In 2020, President Trump, at the end of his first term, ordered the withdrawal of approximately 12,000 US troops from Germany, arguing that Germany was not paying its fair share for defence
The 60-day roller-coaster initiation of Trump 2.0 has touched upon a plethora of sensitive issues, and opened fresh wounds while disrupting many presumptions about international geopolitics. Since it has started with Europe, one needs to take a deep dive into European affairs to understand how the potential new dynamics will work, if at all. In his previous avatar, Donald Trump had only threatened more than he acted, although most Nato nations finally resorted to spending the mandated two per cent of their budget on refurbishing and strengthening their defences. In 2020, President Trump, at the end of his first term, ordered the withdrawal of approximately 12,000 US troops from Germany, arguing that Germany was not paying its fair share for defence. The move was widely criticised, but the US later reversed the decision. This time Mr Trump isn’t testing the waters because he already has a war to contend with, in fact two. Resolving these will place him in the league of statesmen. But the one thing he and his staff need is clarity and end objectives; both of which appear elusive. A US President does not have the luxury of time and in Mr Trump’s case, he only has less than four years.
That is why he is hell bent on a Ukraine deal, under which a ceasefire comes about, on an “as is where is” basis, but with an advantage to America. The broad provisions he seeks are that Ukraine should postpone its aspirations to join Nato, addressing one of Russia’s primary security concerns. While the proposal does not require Ukraine to formally cede territories occupied by Russia, it acknowledges that these regions would remain under de facto Russian control during the negotiations. The Trump administration has proposed that the US receive a significant share of Ukraine’s mineral and oil resources as “payment” for American support. However, this proposal has faced resistance from Ukraine due to concerns over inadequate security guarantees in return. There is a demand for provision of US security assurances to Ukraine, which may include continued military aid and strategic support. Lately, the focus is on protecting energy facilities and critical infrastructure, with hopes that a Black Sea ceasefire may pave the way for a broader cessation of hostilities. Despite these diplomatic efforts, recent Russian drone attacks on Kyiv have resulted in casualties, underscoring the ongoing challenges in achieving a comprehensive ceasefire.
This background is important to comprehend the complexities of the future of European security, which of course needs to be preceded by an agreement on Ukraine, without which US credibility is at stake. A few facts should dictate any further thinking. The threat perception against Europe and the capability appreciation about Russia could bring a perception that Russia’s dismal military performance in Ukraine underscores the fact that it cannot militarily, economically or demographically sustain a war against Europe’s power houses: Germany, France, Italy and the UK, especially given their combined strength. These nations also know that Mr Trump may attempt to pull the US away from Europe. US security perception has long existed that the oceans are its ultimate defence; it runs deep in American strategic thought, shaped by geography, history and military doctrine. This belief has influenced US defence policies for long, with the essential theme of “forward defence”, which falls in line with the universal dictum of war -- defence in depth. In this case Europe facilitates the depth. A military defeat of Europe at the hands of Russia, if ever, would imply the most serious threat to the US mainland. It would be good to remember and imagine what the plight of the United States would have been had Pearl Harbour not occurred on December 7, 1941, which brought the US directly into the war on both flanks; its mainland would have been the next natural objective for Japan and Germany. The US can remain outside a European security agreement on the basis of an irrational belief on the unlikelihood of a major war between Russia and Europe. In the eventuality of such a war, a late US entry to Europe just as in 1941 may be perceived by US policymakers as something feasible and doable, although fairly impractical in today’s technology-driven world. Of course, it would save the US a couple of billions of dollars from its current European commitment and allow it to focus on the Indo-Pacific region, where its current real threats lie, from China. Considering such an American policy, it is hypothetical to assume that the threat from a demographically weakened Russia will progressively recede. Russia will always wish for its bottom-line strategic compulsions; no obstacles in the control of the Black Sea and its coast, and a comfortable offset away from Nato’s ground-based “lean on” alignment. The latter implies that Russia’s borders remain a distance from Nato’s. An American withdrawal may or may not automatically mean that its nuclear assets deployed in Europe, under Nato’s nuclear sharing arrangements at airbases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey are withdrawn and a compensatory arrangement is made by British and French assets. This complicates the issue further and needs a separate analysis.
President Trump’s defence establishment will undoubtedly need time to transform through this rollback and there is no certainty that after four years, any of this will survive. We need to remember that the September 11, 2001 attacks on America and other cyber-attacks proved that adversaries can bypass oceanic defences and forward-based defence in depth. All this will need to be built into US strategic policy formulation. Does the Trump administration have the intellectual bandwidth to alter a fundamental thinking in US security and turn on its head something the US people love most -- their security and their freedom, largely through defence in depth. We are not certain how far deep the strategic security domain within Trumpism has penetrated into the thinking of academia, the military, the powerful think tanks and the media. This has all the scope of dividing society like nothing else. It's already a divided society there, with more and more people sitting on the cusp even after voting for Donald Trump. We can recall how 9/11 had shaken America and its people.
A security schism between the United States and Europe would be a significant shift in global geopolitics, and whether the American public could accept and live with it is subject to many factors which need to be examined in far greater detail as we move forward.
The writer, a retired lieutenant-general, is a former GOC of the Srinagar-based 15 (“Chinar”) Corps
