Carpenter writes that EU policy-elites desire to return “to the pre-Trump status quo ante with respect to Washington’s policy toward NATO" and view the U.S. as a critical part of European defense. Germany’s defense minister has stated that ‘[w]ithout America's nuclear and conventional capabilities, Germany and Europe cannot protect themselves." The author argues that such a view is only valid "if one accepts several popular but questionable or blatantly absurd Atlanticist propositions.” The first proposition is that "the European Union, with a collective population larger than America’s and a highly sophisticated economy nearly as large, cannot build a capable continental defense ... Another is that Russia, despite being a pale shadow of the defunct Soviet Union with an economy barely one-tenth the size of the EU’s economy, poses a dire threat that the EU cannot hope to deter." Finally, such a view assumes, erroneously, "that Russia is hell-bent on an expansionist binge despite reducing its military expenditures in both 2017 and 2018 and barely increasing them in 2019.” The author concludes that "[a]n attempt by the Biden administration and like-minded European elites to restore an idealized status quo ante ... will not make those fundamental differences go away. It merely will feed an unhealthy delusion. The time has come for the Europeans to grow up and for the European Union to take its rightful place in the world as a meaningful political and military, not just an economic, player.”

Read the full text at The National Interest.

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