Navigating the Atlantic is an euradio podcast series produced in partnership with the Chair of Transatlantic Trade and Economy of the College of Europe (in cooperation with Microsoft). As global challenges multiply on numerous fronts – namely security and defence, democracy, trade, climate change and energy among many others – this podcast series aims at navigating the currents underlining transatlantic affairs, to shed light on all dimensions and complexities of this historic partnership. In each episode, journalist Lolla Sauty-Hoyer from euradio welcomes one guest and showcases their personal outlook on the state of transatlantic relations in a fireside-chat-like setting. This series is made possible by the participation of the students of the Master of Arts in Transatlantic Affairs (MATA) program of the College of Europe, who contribute to the preparation of these interviews with their precious expertise.
On January 20th, Donald Trump became the 47th President of the United States. Since that day, Donald Trump has been pressuring Europeans to allocate a larger share of their budget to defense, while simultaneously weakening the security guarantees that the United States provides to Europe through NATO. Forced to take responsibility for themselves, Europeans are compelled to acknowledge how much they remain militarily under the influence of the United States.
The path to European strategic autonomy will be long and complex for Europe, which lacks the means to defend its security interests when they diverge from those of the United States. Today on euradio, we talk about the future of the Transatlantic Partnership under the new Trump administration. For that, we have a special guest, Ian Lesser, who holds the Chair in Transatlantic Trade and Economy at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. He is also Vice President at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels.
Ian Lesser, thank you so much for being here with us today on euradio.
It's a pleasure to be with you. Thank you very much.
So to begin, my first question is to put a bit of context: with Donald Trump returning to the White House, how do you perceive the evolution of transatlantic relations compared to his first presidency? What are the main changes?
Of course, there has been a lot of speculation, and we're only really two months or so into the Trump administration the second time around. I think one thing that's very clear is that the experience of the first Trump administration is not much of a guide to what we're seeing now, for many reasons. In the first case, President Trump didn’t really expect to win, and many different kinds of people came into his administration with different views—some moderate, some less so, some very skilled, some less so.
In general, though, the administration spent four years figuring things out. And this time around, it’s rather different. The president had full confidence in winning, and he did, in fact. He had people who were waiting in the wings to come into his administration, and many of them have.
It is, in some ways, more ideological, even more radical in some respects, but also more professional in terms of the use of executive orders and the system to make things happen and to bring in people who are willing to do quite radical things in terms of American governance.
So, all of this, from a European perspective, means that while Europe really likes to have predictability from Washington, there is now an experience with very, very little predictibility. Every day, there is something new, and this is exactly what Europe is ill-prepared to deal with.
So now Europe has to deal with Donald Trump, who often criticized NATO and European defense spending. Do you think he could go as far as questioning the United States' commitment to the alliance?
I think the burden-sharing argument that Europe should be paying more and doing more—frankly, this is something that multiple administrations from different parties have come to Brussels and talked about. It’s true that the Trump administration, in the first experience, put this in a much harsher, much more brutal way, and has done so again. But the fundamental request is not, in a sense, new.
What is new, in a way, is making this conditional: Europe does more, pays more, does more, or the US will do less. My own view is that, leaving aside the fact that the United States has its own independent interests in its engagement in European security—not doing it as a matter of philanthropy or charity—but clearly President Trump doesn’t see it exactly that way. He really does believe this is somehow a kind of transactional deal, and that Europe isn’t, somehow,paying its full share.
There’s no question that this rhetoric has had an effect on European behavior. Europe has done more, is spending more. I mean, now, of course, we have both the burden-sharing argument coming from Washington, but also the fear that somehow the United States is going to go further and disengage itself from European security, which is causing many in Europe to think that, not only does Europe have to spend more to please Washington, but it needs to spend more in case there’s no pleasing Washington and Europe simply needs to hedge against having less America in European security.
And so, I think that’s where we are. I do think it is still a step, to go from there to the idea that somehow the United States would withdraw from NATO, for example. I don’t think that’s very likely. I think, at the end of the day, President Trump and his administration will calculate that it’s still worth it for the United States to remain. Could they make life in NATO headquarters rather difficult? Absolutely. NATO operates entirely on consensus, and the United States has been the consensus driver for decades.
So having a US that is, maybe not disengaged, but much more critical and conditional in its engagement, really does make it much more difficult for the alliance. And of course, much of this will also depend on the evolution of the relationship between Washington and Moscow, and that is completely in play at the moment.
Even if, according to you, the US is probably not going to leave NATO, what could be the consequences on European Security, if Donald Trump decides to reduce the US military commitment in Europe?
