In the past few weeks, there has been a lot of noise about instability in the NATO military alliance. The EU is up in arms about Trump’s diplomacy with Putin and US pronouncements that they may not defend NATO allies slacking on defence spending. Tánaiste Simon Harris said “a gulf has emerged between the United States and European Union” in terms of the issue of Ukraine. “We’ve now got an alliance between a Russian president who wants to destroy Europe and an American president who also wants to destroy Europe” one senior EU diplomat told Politico, adding “the transatlantic alliance is dead.”[1]
We have been here before. In May 2017, Trump came to Brussels, meeting many EU leaders for the first time. He said NATO allies must pay their fair share for their collective defence and increase military spending to 2% of GDP. The EU responded with talk about European “strategic autonomy” and being capable of going it alone. The rhetoric at the time was about Trump, Putin, Erdoğan and Brexit giving the EU a wake-up call about the need to beef up defence. Trump was supposedly distancing the US from long-standing transatlantic cooperation as a result of his America First policy. He was an unreliable character, and then there was the Russia-gate hoax.
This was the backdrop to PESCO. A European Defence fund was established, Joint funding of battle groups aimed to integrate EU militaries, joint procurement of weapons and a host of other initiatives were cooked up. When it was all sorted and agreed in record time, there was a NATO-EU summit in December 2017 where there were smiles and celebrations all round. It was talked about in terms of a spirit of rapprochement between US/NATO and the EU. Apparently all it took to repair this supposed rift was for the EU to turn itself into a military union, just like Trump had asked[2].
EU military spending flatlined in the decade leading up to 2016. In 2006 it stood at €154 billion, in 2016 it was €155 billion. Trump criticises the EU and the curve takes off. By the end of last year we were up to €326 billion, or 1.9 percent of EU GDP. Just in time for Trump and the Republicans to come back and say ok let’s go higher. Again we’re presented with mixed messaging: Trump is unreliable, look at how he is with Putin, screwing over Ukraine. Yet in reality the boss of NATO has given the orders and the EU has answered “yes Sir, how high Sir?”
Following these developments it is instructive to consider the views of Trump’s nomination for under secretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby. In both his 2021 book and in recent articles Colby puts forward his vision for American conservative realism. According to Colby the US has limitations it must recognise and as such should avoid pursuing full spectrum dominance. American “primacism” must be rejected in favour of a coalition of strong like-minded allies. “Conservatism is all about a state recognizing its own proper limits and thus other entities’ legitimate spheres for their own power and responsibility”[3], he writes. The US must focus its limited abilities on the real challenge to US interests – China – and push allies to build strength and look after their own spheres of interest to better facilitate the collective sabotage of Chinese development.
On 19th March 2025, the EU Commission adopted a “White Paper” strategy for advancing European rearmament at unprecedented levels. Apparently threats to Europe abound: Russia is about to invade Europe, big bad China is on the rise, EU interests are challenged everywhere we look, and the only rational response is colossal military spending. In this vision, diplomacy or peace are not options. Oddly enough, this strategy was published during ongoing US, Russia and Ukraine ceasefire negotiations.
Our governments will feed us whatever propaganda and fear-mongering works to build consensus for taking money from pensions, health and social security systems and squandering it on the machinery of death. Germany has just amended the debt brake to allow hundreds of billions on defence spending. In the beginning of March, Commission President von der Leyen presented her plan for “ReArm Europe” – a package of measures that envisage EU defence spending rising to 3.5% of GDP (€650 billion). A €150 billion loan fund for defence sector investments was also announced.
The EU is doing exactly what Trump and his team have asked them to do. NATO is building strength through division of labour. Their goal is clear: the decimation of the Chinese economy at all costs. They are laying the groundwork for imperialist aggression by the West and its proxies against China and the global South, to crush the possibility of an alternative to genocidal, world destroying, Western-dominated capitalism.
Never was there a more urgent time for diplomacy and voices for peace. Never has Ireland’s neutrality been so necessary and important, and simultaneously so under threat from a government that serves foreign masters.
REFERENCES:
[1] Jamie Dettmer, ‘Is this the end of NATO?’, Politico, 15 February 2025.
[2] Nicolas Gros Verheyde, ‘Between NATO and the EU, smiles are de rigueur. New joint actions to strengthen cooperation’, B2Pro, 6 December 2017.
[3] Elbridge A. Colby, ‘Only one priority makes sense for American foreign policy’, American Compass, 10 July 2024.
