{"id":3074,"date":"2020-01-02T11:07:04","date_gmt":"2020-01-02T11:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3074"},"modified":"2022-06-17T16:55:40","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T16:55:40","slug":"relations-between-the-u-s-and-allies-are-souring-what-next-for-nato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3074","title":{"rendered":"Relations between the U.S. and allies are souring. What next for NATO?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

U.S. President Donald Trump has long argued that NATO member states are shirking their commitment to the alliance. He has pressured allies to make greater monetary contributions to NATO, demanding member states\u00a0spend at least 2 per cent of their GDP on<\/a> defense per the\u00a02014 Wales Summit<\/a>, which gives members until 2024 to meet the 2 per cent benchmark. This demand, including\u00a0Trump\u2019s erroneous\u00a0<\/a>assertion that NATO members owe the U.S. money for years they have underspent on, has dominated the Trump administration\u2019s rhetoric towards NATO.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burden-sharing\nis the concept that the U.S. and its allies will share the costs of providing\nfor the collective defence. These arrangements between the U.S. and its allies\nare jointly beneficial as allies gain additional security and the U.S. gains a\nhost of other benefits<\/a>, including the ability to\ninfluence allied foreign policy, respond to regional crises, and accrue soft\npower. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However,\nallies\u2019 willingness to pay for the presence of U.S. forces and to maintain\ntheir alliance ties with the U.S. are conditional upon how they view the\nbenefits of those arrangements, and how they view the U.S. government and\nmilitary presence within their territory. Our research shows that the tide\nis turning, which may affect the level of cooperation in the alliance going\nforward.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Souring relations between U.S. and NATO allies<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe case of NATO allies, tensions were already rising in the lead-up to the\nmost recent NATO summit<\/a>, with French president Emmanuel\nMacron noting in an interview with The Economist<\/em><\/a> that\nNATO was experiencing \u201cbrain death\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At\nthe summit, it became increasingly evident that relations between the U.S. and\nother NATO members were souring. Trump illustrated this in referring to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as \u201ctwo-faced\u201d<\/a> and\nleaving the summit early<\/a> after a video apparently showed Trudeau<\/a> and\nother world leaders mocking Trump.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 1: Percent of respondents in NATO member states expressing “somewhat favourable” attitudes towards US groups, Auutmn 2018. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As\npart of our research<\/a> on perceptions of the U.S. military<\/a> abroad,\nwe ran large-scale surveys (1,000 respondents per country) in several\ncountries. Figure 1 shows respondent attitudes from NATO member countries\nsurveyed in the fall of 2018 towards three groups of U.S. actors \u2013 the U.S.\ngovernment, U.S. people, and U.S. military forces stationed in the respondent\u2019s\ncountry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nalmost every country, views of the U.S. government were the least favourable,\nas compared to views of the U.S. military and the U.S. population as a whole.\nThe generally positive views of the American people show that this isn\u2019t a case\nof broad anti-Americanism, but rather distinctly negative views of the U.S.\ngovernment.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\nalso spent some time interviewing politicians, activists, journalists, and\nmembers of the U.S. military in Germany and the United Kingdom to ask them how\nthey viewed the U.S. presence and their country\u2019s relationship with the United\nStates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many\nof the people we talked to spoke positively about the United States; the most\ncommon complaints dealt with traffic and noise from the bases. Some interview\nsubjects detailed issues with the use of drones or possession of nuclear\nweapons, but even the opposition party members of parliament we interviewed in\nthe U.K. expressed generally positive views of the NATO alliance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The case of Turkey?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Trump\nand Turkish president Recep Tayipp Erdogan had a cordial interaction at the NATO summit<\/a> and\neven held a previously unscheduled meeting. This is notable given that Turkey \u2013\na NATO ally \u2013 has recently clashed with the United States over weapon systems,\nand concerns that Turkey might target Syrian Kurds who fought alongside the\nU.S. in Syria. Additionally, despite being a NATO ally, Turkey maintains a\npositive relationship with Russia, which has further strained relations with\nthe U.S. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 2: percent of respondents in NATO member states expressing “somewhat unfavourable” or “very unfavourable” attitudes towards US groups, Autumn 2018. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our\nsurvey results show that despite hosting U.S. forces, members of the Turkish\npopulation express negative views of the United States government, military,\nand people. As shown in Figure 2, Turkish respondents not only expressed some\nof the most negative views of U.S. actors, but it is the only NATO country\nsurveyed where we find more negative views of the U.S. military than of the\nU.S. government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally,\namong the NATO allies surveyed, Turkey has the highest rate of negative\nperceptions of the U.S. population compared to other NATO members. We conducted\nthis phase of the survey before the most recent dispute about the role of\nKurdish forces in Syria yet it still shows the likely souring of relations\nbetween the U.S. and Turkey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What <\/strong>is next for NATO?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

If\nthe U.S. is perceived as an unreliable ally,<\/a> U.S.\nallies may turn to other great powers, like China. Already, U.S. allies have\nbeen willing to join the Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank (AIIB)\ndespite U.S. opposition, like the United Kingdom in 2015<\/a>. A recurring theme in\nour interviews was that while members of the general population saw China\u2019s\ninterests as purely economic and not political, political and military leaders\nworried about increased Chinese influence in parts of the world traditionally\nunder the U.S. sphere of influence, such as Africa. They expressed similar\nwariness of Russia\u2019s efforts to reassert its global influence. Continued U.S.\nand NATO disagreement may further open the door to Russian and Chinese\ninfluence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cause for optimism<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Despite existing disagreements, there may yet be some cause for optimism. Though the attention-grabbing speeches and high-profile events certainly cause concern about the future of NATO, we also found evidence that NATO allies remain committed to joint security. A Labour member of parliament interviewed in July of 2019<\/a>\u00a0noted that despite the attention that President Trump\u2019s tweets receive, the importance of the alliance is well understood among many politicians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For\nexample, one interview subject noted that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi\u2019s\nvisit (with 50 U.S. representatives) to the Munich Security Conference in\nFebruary of 2019 dramatically decreased anxiety among their European\ncounterparts about the U.S. commitment to European Security. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nindividual went as far as to say that the alliance is in a better place than it\nwas before, given the shared threat of Putin and an increasingly bold Russian\nforeign policy. They noted that it wasn\u2019t not just the fear of \u201cRussian\naircraft carriers coming along the channel,\u201d but also the threat of election\ninterference from Russia that highlighted the importance of joint defence. They\nwent on to say that \u201cgiving people a sense of inclusion and partnership is very\nimportant.\u201d Yet, they also said \u201cI don\u2019t know that the way of doing business in\nthe U.S. translates well to Europe.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is clear that increasing the costs of U.S. deployments, whether in monetary compensation or polarizing rhetoric, will make it difficult to maintain the level of cooperation that the alliance has historically maintained.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Parts of this article are based on work supported by, or in part by, the Minerva Research Initiative, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, and the U.S. Army Research Office under grant number W911NF-18-1-0087. The opinions and interpretations are those of the authors and not the U.S. Army or Department of Defense.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. President Donald Trump has long argued that NATO member states are shirking their commitment to the alliance. He has pressured allies to make greater monetary contributions to NATO, demanding member states\u00a0spend at least 2 per cent of their GDP on defense per the\u00a02014 Wales Summit, which gives members until 2024 to meet the 2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":3079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1391,1394],"tags":[2282,1614],"coauthors":[2279,2280,2281],"class_list":["post-3074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-international-politics","category-long-reads","tag-nato","tag-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Relations-between-the-U.S.-and-allies-are-souring.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3074"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=3074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}