They would be very severe. I would go back to the point that, in a sense, this problem, this challenge for Europe, could have come from any American administration, in a different way, because there was already the concern—even with Biden, who was very Atlanticist—that somehow contingencies in Asia could, in a very quick way, cause the United States to look elsewhere by necessity. And that the US simply wouldn’t be as available for European security at a time when there was a war in Europe. But of course, the Trump administration takes this further because they have, in a sense, an activist desire to do less in Europe and to see Europe do more. It presents Europe with difficulties at many levels. First of all, how to preserve the American commitment to European security, if it can be done. Secondly, how to, as a matter of hedging, prepare Europe to do some of the things that only the United States has been able to do during the Cold War and since the end of the Cold War. And there are some key capabilities that the United States brings where Europe is simply far behind. It’s not just in the numbers of troops or aircraft or spending levels.
It’s also to do with some key elements like communications and logistics, intelligence collection, and all of this kind of stuff that the United States essentially provided as an infrastructure for European security. If that’s taken away, Europe has a lot to replace.
And then you could even go further to say that, in the worst case, what happens to the American nuclear deterrent —that nuclear umbrella that is largely, not entirely, but largely American, also a French piece and a British piece, but largely American, and it’s very substantial, and it operates at a tactical level in Europe, but also across the Atlantic, obviously, and globally— how does Europe make up for that? Is it possible?
Especially given the very dangerous and risky state of relations with Russia. That’s a big hurdle for Europe to overcome. And then there are questions of how —even if Europe is willing to try to do this, and there’s been remarkable progress even in the last weeks— and the question of who will do it? Will it be the European Union? Will it be a stronger European pole within NATO? Will it be some collaboration between the two institutions? Or will you simply see a coalition of individual nation-states who are willing to do more? I think that’s very unresolved at the moment. Yes, there’s a broad commitment to do more, to spend more, but how exactly is less clear.
And then finally, for Europe to really build a serious, sustainable defense capacity on the continent is the work of years, really, in the sense of being able to have the defense industries and all the supporting infrastructure that goes along with it. It’s not just about people and money. It’s about many, many other things, and you don’t create those things overnight.
You mentioned Russia and the situation in Ukraine. The Trump administration has suggested that it might negotiate directly with Russia. So while Donald Trump is putting the EU aside in peace talks, the new Weimar+ meeting took place in Paris in February. Under the new administration, do you foresee any major shifts in US support for Ukraine? And how can Europe react? Is it possible to do it without the US?
Well, it’s already the case that collectively Europe has done as much or more for Ukraine than the United States has. Of course, not on an individual country basis, but collectively, Europe—especially including the UK—has done more and is doing more. The general assumption is that the United States will do less over time. But even that is a bit unclear. The Trump administration has reversed itself on this actually a couple of times just over the past few weeks.
And depending upon the discussions between Washington and Moscow, this could go in different directions. It would be very difficult, I think, unless there is some ceasefire or even the direction of a settlement between Russia and Ukraine. It would be very difficult for Ukraine to have full security without having support from both the United States and Europe.
In a sense, both of these elements are extremely important, but not only that, they’re slightly different in the sense that even though Europe has given a lot, most of that has been delivered by the United States still. And in terms of actionable intelligence and other things, the United States again provides a disproportionate share of the support for Ukraine.
So if you take the United States out of the equation—and it’s not clear that that would happen— but if you did take the United States out of the equation, it would be very hard for Europe to make up for that in the near term. But much again depends on the nature of these discussions that are going on about, at least, a pause in the conflict, if not a formal ceasefire, and maybe even eventually a settlement, although that’s obviously going to be a very difficult negotiation.
What Ukraine needs will be driven in large measure by the outcome of these talks. So it’s very difficult to judge for the moment.
Within this situation, do you think Europe is seeking to gain more independence in defense and foreign policy? And do you think that the war in Ukraine is pushing Europe towards greatest Strategic Autonomy? Or is it still too dependent on US security guarantees?
Well, the truth is that both observations are correct. I think there was already, especially in Paris but not just, this desire for greater European strategic autonomy from the United States for all kinds of reasons that preceded the re-election of Donald Trump. But of course, his election has, in a way, given history a shove.
It’s reinforced concerns about many things, whether it’s about economic competitiveness or Europe’s lack of capability in terms of defense forces and the ability to project power and use military force, and it’s all come together in the last weeks because of this uncertainty emanating from Washington.
One stance is to say that, in a sense, the French view was correct, that Europe needs more of its own autonomous capacity —and I think, ironically, in Washington now many people would agree. What has given this real fuel, what has supported this idea is not just the idea that Europe doesn’t have enough capacity, but that somehow the part that the United States contributes has become unreliable.
