Good Chat: What does Trump’s election mean for European security?
By Polina Beliakova, Stacie Goddard, Kaija Schilde, Lauren Sukin, and Sanne Verschuren (Beliakova is a Fletcher alum and Post-Doctoral Fellow at MIT Security Studies Program)
ust as he did during his first term as president, Donald Trump focused on European security issues during his 2024 campaign. He continued his well-worn criticism that NATO allies have failed to pay their “fair share” of the defense burden, promised to end the war in Ukraine in less than 24 hours, and praised Europe’s far-right leaders – including Vladimir Putin himself.
Not surprisingly, Trump’s rhetoric has done nothing to assuage Europe’s anxiety over the future of transatlantic relations. But the connection between Trump’s rhetoric and reality remains unclear. What do Trump’s positions likely mean for key European security issues – including the future of the NATO alliance, the trajectory of the war in Ukraine, the state of nuclear proliferation and strategy, and the possibility of an autonomous E.U. defense?
To unpack these questions in detail, the Frederick S. Pardee School at Boston University brought together a special panel on Nov. 12, 2024. Participants included Sanne Verschuren [Pardee School of Global Studies of Boston University]; Lauren Sukin [London School of Economics]; Polina Beliakova, [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]; Stacie Goddard [Wellesley College]; and Kaija Schilde [Pardee School of Global Studies of Boston University].
For good reason, much of the emphasis has been on Trump’s threats to abandon NATO entirely. Here, the panelists expand this focus, discussing a number of other problems Trump presents for European security. The following transcript, lightly edited for clarity and length, recounts this discussion.
Sanne Verschuren: In the context of increasing security competition with China and Russia, how will the NATO alliance endure? What are the upcoming challenges for the NATO alliance?
Lauren Sukin: NATO is faced with two pressing challenges. The first is the two-peer problem, referring to increasing aggression and other challenges to the liberal order by both Russia and China. This has to do not only with Russia’s belligerence in Europe, including its use of nuclear threats, coupled with China’s investment in expanding its nuclear arsenal, but also with the growing connections between Russia, China, and other adversary powers, including North Korea and Iran. This cooperation includes engagement on joint military exercises as well as increased technology transfers. It may be reflective of expanding political alignment between these powers as well.
This dynamic creates a couple of different challenges for the United States and its allies around the world, including those who are members of NATO. One of these challenges has to do with potential coordination between these adversary powers, and the possibility that the U.S. will face concurrent crises or conflicts in multiple regions, such as wars in both Europe and Asia.
The specter of this potential challenge has shaped U.S. foreign policy over the last couple of years, with the U.S. becoming increasingly embedded in the Indo-Pacific region and invested in strengthening its relationships and its military capabilities there. But this poses a challenge for NATO, because as the United States turns to East Asia, it may become less focused on many of its challenges in Europe, and European allies will have to evaluate how NATO can maintain strength and independence if there is a weakened United States presence in Europe.
The second challenge concerns burden sharing. The Trump administration pushed many U.S. allies to contribute more heavily to their burden-sharing commitments. During the election campaign, Trump made concerning statements with the potential to undermine U.S. alliances, such as saying that Russia should do “whatever the hell they want” to allies of the United States that don’t contribute adequately to the defense burden. The current standards in NATO require that states contribute 2% of their GDP towards defense spending. In the coming year, 23 out of 32 NATO allies will meet that goal. However, Trump proposed a 3% burden sharing requirement. This is a significant economic ask. It may be difficult for U.S. allies to meet that responsibility.
These demands for burden sharing are not only an economic problem. They may undermine the confidence that the United States continues to be invested in the security of its allies. NATO’s effectiveness as an alliance depends on the perception that the United States is willing to come to the aid of its partners. This is particularly problematic when we think about the nuclear domain. NATO is a nuclear alliance, where the United States has promised to shield its allies from nuclear threats, including those coming from Russia.
Statements from members of the Trump administration suggesting a decreased interest in NATO or the willingness to abandon NATO partners who don’t do their share means that our adversaries might become emboldened. Meanwhile, fears of abandonment among U.S. allies will become sharper. NATO allies will need to hedge against the possibility that the United States might increasingly turn away from the alliance to focus on other challenges across the globe.
