe against enemy threats. The idea that we need to cram every asset we have into the western Pacific to counter China is folly.
The U.S. role in NATO is up for discussion with our European allies:
Former top U.S. military commanders say the key to any new approach will hinge on finding a way to ensure that enough American firepower remains in Europe to dissuade Russia from expanding its war beyond Ukraine. …
Hegseth’s Pentagon is being filled out with a team of China hawks who have argued that the United States is spread too thin.
They assert that the U.S. cannot credibly deter China in the Pacific while also underwriting the bulk of the security in Europe.
“We need to grapple with scarcity,” Elbridge Colby, nominated to serve as a top deputy to Hegseth in the Pentagon, told Stars and Stripes in May. “We don’t have a two-war military. We’re not even sure if we have a one-war military, vis-a-vis China.”
I start with the assumption that securing Europe in the friend column is not a favor to Europeans. It is in America’s national interest:
Stop being shortsighted about free Europe. Defending Europe isn't American charity. Europe is an objective that must be secured to prevent it from being an asset for enemies as much as it is a source of allies.
Further, while victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War means Europe is now an economy-of-force front, it is still a front:
I don't think it has been a mistake to send help to Ukraine. America needs a forward defense in Asia and Europe. That proposed division of labor requires Europe to be secure enough for America to further pivot to Asia. That requires the Russian threat to be defeated and not simply assumed away.
We need NATO as our Great Wall of Europe. And we need to remain a leader in NATO to get that. Which means we need sufficient (but much lower than in the Cold War) force to mold NATO and lead it—not from behind in the cheap seats, but in the actual lead. It would be national security malpractice to abandon Europe.
To secure Europe I want:
A corps headquarters with two division headquarters and the ability to reinforce (pp. 15-20), as I discussed more than two decades ago in Military Review. Especially with my old REFORPOL proposal. With a robust REFORPOL, I’d accept just five brigades in Europe. But the threat justifies a heavier (armor rather than light infantry) force unlike the world of 2003 when I only wanted a hedge against revived Russian aggression. And Poland has evolved into the center of American military efforts in Europe since Russia’s serial aggression against Ukraine and revived threats to NATO states began. Including the forward elements of V Corps which did indeed leave Europe after I wrote that article cited first, and then returned. So the foundation is there. Apparently, American troop reductions in Poland and eastern Europe are not planned.
Enough Air Force to support a war effort. We can certainly afford to do that. Or do you think we can jam all our planes into scarce western Pacific bases? Bases that lack even hardened shelters?
A small portion of the Navy, because the Russian blue water navy doesn’t cause me to lose any sleep at night—except for trans-Atlantic supply lines that Russia could challenge if we don’t get our act together. The destroyers we have there now are significant mobile air/missile defense assets to support allied NATO naval missions.
And as long as the Marines are doing whatever they are doing to themselves under Force Design, let’s scrape together the remnants of remaining Marine conventional ground combat power (and loan them a couple Army National Guard tank battalions) and whatever big deck amphibious warfare ships the Navy bothers to maintain to give America options from the Arctic, through the Baltic Sea and Mediterranean Sea, to the Black Sea.
And otherwise, America should be a force multiplier, knitting together atomized NATO capabilities with our unique high demand/low density capabilities. Which to be fair to the Europeans, is pretty much by design so they don’t duplicate what we do and instead focus on trigger pullers. America could even do that at the combat brigade level, as I proposed in Army magazine.
And a solid American position in Europe will help project power to the Middle East, which China, Russia, and/or Iran could disrupt to our ultimate harm, whether economically or by generating jihadis in the chaos. America may not rely on Middle East oil, now. But our friends and allies do. If they are weaker, we are weaker.
Ultimately, talk of NATO being obsolete is nonsense. We must not lose Europe. We must not abandon it in all but name. And we must not forget that NATO has a new mission to keep Europe strong enough to fight our common enemies who threaten a free, allied Europe. And to do that without too much American military power needed.
That is a role for America in Europe that will not cripple the ability to pivot more power to the Pacific, including more power kept in the Continental United States to send to Asia to replace losses or add power when basing and logistics allow.
NOTE: Graph from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I wrote this before I saw their report that has the graph I used. But before I published it. It is reasonable. And more granular than my overview. Although I don’t see why European NATO states can’t handle maintaining control of the Baltic Sea without our Navy’s help.