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There is an uncomfortable truth that almost nobody in Washington wants to address and it's this: The biggest foreign threat to the Unites States is not Russia and it's not China. It's the European Union and its member states.
This is not to say that Europe is an enemy of the United States or a serious geopolitical competitor. While Europeans like to complain about the vulgarity of American culture, they consume it constantly, en-masse, and relations between the two continents are defined more by a sense of mutual friendship then animosity.
Yet underneath the friendly banter, a real geopolitical problem has blossomed, one that is becoming ever more apparent, though Europeans are too proud and the U.S. too nostalgic to admit it.
It began in the 1990s with the breakup of former Yugoslavia, something that should have been a small regional conflict manageable by Europe's major powers, especially France and a reunified Germany. Alas, it was U.S. intervention that led to peace in 1995 and then again in 1999, after a crisis involving Serbia and Kosovo.
After the war in the Balkans, Europeans got comfortable in a post-Cold War World that was managed by U.S. hegemonic power that provided security for free. While it was and still is fashionable to whine about American dominance in European newspapers and university departments, it was in fact an incredibly sweet deal; instead of spending money on defense, Western Europe could use the dividend from American protection to build out its generous welfare states.
As a result, the very question of hard geopolitics became a thing of the past, something only war-mongering Americans and their sinister military-industrial complex cared about. Europe was "stylish," a "metrosexual superpower," while the U.S. "bumbled" through the world, according to a 2009 article in the renowned magazine Foreign Policy. And concerns about international security went right out the window.
Germany now barely meets its financial obligations to NATO, something that bothered both Trump and Obama, though it reflected the attitude of many Europeans: There are no more threats and rivalries, only economic interests and a life of comfort. It's no coincidence that is was during this period that the now famous Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 were planned and built.
As we're learning now, this was wasn't just laziness. It was lunacy.
Of course, not even in Europe did everyone buy it. Poland has been warning of too-cozy relations with Russia, and there were good reasons why the Poles and other former countries from the Eastern bloc joined NATO before they joined the EU: They wanted U.S. protection, and no one in Warsaw believed that Paris, Brussels, and Berlin would ever stand up to an aggressive Russia.
And how right they were: The U.S. provides twice as much aid to Ukraine as the EU and its member states combined, demonstrating that even now, Europe has not awoken from its geopolitical slumber, into which it was lulled by the luxury of U.S. protection.
Washington on the other hand still seems to be unwilling to give its European friends the wake-up call they need, turning them into millstones around America's neck, threatening to drag the U.S. down in a sea of geopolitical turmoil.
It's time for the U.S. to cut its European satrapies loose, not out of spite but in the interest of both sides.
No relationship can work under conditions of one-sided dependency, which only leads to resentment and weakness. The U.S. is still strong, but it's not strong enough to face all major threats from Asia to Eastern Europe on its own, and it is time for the EU to take responsibility for its own neighborhood.
It would be laughable to expect Brussels to intervene in problems in Mexico or Venezuela, since we intuitively grasp that geographic vicinity makes Latin America an issue for the U.S., not Europe. Similarly, we have to understand that the Middle East and Eastern Europe need to be dealt with by the EU, not the U.S.
The path forward must be one of a true partnership and burden sharing, and this will require Europe to grow a spine, both diplomatically and militarily.
Some tough love by Washington could help. It might be tough, but it's still love.
Ralph Schoellhammer is an assistant professor in economics and political science at Webster University Vienna.
The views in this article are the writer's own.
