Analysis: America's first post-war presidents always envisaged a US withdrawal, but 75 years later a renewed threat has re-established NATO's value
Former President Donald Trump's comments that NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) were failing to pay their 'bills' and that he would 'encourage’ Russia ‘to do whatever the hell they want’ in the event of an attack on NATO, sparked a wave of fatalism sweeping European capitals ahead of the November presidential election in the US.
While Trump’s complaints are considered a product of his unique eccentricity, US Presidents during the Cold War routinely decried European reluctance to increase spending in their own defence, even as the US provided the preponderance of military strength to deter a Soviet invasion of the West, to a level disproportionately higher than its European allies.
Historic tensions, recurring threats
On April 4, 2024, the NATO military alliance marks the 75th anniversary of the signing of its founding treaty in Washington in 1949. But America’s first post-war presidents always envisaged a US withdrawal as European militaries grew strong enough to take on the greater burden. This never happened, partly due to the sheer size of the Soviet military forces poised on Western Europe’s borders. And yet, American dissatisfaction over the European commitment to bearing its share of the burden prompted recurring periods of intra-alliance tension.
As early as 1952, only three years after NATO’s foundation, the State Department warned European allies that "the…NATO defense program is facing collapse". Echoing domestic criticisms, the secret cable branded European defence a ‘bottomless pit’ into which the US contributed four times that of the other alliance members combined. If its allies did not increase defence spending, the US warned a year later that it might reconsider its contribution to European defence.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Today with Claire Byrne, The impact of Trumps' NATO statement
The issue arose repeatedly in the intervening period, apparently with little change in American dissatisfaction. Trump’s complaints were echoed by national security advisor and later secretary of state Henry Kissinger in the early 1970s, who described the administration’s efforts to encourage ‘our allies to increase their [defence]… contribution… by an average of 4 percent annually from 1971 through 1975’, to which the NATO allies would only commit to an unspecific ‘moderate’ increase. This thorny issue, in Kissinger’s words, remained ‘a problem to this day’.
Despite its perennial frustration, the US faced a tricky dilemma: as Kissinger described it, its West European allies suspected that any expansion of their own militaries would merely induce the US to drawdown their forces, thus leaving them more exposed in the aggregate. At the same time, policy makers feared that if the US withdrew forces unilaterally, NATO members might cut their own anyway out of a sense of fatalism. Meanwhile, to do nothing gave America’s allies no greater incentive.
This dilemma was thrown into stark relief a decade earlier when, just as the Eisenhower administration was mulling cuts in Europe-based forces, NATO’s American commander advised against making reductions at the same time as a visit of Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev, as ‘If we decrease our forces, following the Khrushchev visit, this… will be taken as a deal with the Soviets, removing the need for security and the Europeans will cut back.’ And so, it was advised ‘to wait for a change in the situation and to reduce after this.’
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From RTÉ News, NATO chief warns over undermining security after 'reckless' Trump comments
Power and Economics
But American complaints occasionally extended beyond mere considerations of financial and manpower burden to broader considerations of power. Despite the continuing US desire to reduce the scale of its commitment, the early post-war American belief that Europe’s military means would grow sufficiently to permit a US withdrawal gave way when John F. Kennedy took office to a resignation that a US presence would have to be maintained to some degree. The price Kennedy demanded in return was a deciding voice in defence-related decision-making (particularly around managing the rehabilitation of West Germany), something which would soon inflame relations between the US and its two largest continental members, France and Germany.
French President Charles de Gaulle aspired to a NATO with France, rather than the United States, at its centre, while still maintaining the benefits accruing from the American presence in Europe. When France and Germany formulated the Elysee Treaty, a treaty of friendship ending generations of enmity, Kennedy feared that the two countries would strike a separate bargain with Moscow to reunify Germany, thus undercutting US diplomatic sway on the continent. Angered, Kennedy warned West Germany that such a move may force a US withdrawal from the continent. In the event the treaty was signed, but would include a German commitment to continued NATO participation.
Does ‘presidential shaming’ actually work?
This back-and-forth tension has persisted below the surface into recent decades, with both George W. Bush and Barack Obama expressing similar frustrations over spending disparities. All the same, it is not at all clear these tactics are effective; at worst some suggest it may possibly cause allies to spend less on defence.
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On the one hand, Alliance theory scholars have suggested that the weaker members are incentivised to placate the wishes of the dominant actor by the fear that they may leave the alliance if they do not. On the other hand, other scholars have also argued, as many US administrations feared, that the fact that nation states must respond to multiple competing pressures on, between domestic preferences for spending priorities and EU-mandated debt ceilings, impulses that are frequently in competition, mean that allies may prioritise addressing those requirements over appeasing American sentiments.
Ultimately, some experts suggest that, the fact that the alliance has survived recurrent bouts of these tensions over decades indicates NATO may well be durable enough to weather Trumpian rhetoric around withdrawal.
Why are such threats looked down upon now?
If these threats were once so common, why are they viewed so dimly when Trump makes them today? The much-reduced scale of the US presence in Europe – down from 285,000 troops during the Cold War in Germany alone to about 60,000 in Europe in the last decade may be part of the reason. The renewed threat Russia now poses has also re-established NATO’s value, where previously some believed it had begun redundant, while Trump’s apparent leanings toward Russia also amplify the suspicion of ulterior motives belying his rhetoric.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
