The old German question haunts Europe once more

As US priorities move away from the EU, NATO faces a fragmented future shaped by Russia fears, French autonomy and Germany’s military revival The headlines are filled with reports of growing discord inside NATO. Donald Trump openly questions the value of allies who, in his view, fail to carry their share of the burden. Western Europe complains about the unreliability of its American patron while simultaneously pledging loyalty to the Atlantic alliance. Beneath the daily noise, however, something far more significant is taking place: the gradual transformation of Europe’s political and military order. For decades, the United States guaranteed Western Europe’s security while those Europeans concentrated on prosperity and welfare. That arrangement now appears increasingly unstable. Washington’s strategic priorities have shifted toward Asia and the confrontation with China. Europe remains important as a logistical and political platform for American power, but it is no longer the unquestioned center of US grand strategy. Trump didn’t create this process, though he has accelerated it dramatically. His irritation with NATO is not simply personal caprice. It reflects a deeper American conclusion that the era of underwriting Western European security indefinitely has become too expensive and strategically distracting. The alliance itself was built for another age and another purpose. NATO was designed to contain the Soviet Union and anchor American influence in Europe. It was never intended to become a global instrument for confronting China. Yet this is precisely the direction in which many in Washington would like to push it. These Europeans, however, do not share America’s sense of urgency regarding Beijing. For most of them, China is an economic competitor, not an existential threat. Russia, by contrast, remains the central security obsession of much of the bloc, especially in Northern and Eastern members.

Read more Memory of the War: How the victory over Nazism defines modern Russia This divergence is beginning to reshape NATO from within. France has emerged as the loudest advocate of greater Western European strategic independence. Paris retains a long tradition of military autonomy and still possesses something few other European powers can claim: a genuinely independent nuclear deterrent. France cannot realistically replace the American nuclear umbrella over Western Europe, but it increasingly seeks to position itself as the ideological leader of a more self-reliant bloc. Britain, meanwhile, continues its traditional balancing act between the EU and the United States. London insists on its independence from Brussels while simultaneously searching for external support from Washington. Northern and Eastern states remain intensely hawkish and committed to confrontation with Russia, regardless of whether the Americans remain fully engaged. Southern Europe appears far less enthusiastic, distracted instead by migration, economic stagnation and domestic instability. As so often in European history, however, the decisive factor will likely be Germany. Much of post-war Europe was built around one central idea: Germany must never again become an independent geopolitical force. After 1945 the country was divided, militarily constrained and tightly integrated into Western structures under American supervision. Even German reunification in 1990 was accepted partly because Germany remained embedded inside NATO. At the time, many believed that anchoring a unified Germany within the Atlantic alliance was the safest possible arrangement for Europe. Ironically, that very decision became one of the starting points of today’s geopolitical crisis. NATO expansion eastward created a security architecture that Moscow increasingly viewed as hostile and destabilizing. Read more Slovakia is the cyberpunk of Europe Now, three and a half decade