And this is affecting many things, not just the overall levels of spending in Europe, but also what Europe buys. How it deals with the United States when it comes to things like intelligence sharing. There are already countries beginning to question whether they want to buy American F-35s, for example, because somehow their use will be conditioned by American policy preferences. Those concerns are not entirely new, but they’ve taken on a new complexion as a result of the rhetoric coming from Washington.
Also, at the beginning of March, the European Union announced the *Rearm Europe* program to increase European defense spending. How can this program be a response to security issues?
It’s quite significant in the sense that few, I think, would have expected, even a short while ago, Europe to move so quickly and come up with proposals of this scale. Of course, the numbers being spoken about in terms of new European defense spending are, at the end of the day, going to have to come from national governments or be borrowed. There’s very little new EU money involved in this. So really, it’s going to fall back on national governments in their own national debates to be able to fund these kinds of programs, at a time when social spending and other things are also under pressure.
So, it’s not a foregone conclusion that countries around Europe are going to be able to make this happen. Obviously, there are some member states who already feel such a sense of risk, because of their geography, that they’re much of the way there to begin with—Poland, the Baltic States, Greece for a very different reason. So, there is no uniformity of view across Europe on this...
But again, you know, even with the will and the money to actually put the industries and the capacity in place for this—given the example of Ukraine, which provides us with the unfortunate experience of a protracted conventional war, something few people had planned around in Europe over the last decades—that means that you have to do a lot, and you have to put industries and infrastructure for mobility and all kinds of things in place to support defense programs and defense spending. Without that, it’s not enough.
Does the United States see the program as a complement to NATO or more as a competing form of strategic autonomy?
I mean, traditionally, the American strategic class and foreign policy establishment would have always preferred this to be done through NATO. And there is, of course, an argument in Europe, even within the EU: you hear this—that well, in fact, you don’t want to reinvent things, you have this perfectly good, very large coalition of the willing, because that’s in a sense what NATO is, so why not use it? Even if NATO becomes less American and more European.
I mean, maybe that’s one of the solutions here, because even in some countries that were never entirely so keen on NATO and preferred to see a stronger European defense capacity—France is the classic example, but not the only one—even there, it could be that a NATO that is more European and less American would be attractive.
In a way, if Europe is serious about getting more strategic autonomy and more defense capability, it ought to be focused on what is more efficient and practical, not just what is philosophically more attractive.
Maybe one last question for you, Ian Lesser. How would you describe transatlantic relations at the moment, today?
The state of transatlantic relations at the moment is troubled for many reasons, but in part because there has been this mounting disconnect or tension between the need for alliance, cohesion, against a much more risky geopolitical setting at the moment, globally, not just in Europe, on the one hand; and this increasing economic nationalism emanating from Washington, but not just from Washington, on the other.
This doesn’t fit together well, and in fact, it’s been fueled by the tendency of the Trump administration to be very direct about linking these two things.
So, you have, for example, Vice President Vance saying quite directly that the way American companies are treated in Brussels will have an effect on our policy towards NATO. And that’s a very unusual thing to say. Did that kind of argument go on in the background? Perhaps, yes, in the past, but it was never made quite so explicit. And now we’re actually confronting that in a very explicit way. These worlds –the world of economy, trade, commerce and the world of defense and foreign policy– have come together in a way that we really have not seen in recent decades, and it is making the whole business of transatlantic relations much, much more complicated.
The other thing that I think is worth thinking about while we are talking about defense, trade, or other things, is how much of this is just about President Trump and his administration, and how much of it is structural. And the truth is, it’s probably a bit of both.
There were already anxieties in Europe about the United States refocusing or focusing more on Asia, and things potentially going wrong in the Indo-Pacific that would very rapidly shift American attention away. That was a concern going back certainly to the Obama administration, if not earlier. That was pre-existing.
The desire for Europe to spend more, multiple administrations have brought that message. The European kind of philosophical desire to see the European Union take on more foreign and security policy dynamics is also longstanding.
So, these are kind of structural things. But on top of that, you have the advent of the administration in Washington that clearly talks in a different way about European allies, especially about the European Union which is seen very negatively by this administration in Washington. Is that a passing phenomenon? We have midterm elections coming up in the United States in now less than two years. There will be presidential elections, new ones, coming up not too far off. But this change, could it be reversed? Could Europe be dealing with a much more congenial Washington in a few years’ time? Possibly. There is no simple answer to this. And, in the meantime, Europe has to plan and has to act, and that’s part of the challenge.
This episode was prepared with the support of Agathe Lamotte, Coralie Ballieu and Marie Ketterlin, student and academic staff members of the MATA program.
