[…] NATO and all U.S. allies, including Australia, recognize the need to spend more. But Washington and allied capitals differ on how that extra cash should be spent. The United States naturally wants additional purchases of American weapons. But allies fear that although buying more U.S. equipment and munitions may please Trump, it will not deliver greater independence. Indeed, a buying spree of U.S. weapons systems may result only in the purchaser becoming even more reliant on the United States.
The long-term solution for U.S. allies is to be able to deter aggressors with capabilities that are sovereign, ideally in the sense that they have been produced domestically but certainly in the sense that they can be deployed and operated without the concurrence of the United States. At the moment, that is not possible. U.S.-supplied F-35s, for instance, are so functionally dependent on American software and spare parts that it is difficult to see how they could be used, or used for long, without Washington’s consent.
This kind of dependence, common in most modern weapons systems, was often irksome for U.S. allies but not regarded as a big problem. NATO allies could trust that they would never fight alone, so dependence on an indifferent United States was merely a theoretical concern. But today, with the White House demanding that the United States’ allies be able to fend for themselves, the circumstances are very different. It is no surprise that the EU’s recently unveiled 150 billion euro defense procurement plan largely excludes U.S. companies. At the same time, Portugal has announced it is no longer planning to acquire F-35s, and Canada is reassessing its plans to purchase 88 F-35s. Europe’s challenge is not just to find the money to fund rearmament but also to overcome national rivalries to agree on several standard-bearers for the defense industry, much in the same way that France and Germany came together to create Airbus in 1970. Another inspiring example for Europe (and other U.S. allies) can be found in Ukraine, where the local defense industry has produced one disruptive, innovative, and much less costly capability after another—as demonstrated by the stunning drone attacks that Ukrainian forces launched earlier this week on Russian air bases. […]
U.S. allies often trusted in the United States and in American values more in hope than in expectation. But that trust was real, and now it is fraying. Trump invites a different sort of trust in the United States: the certainty that Washington will seek to act ruthlessly in its own self-interest and use its might to extract the best deal for itself. Future U.S. leaders may try to restore the country’s moral leadership, but trust once lost is hard to win back. Trade deals come and go, but if the light on the hill shines only for Americans, Trump will have ushered in a darker world for everybody else. Läs artikel