What are the 3 major dangers linked to European American-centrism in terms of Defense?

For many years, well before the arrival of President Macron at the Elysée, the French position in matters of defense had always been more independent than that of its neighbors with regard to American protection.

In 2017, when tensions between Berlin and Washington were at their peak, Emmanuel Macron and Engels Merkel launched several industrial and political initiatives in order to give substance to a very ambitious and quite old project, Defense Europe.

However, while relations between Germany and the United States normalized from the following year, Franco-German cooperation programs withered little by little, largely due to a significant shift and rapid move by Germany for a return to its traditional posture based on US protection in terms of Defense.

The arrival of Joe Biden at the White House in 2020, and even more so the Russian aggression against Ukraine, finally convinced Berlin, but also all Europeans, including independent countries such as Sweden and Finland, that US protection and NATO represented the Alpha and Omega of European defense.

Exit Defense Europe, long live the redeployment of US forces in Europe, and the acquisition of US military equipment to better cooperate with them.

It must be said that this position, acclaimed by all European capitals from Lisbon to Vilnius and Budapest, is not lacking in relevance today. Due to 20 years of critical underinvestment in European defense tools, despite a timid increase from 2015 and a clear acceleration from 2022 and the return of war in Europe, but also the absence of anticipation of the General Staffs in terms of geopolitical risk, concentrating the weak credits in the modernization of the means of power projection while neglecting the high intensity commitment, the means available to the European armies at the start of the Russian aggression against its neighbor, were more than limited.

Without the massive and voluntary intervention of the United States, which alone assumes more than 2/3 of the arms and ammunition shipments to Kyiv, as well as half of the economic aid, not to mention the assistance in matters of intelligence and conduct of operations, it is likely that European assistance would not have enabled Ukrainian forces to neutralize Russian military power.

We can also sincerely question the fact that Europeans, particularly Western Europeans, would have actually supported Ukraine militarily to such an extent without American leadership?

In fact, today, the position chosen by all the European countries relying on American military power and deterrence to ensure their own protection, in particular against Russia, does not seem to be subject to debate, even if, once again, France, which has its own deterrent, again and again offers a more independent posture, as President Macron reminded us a few weeks ago. However, and even if the Europeans have for the most part announced a significant increase in the means devoted to their armies in the years to come, this posture is not without risk, quite the contrary. In this article, we will study 3 of these major dangers linked to the renewed and even increased American-centrism of European capitals in terms of defense following the war in Ukraine: the Chinese risk, the risk of extending the conflict, and the risk of political alternation across the Atlantic.

1- To contain the Chinese threat, the United States will have to concentrate all of its military power in the Pacific

Whether it is an application of the trap of Thucydides which would oppose the rising power, China, to the dominant power, the United States, the consequence of two divergent historical and political visions, or that of the vision of a Chinese leader wanting to leave his name in history on the same level as Mao Zedong and Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the risks of an upcoming major confrontation between China and the United States and their allies in the Pacific , now represent the most important subject of concern for the American armies. The fact is, the simulations around the capture of Taiwan, estimates expressed by senior Australian military and political officials, or the analyzes published on our site, all indicate that beyond 2027, the American armies will only be able, at best, to obtain a strategic pate against the People's Liberation Army in full modernization, and that beyond 2035, China will be able to feed serious hopes of victory against the United States.

The rest of this article is for subscribers only

The Classic subscriptions provide access to
all articles without advertising, starting at € 1,99.

Newsletter subscription