There are two areas where we might be able to make some progress in heading off some of the worst consequences of these developing challenges. The first is for NATO countries to invest more in self-sufficiency. This might include, for example, further procurement from the United States or the development of more independent capabilities within NATO itself. Second, NATO has to deal with the challenge of the U.S. attention shifting towards East Asia. We’ve seen increased engagement from NATO countries in that region. For example, the second pillar of AUKUS defense partnership will engage the U.K. further in the region and improve interoperability across the U.K., U.S., and Australia. Other NATO states will need to decide what role they are going to play in the event of a conflict in East Asia, and they will need to think about how to develop self-sufficiency in Europe in the event that the U.S. is tied up in conflict elsewhere. Meanwhile, the United States will need to work hard to reassure its allies in NATO and elsewhere that it remains invested in protecting its partners against numerous emerging threats.
Verschuren: Checking in with you, Polina Beliakova. What will American and European partners do to continue support for the war in Ukraine? What are the main challenges in contemporary policy with regard to that war – what is working? Where is the policy failing? In light of the recent elections, how should we think about the relationship between the United States and Europe on one hand and Russia on the other hand?
Polina Beliakova: Russia sees elections in the United States as adding to the vulnerability of European governments – and an opportunity for expanding the Kremlin’s influence in Europe. Russia’s preference for being the leading European power is persistent and can be traced from the Russian Empire, to the Soviet Union, to Boris Yeltsin’s post-Cold War Russia, and to Vladimir Putin’s regime we observe today. It is a mistake to attribute Russia’s European ambitions to recent events such as NATO expansion or the E.U. aspirations of the Ukrainian government. Keeping in mind Russia’s strong preference for increasing its influence in Europe, it is reasonable to expect that the Kremlin will use the election of Donald Trump to drive a wedge between the United States and its European partners. For instance, Putin has already stated earlier this year that dependence on the United States is the main threat to Europe.
If the Russian motivation for expanding its power in Europe is constant, the only thing that can effectively limit this expansion is the lack of necessary capabilities. Therefore, European policymakers who would like to prevent the Kremlin’s influence in European politics should focus on weakening Russia’s ability to target European politics and security. First, it is in the best interest of Europeans to keep supporting Ukraine – to make the Russian war there as costly, painful, and distracting for the Kremlin as possible. In practice this would require providing Ukraine with necessary technology to strike deep into the Russian territory, potentially with the Ukrainian-made weapons; providing air-defense capabilities to Ukraine, and doing so in a timely and proactive manner. Pursuing a fast and cheap peace in Ukraine would be counterproductive and dangerous for Europe.
Second, the European policymakers who want to keep the Kremlin at bay should focus on diminishing Russia’s ability to recover from the economic and military losses in its war against Ukraine. It is an open secret that the sanctions regime is rather porous and Russia keeps obtaining Western goods, including the components for weapons manufacturing made in the U.S., Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Keeping Ukraine strong and Russia weak should be equally important priorities for the European policymakers concerned about the Kremlin’s influence in European politics. Supporting Ukraine while enabling Russia to fight is self-defeating for Europe.
A final point: European governments should invest in counterintelligence. Russian incursions in Europe do not and will not look like the war in Ukraine in 2022 or even 2014. Certainly Russia will not rely on missile attacks on Warsaw, Bratislava, or Munich to coerce Europe. Instead, the Russian interference in European affairs will likely look similar to the coup attempt in Montenegro in 2019 or the migration crisis on the Belarus-Polish border in 2021. The Kremlin’s influence toolkit will involve polarizing the information sphere; weaponizing divisions over migration, ethnicity, race, gender, and religion; infiltrating and eroding the institutions – from elections to the media to financial organizations; and challenging the credibility of NATO in the face of the new threats. The ability to identify and curb Russian adventurism in these areas will be crucial for European politics and require a serious and proactive approach to domestic security.
