NATO’s upcoming summit will champion a familiar narrative: the United States will reaffirm its “ironclad commitment” to Article 5 and collective defense, Europe will recommit to larger defense budgets, and together they will extol the strength and unity of the 75-year-old alliance. The same old script results in the same old problems. There is no end in sight for Europe’s dependence on the United States.
Twenty-five years ago, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned that the alliance would only remain strong and cohesive if there was no decoupling of European defense structures from NATO, no duplication of NATO capabilities, and no discrimination against non-EU NATO members. This narrative is so well entrenched that U.S., NATO, and even EU officials routinely invoke the “3Ds” in defense policy debates.
But NATO lost the plot along the way. Europe limited its defense ambitions in response to Washington’s opposition, and while allied unity was preserved, the alliance itself grew “unbalanced.” First, the “no decoupling” rule has discouraged European allies from fully leveraging the EU’s comparative advantages, especially its funding and financing mechanisms. When the EU released its Defense Industrial Strategy, to include an initial budget of €1.5 billion ($1.61 billion), and indicated it would “explore all options” to increase funding, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg pushed back, warning, “You cannot have [the] EU and NATO presenting to Germany, or to Denmark, or to Poland two conflicting lists of capability targets.”
Second, the “no duplication” guideline imagines one threat—the EU duplicating NATO’s role—while ignoring the all-too-real problem of Europe’s defense fragmentation. European allies collectively spent about four times as much as Russia last year on defense, despite Moscow’s surge in wartime defense spending. There is no reason why Europe cannot come to its own defense, except it spends its funds so inefficiently. For instance, European allies collectively have 17 different types of main battle tanks, 13 different types of air-to-air missiles, and 29 different types of naval frigates.
Finally, the “non-discrimination” principle has become synonymous with advancing the interests of U.S. defense firms and stymying any progress toward European defense industry consolidation. Washington has long insisted that Europe keep its defense market open to U.S. firms without reciprocating in kind. While allowing U.S. companies to compete for European contracts makes good business and economic sense in Washington, it offers little incentive for European publics to support larger defense budgets when they line American business pockets.
NATO should flip the script. Instead of Albright’s “3Ds,” it should embrace what Marie Jourdain and I call the “3Cs”—cooperation, capabilities, and consolidation—to build a stronger European pillar in NATO. The top priority should be deepening EU-NATO cooperation, in which NATO sets standards and procurement targets while the EU coordinates investment and procurement. Strengthening European military capabilities will also likely require joint EU borrowing, similar to the European Union’s €800 billion ($857 billion) post-COVID recovery plan. Importantly, European allies should work to consolidate their defense industrial base, and the only way to achieve that is for Europe to wean itself off American kit and build its own. Seventy-five years on, NATO ought to reinvent itself into an alliance of equals.
