NATO is accelerating its pace ahead of its biggest strategic realignment in decades. The defense ministers of the Atlantic Alliance meet in Brussels this Thursday with an urgent objective: to design the plan for European allies and Canada to assume control of their own conventional security and cover the military gaps that the United States will leave.
This reconfiguration, already baptized under the concept of “NATO 3.0”, responds to Washington’s formal announcement to withdraw an important part of its air and maritime assets deployed in Europe – including combat fighters and submarines with the capacity to launch cruise missiles – to reassign them to priority regions such as the Indo-Pacific.
Just before the meeting, the Allied Secretary General, Mark Rutte, told the press that he cannot say that the US is going to make the military resources it had committed available to the club, but that it will do “the maximum” for the Alliance. “If a war breaks out, it is clear that all allies, including the United States, will do everything in their power. I am not saying that they can fulfill everything they promised within the framework of the NATO force model, but they will give their best,” said the Dutchman, noted since his inauguration for his evident closeness to the North American president, Donald Trump.
The former Prime Minister of the Netherlands specifies that “this will depend, of course, on the type of war in question, what other limitations there are and what other challenges arise.” “But I’m pretty sure we will fight that war and win it,” he adds.
The US realignment, in particular, substantially cuts its contribution to the “NATO Forces Model” (the framework that stipulates what resources each country contributes in the event of a crisis). Although it will not affect the “nuclear umbrella” with which Washington protects the European continent, it will force the allies to suddenly assume responsibility for conventional defense.
Rutte, despite everything, wanted to downplay the drama of the measure, describing it as a “sign of success” in the evolution of the Alliance: “It is completely logical that the Europeans assume a greater part of the burden. It is something peculiar that we continue to need so much help from another country, eight hours away by flight from here, with 350 million people, to defend ourselves against 140 million,” he said yesterday, recalling that Europe has 600 million inhabitants to face the threat from Russia.
“What the US has said, and we knew this was going to happen, is that it has to deal with multiple theaters of operations. They cannot disperse their resources too much. They have said that they had to reduce to a certain extent their contribution to the NATO force model,” insists Rutte, justifying his American friend.
The US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has also said in a rapid assessment before the meeting that his country appreciates that Europe is leading the return to a “firm military alliance”, capable of deterring enemies, and appreciated that many countries in the organization are fulfilling the commitments made, although he acknowledged that others still must “do more.” The “NATO 3.0” plan represents “the recognition that, after the Cold War, it is necessary to once again be a firm military alliance, endowed with real military capabilities capable of deterring right here, on the continent, and assuming leadership in conventional defense,” reports EFE.
A puzzle against the clock for Ankara
Despite the optimism of the Alliance leadership, replacing the US deployment will not be a simple or immediate task. Rutte admitted that not all North American capabilities will have been replaced by the time of the leaders’ summit in Ankara, Turkey, scheduled for July 7-8.
The replacement process progresses at different rates. For example, several nations (including Spain, Germany and the Netherlands) have already responded positively to the request from NATO’s supreme military command (SACEUR) to provide more resources. But there are long-term gaps: the strategic arsenal of ballistic missiles and deep precision strike capabilities (deep-strike) are the most complex areas, as Euractiv reminds us.
Initiatives such as the European Long Range Strike Approach (ELSA) will still require years to materialize, furthermore. As a temporary alternative, some diplomats suggest betting on technological innovation, such as the use of drones to replace tasks traditionally assigned to US fighters.
Tensions due to increased military spending
This sudden changing of the guard coincides with suffocating internal pressure on European defense budgets. The ministers evaluate compliance with the commitments adopted in The Hague to raise military spending to 5% of GDP by 2035 (divided into 3.5% of purely military investment and 1.5% in areas related to Defense).
The economic debate is already causing strong political friction. The meeting in Brussels takes place a few days after the resignation of the British Defense Minister, John Healey, motivated precisely by disputes over his country’s military budget.
A discomfort shared publicly by the Italian minister, Guido Crosetto, evidencing the complex fiscal decisions that await European governments in a geopolitical context marked by tensions with Russia and instability in the Middle East.
