Rewind: Is the sky falling on Western alliance?
As Europe rethinks its security, China stakes a global claim, and the US turns unpredictable, the cinders of the post–World War II order smoulder. What will crystallise remains unclear, but the birth pangs of a new global order are already visible
By Monish Tourangbam, Indrani Talukdar
That the Western alliance, spearheaded by the United States, is in dire straits is no longer an academic debate that starts and stays in the ivory towers of university campuses. Institutions from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the Group of 7 (G7) are in a state of deep churn amid geopolitical shifts brought on by the rise of new powers in the non-Western world, and the seismic changes brewing within the Western world.
In the last two decades and more, the rise of non-Western powers like China has reshaped the discourse on political hegemony, economic supply chains and military power projection. An explicit or implicit cardinal principle in international relations is that a country is considered a great power if it is recognised as such by another great power. In this sense, as China aims at a duopoly with the US, on its way to a loftier ambition of monopoly, it seeks validation of peer status in the international system.
An insecure Europe could trigger two key developments: closer ties with Russia, mirroring Russia-China relations since 2014, and a common EU defence policy that could backfire on Trump
China, particularly under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, has gone way past Deng Xiaoping’s dictum of “hide and bide your time” and is pushing the envelope of great power parity with the US — if not by validation then by gate-crashing. That the world order stands at a precipice is clear, but does it spell an imminent doom for the Western alliance, or is it merely rebooting itself for a new era?
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the ensuing involvement of European countries and the US in the war have upended the European security architecture and exposed several fault lines in threat perceptions and collective responses.
No Time for Old Alliances
The Russia-Ukraine war is a watershed moment for NATO and the European Union (EU), exposing the fault lines among the groups, prompting both to rethink security in the region as well as their respective roles. The war made the EU accelerate its development of a European Defence Union. Additionally, developments in the Indo-Pacific and Donald Trump’s disengagement from European security have pushed the EU to rethink its own security framework.
The EU, which was born after the Cold War, grew in relevance in international affairs and became a model to be emulated in regional integration amid a world undergoing rapid globalisation. If one overriding question that has defined international relations in the 20th century, it was how states could prevent systemic and regional wars. In that sense, the evolution of the EU seemed to have found the answer through its ingenious political and economic union in a continent with a perpetual history of conflict and where the two World Wars originated.
The EU had outsourced its security to the US-led NATO, and did not invest much in a common defence and security of its own in the Atlantic theatre. However, the Russia-Ukraine war, the Trump administration’s response to the same, and his tariff policies disrupted how Europe reimagines its ability to secure itself and temper its expectations from the US.
China under Xi has gone way past Deng Xiaoping’s dictum of ‘hide and bide your time’ and is pushing the envelope of great power parity with the US — if not by validation then by gate-crashing
The question of NATO partners increasing their defence spending and sharing the burden of security commitments in Europe has been a negotiating theme among successive American presidencies and is not a product of the Trump administration alone. However, such demands have become more vociferous during Trump’s presidency.
Coupled with the tariff tensions, schisms in the ironclad alliance became all too palpable in his second term. As such, the EU’s insistence on normative power as opposed to hard military power has come under scrutiny. This might push the bloc to expedite the formation of an exclusive ‘European’ security umbrella, which has been under consideration for some time in the form of the EU’s own defence and security policy.
Rearming for Peace!
With the Trump administration showing intent to shift gears towards the China threat in the Indo-Pacific, Washington may want the EU to manage its own security. European perceptions of defence preparedness have undergone a shift with more independent agencies. Despite the strategic shifts to the Indo-Pacific and the China threat, the Russia-Ukraine war has proven that Europe will still be at the centre of any new Cold War, not a benchwarmer or a mute spectator that could pass off, by sermonising normative power.
Several questions emerge. Did Europeans take peace for granted by failing to develop a consensual common defence and security policy? Or was it an implicit understanding that engaging Russia through economic and energy ties would be more pragmatic since it is a proximate power to Europe, unlike the US, which is an ocean apart?
In 2016, then High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, Federica Mogherini, contended that the EU would not mind its own hard power capabilities despite taking pride in being a ‘civilian power’. This statement came against the backdrop of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and Trump’s first term as the US President in 2016 when he started threatening to pull out of NATO.
Despite new technologies reshaping inter-state dynamics, 21st-century wars still revolve around old-age issues of territories, sovereignty and nationalism
After the 2022 Ukraine war, the EU formally approved the Strategic Compass with four pillars — act, invest, partner and secure. The motive behind this move was to strengthen the EU’s defence and security and to advance towards a common forward-looking strategic culture with a belief that the initiative will give the union strategic autonomy and the ability to work with partners to safeguard its values and interests while complementing NATO.
