CRISIS, WHAT CRISIS? THE U.S. NEEDS NATO AS MUCH AS EVER / THE FINANCIAL TIMES OP EDITORIAL

Crisis, what crisis? The US needs Nato as much as ever

Quitting Europe would see Washington deliver to Beijing its most important strategic ambition

Philip Stephens


© Ingram Pinn/Financial Times


No pictures, please. It is not often that a British prime minister plays hide-and-seek with a US president. Custom demands they doff their caps in deference to the prized “special relationship”. Boris Johnson, though, faces an election. He knows his American soulmate Donald Trump, in Britain for the Nato summit, is unloved by voters. Mr Trump was uncharacteristically forgiving as his host darted to and fro to avoid the cameras.

This tableau was, in its way, a metaphor for this week’s grand Nato gathering. Marking its 70th anniversary, the 29-nation alliance might have worked on a vision for the future. The founding plan — to keep the Americans in, the Soviets out and the Germans down — could do with updating.

Instead, the event was scripted as an exercise in diplomatic damage limitation. Atlanticism is said to be in crisis, caught between a capricious US and miserly Europeans. And a public spat between Mr Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron dispelled the notion of an alliance advancing as one.

It is hard keeping up with Mr Trump. He used to excoriate Nato as an expensive irrelevance and an unfair burden foisted on American taxpayers. Now he has decided it “serves a great purpose”. Europeans have upped their defence spending and Mr Trump wants the credit. By contrast, Mr Macron now describes the alliance as “brain-dead”, and wants fellow Europeans to find another way to defend themselves.

It does not help that what bills itself as a club of liberal democracies includes Turkey’s autocratic president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr Erdogan, who has been cuddling up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, refuses to recognise that membership carries responsibilities. He is testing a new Russian-supplied anti-aircraft system.

By waging war on the Kurds of northern Syria — the west’s allies against Islamist terrorists — he has also handed a victory to the Syrian regime and blunted the fight against the remnants of Isis. Mr Macron is right in claiming Mr Erdogan has forfeited his place at the table. That said, Turkey sits on Nato’s eastern flank. It is prudent to keep Mr Erdogan within the tent.

After listening this week to the rambling fantasies and non-sequiturs that comprise Mr Trump’s worldview, it seems reasonable to say things may well look even worse if he wins a second term in 2020. I am still struggling with the logic that says US interests would be well served by a policy of sanctions on its European allies alongside a tripartite trade deal with Russia and China. To be fair, the president did apply a caveat: it may not happen.

And yet. Amid the cacophony, and some real differences, no one should think that the game is up for Nato. Sure, it is an alliance designed for the cold war. If it did not exist, it is doubtful anyone would now invent it. But why, at a moment of geopolitical upheaval that has left western democracies challenged by a risen China and a revisionist Russia, would anyone — even Mr Trump — seek to dismantle their collective defence?

Europe does need to build up its own capabilities. It has made a small start in Africa but will need to take on a lot more responsibility for the security, and prosperity, of its near neighbours. But realism is also required. The continent has a long way to go before it can properly defend itself against, say, an expansionist regime in Moscow.

The French president is correct to say that it makes sense for the west to engage with Russia, as it did during the cold war. The many nuclear arms agreements concluded during the communist era should serve as model for a relationship that identifies areas of mutual interest. We must presume that Mr Macron, however, is not talking about redividing Europe into western and Russian spheres of influence. Those days have passed. Dialogue with Mr Putin will be useful only if the west starts from a position of strength.

The future of Nato, of course, ultimately depends on America’s commitment. And here, often overlooked, lies the assurance that the organisation has a secure future. The argument about Washington’s disproportionately large military commitment has been going on for so long that many have come to see it as an act of altruism. In truth, America has paid for Nato because it has served US national interests. It still does.

A lazy view of those national interests says the focus has changed with the rise of China. The challenge to US primacy from Beijing means the Pacific now counts for more than the Atlantic. Russian revisionism is no longer a direct threat to the US.

This analysis rests on the fundamental misjudgment that competition between America and China will be confined to the Pacific. Beijing’s most important push is westwards. The Belt and Road Initiative is calculated to sideline Russia, pull Europe closer to Asia and establish China as the pre-eminent power in the world’s richest, most populous region — Eurasia. Quitting Europe would see the US deliver to Beijing its most important strategic ambition.

Pulling back across the Atlantic would do more than deprive the US of the allies and the bases needed to defend its global interests. Rather, it would redefine the US as a hemispheric power, a regional rather than global player. Many Americans, I know, have tired of the global policeman role. I have not heard many suggest a retreat into isolationism.

Until then, Nato is safe.