Joel R. Hillison

The election of President Donald J. Trump in 2024, is reshaping the current transatlantic relationship. There are those who argue that this relationship no longer serves U. S. interests. Others argue that Europe is more than capable of dealing with Russia and that the United States should conserve its limited resources and focus on China. A Sustainable U. S. Strategy for Transatlantic Relations: NATO, the EU, and the USA disagrees. With a rising and increasingly menacing China, an aggressive and dangerous Russia, and a host of other challenges, the United States and its allies need each other more than ever. This requires a sustainable Transatlantic strategy that acknowledges and addresses both the domestic and international environment facing the United States and its allies. A strong NATO, with an improved European support, will provide a credible deterrent and the capability to prevail in any conflict. At the same time, the EU, with its economic strength and political influence, is needed to complement NATO. In addition to NATO and the EU, the United States needs to strengthen key bilateral relations in Europe. Finally, for the transatlantic relationship to continue, European allies need to increase their contributions to transatlantic security, both with increased spending and greater capabilities. This book shows how this can be done.

Burden sharing is back. Indeed many observers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Alliance would claim that it never went away. This is because, from its inception in 1949, NATO has never been an alliance of equals. The United States has always made the overwhelmingly larger contribution, not only for the defense of Europe under Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, but also in the numerous operations that the Alliance has carried out beyond Europe since the end of the Cold War. At one stage in the late-1950s, the United States had nearly 400,000 troops and 7,000 nuclear weapons deployed in Western Europe. It also maintained large stocks of pre-positioned equipment and sent thousands of more troops back to Europe every year for reinforcement and exercises.