To summarize, the outcome of U.S. elections enables Russia to pursue its long-established orientation towards influencing European politics. Since this motivation remains constant through centuries, regimes, wars, and revolutions, the best bet of the European governments is to target Russia’s ability to pursue more power on the continent. Therefore, supporting Ukraine, weakening Russia, and investing in domestic security should be at the top of the to-do list of European leaders in the next four years.
Vershuren: Turning to Stacie Goddard, what role do nuclear weapons play in the transatlantic relationship? How will that change as a result of the elections in the United States and Europe? How is nuclear policy changing in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom? What role will nuclear weapons play within NATO?
Stacie Goddard: Trump is a big believer in the deterrence model: He thinks that conflict comes when a country fails to show strength, and allows an opponent to take advantage of weakness. In the realm of nuclear policy, this worldview means that the next administration will embrace a doctrine of nuclear superiority, where the U.S maintains more nuclear forces than any of its rivals, including not only China but Russia. Much of the language of Project 2025 embraces the spirit of the Reagan-era military buildup, the idea of outspending opponents and forcing them to keep up. Even more specifically, Trump believes that deterrence is strengthened when you’re willing to be a little bit of a madman, and when you’re willing to take some risk.
And this position towards nuclear strategy may lead to a serious destabilization effect in Europe. First, there will be changes to nuclear burden sharing. We do not know for sure how many nuclear weapons the U.S. has in Europe right now; estimates suggest about 100. The United States has a nuclear burden sharing agreement, where Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey all store nuclear weapons in underground bunkers.
There are two changes the Trump administration is likely to make to this nuclear burden sharing agreement. First – and this was a likely change in any administration – he is likely to update the stored weapons from the older version of the B-61 gravity bomb to the modernized B-61-12. This newer version of the B-61 is a low-yield, precision nuclear weapon, more accurate than the currently deployed version. While some nuclear strategists see this increased precision as necessary to securing the credibility of NATO’s nuclear deterrent, others see this upgrade as making nuclear weapons use more thinkable and, thus, nuclear politics more unstable.
Second, Trump is likely to consider moving the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Poland is a likely host. To begin with, Poland has asked to store nuclear weapons, in hopes of building up its deterrent capacity against Russia. Trump’s advisors likely see such a move as necessary to counter Russia’s deployal of nuclear weapons in Belarus. But moving U.S. weapons to Poland will be expensive – and will require building new underground bunkers to store them. Moreover, moving weapons is destabilizing. If you have Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus and U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Poland, this places significant forces in close geographic proximity, which increases the probability of a preemptive strike.
At the same time the U.S. will be increasing its nuclear weapons, nuclear powers like the U.K. and France will likely take steps to increase their autonomous deterrent capacity. Right now, both countries embrace a minimum deterrence strategy. The U.K. relies on a small submarine force armed with nuclear weapons, one of which is continuously at sea. France has about 290 nuclear weapons, which can either be delivered by air or by submarine.
Trump’s threats of abandonment of NATO allies, combined with his willingness to take nuclear risks, will likely lead to debates in the U.K. and France over nuclear strategy. The U.K. may see a more flexible force, one that diversifies its delivery vehicles. France has suggested that not only will it increase its arsenal, but that it might take on the mantle of deterring all of Europe from Russian threats. Under these conditions, you would have multiple actors in Europe all aiming to deploy credible nuclear forces, and a lot of arms racing is likely to be the result.
Verschuren: Kaija Schilde, what’s your take on the prospects for the defense industry across both sides of the Atlantic, in light of the elections? What are the challenges and opportunities for the defense industry in the United States and Europe? Will Europe be able to build up a flourishing defense industry in the context of a potential U.S. withdrawal from NATO?
Kaija Schilde: We need to watch the E.U. as a defense actor. The European security conversation is dominated by discourse about NATO, but the E.U. is an important defense actor in Europe: Most structural trends point to it becoming more central to European security and strategic autonomy. The key to understanding the role of the E.U. in European security is to look at it through a political economy of security lens: Where are markets governed? How will future defense technology and equipment be generated? How do countries harness defense capabilities in complex (often international, mostly private sector) supply chains? Part of that answer, in the 21st century and accelerating since 2022, is the European Union and its market authority.