Elections across the Western world have also exposed numerous socio-political and economic fault lines, particularly in the US and Europe, over values and interests. The Munich Security Conference which was often seen as the platform for transatlantic unity, more recently occupied prime-time news not because of Western solidarity but because of glaring divergences.
As the Trump administration declares victory for having overwhelmingly pushed European partners to increase their defence spending to 5 per cent in the next ten years, doubts remain —what really binds the Western alliance.
When G7 leaders congregated in Canada exploring “all options to maximise pressure on Russia, including financial sanctions”, Trump fretted in public about the mistakes of former leaders of the group, particularly aiming at Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau for pushing Russia out of then G8. Trump’s political vicissitudes on how he would like to deal with Putin and Xi have been rather uncertain and kept America’s Western allies on their toes.
Some look at his outreach to Moscow, as aiming at a “reverse Nixon/reverse Kissinger”, to drive a wedge in the “no limits partnership” between China and Russia, akin to how the Nixon-Kissinger duo in the early 70s leveraged the Sino-Soviet split to engineer a Sino-US rapprochement, creating a major point of departure in great power politics.
The current geopolitical circumstances do not seem to provide a similar traction to affect the same outcome. However, it might push Europe into insecurities. Two things might happen if there is an insecure Europe: firstly, it might push it to the Russian arm (akin to the growing strategic bonhomie between Russia and China since 2014) and secondly, an EU common defence security policy might backfire on Trump and undermine Washington’s policies.
The Ukraine war became a game changer, forcing the EU to take note of the security environment, and bring back its defence and security policy from the cold
Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union has, in fact, expressed interest in joining the European architecture such as NATO and the EU. However, things did not pan out positively largely because of mutual threat perceptions from all sides. Russia, until recently, was fine with Kyiv’s integration with the EU, as it made economic sense and would have benefited it in the long run (more so if a pro-Russian regime was in power in Kyiv).
But, Ukraine joining NATO was, undoubtedly, a big red line for Moscow, and a clear infringement into its sphere of influence. Further, with the EU’s growing military support to Ukraine and the Strategic Compass, Russia’s stance on Kyiv’s potential EU membership shifted towards opposition.
The European security environment is thus a story of mutual threat perceptions and diverging security calculations, killing opportunities of relative détente. In response to Trump’s radical agenda to transform US engagement with allies, adversaries and partners, America’s Western allies seem to be simultaneously “de-risking” the US as much as they intend to “de-risk” China.
Return of the Non-West
The history that started roughly 500 years ago with the rise of mercantile European adventurers and explorers discovering safe routes to the non-Western world, leading eventually to years of colonisation, has come to an end. The rise of erstwhile civilisations, previously subdued under the yoke of European colonialism, has upended the global order, and the role of the Western powers in the international system. In fact, many G7 countries are way too low in the global pecking order of relevance, prompting louder calls for inclusive global governance.
This has created diverse and inclusive groups such as the G20 and the BRICS+ — which have risen to occupy the space of regional and global governance, focusing on non-military cooperation. But has the so-called “rise of the rest” led to a unified “rest” or the rise of a unified Global South?
Well, the two economies that spearhead the “rise of the rest” and the Global South — India and China — have fundamental problems to resolve, and on strategic matters, New Delhi’s ties with major powers of the Western world are growing more convergent. Despite new technologies reshaping inter-state dynamics, 21st century wars — be it Russia-Ukraine, West Asia or geopolitical hotspots in the Indo-Pacific — still revolve around old-age differences over territories, sovereignty and nationalism.
Hence, on the cinders of the post-World War II security and economic order, what will crystallise is still unclear, but the birth pangs of the new order are being felt across the world. The Western alliance is passing through one of its most critical stress tests. Is the sky falling over the Western alliance or is it merely rebooting in response to the multifarious changes affecting global security and economic environment? Will the transatlantic alliance see more Europe in it, with the depreciating value of the US or is it merely a transition phase?
While American power remains critical in shaping the contours of the transatlantic alliance, the growing uncertainty surrounding how American power is deployed and employed is reshaping the new terms of negotiating this alliance. As a major stakeholder of the international system, New Delhi must closely watch how the Western alliance is unfolding, and create traction for the protection and promotion of its interest, while preparing to absorb the geopolitical and geoeconomic shocks coming out of it.
(Monish Tourangbam is a Senior Research Consultant and Indrani Talukdar is a Fellow at the Chintan Research Foundation [CRF], New Delhi)
