Amerexit: What happens if America quits Europe?

All eyes are on the unfolding tragedy in northern Syria. For the Kurds, the bitter lessons of history are repeating themselves. For the Russians, another strategic opportunity is being

offered on a plate. For the luckless refugees eking out a bleak existence in Turkish camps, there is the prospect of swapping one desolate landscape for another on the Syrian side of the

border. And, for the liberal commentariat of Europe and North America, it is a chance to howl in outrage at the perverse strategic judgement of Donald Trump, which seems to occupy an

uncertain territory between the capricious and the certifiable.

We can now be guaranteed an inundation of heartrending stories of individual loss and solemn lectures on the strategic impact on the dangerously volatile Middle East region. Less likely is a

longer view on US global engagement, which provides the larger context to events in Syria.

It’s easy enough to dismiss the precipitate US withdrawal from Syria as just another example of late-term presidential craziness. Having lost the mediating influence of national security

professionals like Jim Mattis, John Kelly and H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s foreign policy is now formulated in the unknowable recesses of his own mind, the sycophantic echo chamber of

compliant advice that surrounds him and his Twitter account.

Seen in these terms, it may seem as if US foreign policy has suffered a minor power outage and that normal service will soon be restored. A closer look suggests this view might be complacent

self-delusion. Getting out of what Trump calls America’s endless wars plays well to the core vote that delivered him to the White House and which will decide his successor. None of the

candidates from the Left of the Democratic Party has a fundamentally different view. Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders would sooner address social justice in America than strategic

anomalies half a world away.

Moreover, Trump has already embarked on shaping operations with what many on the Republican Right regard as the real enemy, by slapping a suffocating tariff regime on Chinese trade. In doing

so, he is following President Obama’s strategic pivot to the Western Pacific, the cold-eyed analysis of the Washington beltway think tanks and academic observers like Graham Allison, who

see China’s rise as an existential challenge. So, what looks like reckless irresponsibility in the Middle East may be informed by a strategic rationality that sees great power rivalry as the

real issue and local squabbles in areas of endemic violence as distracting noises off.

And then there are those freeloading Europeans. Not content with relying on US intervention to deliver them twice in the 20th century from the voracious Germans, they have continued to

luxuriate in the massively expensive American security guarantee first against Soviet, now Russian, aggression, all the time short-changing the Nato alliance and ploughing money into what

Fox News would regard as the bloated social models that sustain their self-indulgent decadence. The last century’s commitment to Europe has not just been a strategic odyssey for America, but

a moral one too. Europe authored many of the abominations of the 20th century, from the Holocaust to the Gulag. It was redeemed not only by the material energy, but also the moral purpose

of America. Seen through a certain Washington prism, America owes Europe nothing. The sooner the USA is able to focus on its core vital interests in the Pacific basin, the better. If that

means Amerexit, bring it on.

There are interesting echoes from British history here. In the first decade of the 20th century the fleet was concentrated in home waters. Military planning for an intervention in

continental war commenced in 1906 and was complete by 1911. The strategic threat was seen as Germany and the more distant parts of empire were stripped of the guarantor presence of the Royal

Navy in order to protect against a clear and present danger. America now faces the same dilemma: of tactical overstretch at a global level or concentration against a peer competitor in a

single theatre. It may well make the same choice.

So, where would that leave Europe? The only conclusion is: in a fundamentally more dangerous position. European security underwritten by a US guarantee has little to fear against a

revanchist, militarily strong but economically feeble Russia, that could never contemplate sustained operations against Nato in its current form. Strip out US leadership and combat power,

however, and all that changes. President Putin has perfected the techniques of strategic adventurism in the Middle East, Crimea and Ukraine. The temptation to explore European resolve in the

event of, say, a test of Latvian sovereignty, might be difficult to resist. In turn, this might lead President Macron to regret what he has wished for in constantly pressing for a European

army. The failure to invest in military capability has hollowed out the armed forces of Europe. As an illustration, only 160 of the French helicopter inventory of 460 aircraft are in working

order, but that places them well ahead of the German Bundeswehr, which has recently declared that all 53 of its attack helicopters are grounded. Indeed, if Ursula von der Leyen — the next

President of the European Commission — leaves any legacy as German defence minister, it will be to have made a singular contribution to unilateral national disarmament. Against this

background, Macron’s advocacy looks more like Napoleonic posturing than a serious contribution to the debate.

But getting helicopters to work is the least of the challenges facing European military planners. It is hard enough to raise, train and equip a national army with common kit, procedures and

doctrine, plus logistic and command architectures. But it is exponentially more difficult to do so from a standing start and across a range of disparate nations that don’t even share a

language — unless, of course, it’s English.

Creating effective alliances is tough, as the example of Nato shows. Nato was formed in 1949 but didn’t conduct its first military intervention, in the Balkans, until 1992. Even after 40

years’ practice, it was not a pretty sight as the alliance stumbled hesitantly into live operations. Neither the Balkans nor subsequent operations in Afghanistan represented a material

threat to any Nato nation and so a degree of battlefield experimentation was possible to refine techniques, tactics and procedures. This sort of latitude is unlikely to be available to a

future European army. It will have to incorporate cyber, space and information operations into the bombs and bullets of the traditional battlefield in an increasingly complex operational

environment. The scale of the challenge would be immense and glib political assurances that the balm of European solidarity will solve everything are grotesquely — and dangerously —

inappropriate.

Where would Europe start? Probably by increasing defence expenditure to, say, agreed Nato levels of 2 per cent of GDP. For Germany, that would represent a defence budget of $74 billion,

significantly larger than Russia and third only after the US and China in global terms. Would there be a stirring of folk memories in Warsaw, Paris, Kiev and Moscow at that prospect? With

increased military power would come increased political power and the current shared leadership axis between Berlin and Paris would be heavily skewed in Germany’s favour, recreating the

situation at the end of the German wars of unification in the 1860s where a single nation became too big, too populous and too rich to be constrained by the traditional device of balance of

power politics. Indeed, it was only America’s commitment to Europe in 1917 that restored a European balance of power, and, if it now quits the European stage, we will enter a new era of

strategic uncertainty. If European leadership is vested in a conventionally-armed Germany and nuclear-armed France is reduced to a subordinate role, the situation will become more complex

yet. Finally, whither Brexit Britain, if national defence can only be guaranteed by a more closely militarily and hence politically integrated Europe?

President Trump may be a passing aberration, calls for a European army may be no more than pompous grandstanding and Russian opportunism may fade as Putin’s star declines. But nothing is

strategically permanent and America’s century-old commitment to Europe and Nato’s 70-year stewardship of continental security will end at some stage. Of all the current issues facing Europe,

this is probably the least recognised but perhaps the most consequential.

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