E.U. defense has accelerated since 2014 and 2022, but it is not new. While E.U. defense institutions and functions are not always well known, defense has been part of the European project since the very beginning. While this phase of defense institutionalization has been building since 1999, there have been earlier rounds of efforts towards E.U. defense integration. Even when there was basically smoldering rubble in Europe just a few years after World War II, one of the first attempts at European cooperation was to pursue collective defense in the form of the European Defence Community. So one of the first E.U. efforts was not just civilian markets (for coal and steel), but defense.
Second, European citizens like and support collective defense, and they have for over 30 years. Surveys suggest that over 75% of the European population supports a robust defense at the E.U. level. One survey asked Europeans where the most logical level of governance defense efforts should be located, and 43% of them said the European Union, 26% said nation states, and only 18% said NATO. And a further note: Recent political science experimental research shows that the more European citizens perceive threats, the more they support E.U. defense efforts. It is not only Russia that is a threat. Some research suggests that Europeans see increased migration, and particular kinds of migration, as a threat that increases their support for collective E.U. defense. So, a question will be the degree to which European publics and their leaders see Trump as a threat.
Third, the E.U. has significant powers – in the form of regulatory authority – to leverage markets to mobilize defense capacity. It has a single market authority in Europe, and a singular authority in regulating and shaping markets, including security, dual-use technologies, and increasingly defense markets. Much of what is happening in European defense, especially in terms of organizing the weapons response to Ukraine, has been at the E.U. level. The E.U. defense authority is primarily regulatory, but some aspects are increasingly traditional, in terms of procurement.
Currently the E.U. is the third largest spender on defense. It is the third largest buyer of defense equipment in Europe behind France and Germany. Up until now, for the U.S. and non-Ukrainian European states, national security in the 21st century has not been about fighting wars geopolitically or large great power wars. It has been about generating the material tools of war, making sure that countries have the capacity to mobilize their economies in support of their own security and that of their allies. Here, it is the E.U. doing the hard work – not NATO. NATO doesn’t have that kind of market, regulatory, or procurement authority. If future military technology for European strategic autonomy is going to come to market, that will be the E.U.’s doing. If complex, regional supply chains are going to be activated, if countries coordinate over a particular kind of missile technology or heavy armor model that firms are going to invest in, here again, that lies in the realm of the E.U. and its regulation.
This is how 21st century countries build their military power. To generate the tools of war, they have to work with markets, and often those markets are international, not domestic. So it requires a certain kind of economic authority that the E.U. has, and NATO does not. This is not to say that the E.U. efforts have been entirely effective. In general, the E.U. lacks a coherent fiscal and industrial policy when it comes to defense. It is possible that this might change, especially with the increasing threat from Russia and U.S. abandonment.
The E.U. has managed to adopt massive and coherent fiscal policies that rival or exceed U.S. fiscal responses in the face of crises, most recently in its response to the covid-19 pandemic. So it is not out of the realm of possibility that the E.U. might do so in the face of these security threats. The greater E.U. challenge is over industrial policy, where E.U. states and markets are highly constrained in their ability to “pick winners” to overcome security (or environmental) crises and shape European strategic autonomy with all the tools of a sovereign nation state.
Overall, my expectation is that E.U. leaders will continue the structural trend of supercharging defense cooperation. However, a countervailing challenge to this integration trend will be whether European leaders will be able to do that under the shock and awe they’ll be facing from the Trump administration. Since 2022, E.U. member states have only made themselves more vulnerable to U.S. influence (and potential quid pro quo control).
While the importance of NATO has only grown more salient, the increasing dependence has come from Europe’s increasing arms imports from the U.S., and joining or deepening their participation in joint collaborative arms projects, such as the F-35. It is over these deep dependencies that I will be watching the transatlantic relationship during the next administration. If the new Trump administration weaponizes short-term European arms dependence on the U.S., it might successfully stop or decay the overall trend towards deeper defense authority at the E.U. level. European leaders should plan for this. Relaxing subsidy and industrial policy rules would be a great start, and will also help E.U. member states prepare for the end of the climate mitigation gains from the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act.
(This post is republished from Good Authority.)