During the signing event, President Trump remarked, “On trade, I have decided, for purposes of fairness, that I will charge a reciprocal tariff, meaning whatever countries charge the United States of America, we will charge them no more, no less. In other words, they charge the US a tax or tariff, and we will charge them the exact same tax or tariff, very simple.”

A strong economy is vital to national security. In addition to reliable access to energy, minerals, and capital, any great power fundamentally requires a resilient, production-oriented, economic infrastructure that ensures a comprehensive and adequate industrial base capable of producing most of the nation’s necessities.

Furthermore, America’s national debt exceeds $36 trillion, with a debt-to-GDP ratio surpassing 133 percent. In fiscal year 2024, the cost of servicing the debt’s interest surpassed America’s defense budget.

Americans place great importance on fairness and balance. The Declaration of Independence famously states that “all men are created equal” and advocates for equal treatment for all individuals, regardless of status or position. The Constitution establishes a framework that balances power among various branches of government, as outlined in James Madison’s Federalist 51.

Socrates once remarked, “If measure and symmetry are absent from any composition in any degree, ruin awaits both the ingredients and the composition…. Measure and symmetry are beauty and virtue the world over.” He was right.

President Trump seeks to implement tariff reciprocity towards America’s competitors in a fair, just, and balanced manner. Can this same principle be applied to his peace through strength deterrence approach? Yes, it can.

Dynamic parity is a nuclear deterrence strategy that deliberately achieves and maintains a contextually symmetrical balance of nuclear force capabilities, capacities, and composition in relation to the combined nuclear strength of China, North Korea, Russia, and possibly Iran. This strategy seeks to balance America’s nuclear deterrent force against the potentially collaborative arsenals of these adversaries, thereby enhancing deterrence, reassuring allies, and preserving strategic stability in a world lacking binding arms control agreements.

America is about 15 years into a 30-year effort to recapitalize its nuclear arsenal, which has a program of record that offers a one-for-one intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) swap, two fewer ballistic missile submarines, and a reduced bomb load capacity. The current program of record was designed for a world that no longer exists.

Even the Biden administration’s acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy acknowledged the need to explore “options for increasing future launcher capacity or adding more deployed warheads in land, sea, and air capabilities” to address the significant growth and variety of China’s nuclear arsenal. The 2023 Congressional Commission report on U.S. Strategic Posture stated that the current nuclear modernization program is “necessary, but not sufficient” for facing two nuclear peers: China and Russia.

Americans often assess the fairness of financial rewards and the distribution of costs, commonly reacting to perceived unfairness with feelings of hostility and responding with protest. Regarding economic, political, or national security issues, we are “wired to resist unfair treatment.” This sense of fairness and balance also extends to America’s defensive posture. A recent Reagan National Defense Forum Survey noted that 77 percent of voters were concerned that the national debt might force defense cuts, with 79 percent supporting increased defense spending, and 70 percent of those surveyed were concerned about “Russia launching a thermonuclear attack against the US.”

In this context, geopolitical fairness refers to the perceived evenhandedness among nations in a manner that mutually impacts interests. Meanwhile, geopolitical balance pertains to the distribution of perceived power between states in the international system. The 2024 Annual Threat Assessment noted that Russia possesses the largest, most diverse, and most modern nuclear weapons stockpile in the world. This infers that America remains inferior in aggregate nuclear weapon numbers and is trailing in modernization, which creates an imbalance.

Correcting long-standing imbalances in trade policy and military shortfalls is vital to the American conscience. Allowing trade deficits with economic competitors to persist without challenge is akin to unilateral disarmament. The US trade deficit for goods reached a record $1.2 trillion in 2024, while the treasury borrowed $2 trillion that same year. Ongoing deficits of this magnitude threaten domestic companies and jobs, putting negative pressure on GDP and the prosperity of individual Americans. Ensuring that America’s nuclear deterrent can counter the threats posed by its adversaries will safeguard citizens’ security and sovereignty, enabling prosperity.

President Trump’s new Trade and Tariff Reciprocity Policy, like the nuclear deterrence strategy of Dynamic Parity, places the burden of acceptable behavior on America’s competitors. They both empower America to act in the interest of fairness, aiming to achieve balance in both process and product. Geopolitical stability is not born of an America exploited economically or constrained militarily. This kind of weakness is not only provocative but also insulting.

Col. Curtis McGiffin (US Air Force, Ret.) is Vice President for Education of the National Institute for Deterrence Studies and a visiting professor at Missouri State University’s School of Defense and Strategic Studies. He has over 30 years of total USAF service. The views expressed are his own.

Trump’s Trade and Tariff Policy Benefits America’s Nuclear Deterrent was originally published on Global Security Review.

In the UK, under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, gross domestic product (GDP) growth has stalled. PM Starmer committed to spending at least 2.5 percent of GDP on defense. However, funding has not materialized. A clear plan for future UK defense may not emerge until the Summer of 2025.

In Germany, left-of-center Chancellor Scholz dissolved his coalition, and the Christian Democratic Union’s Friedrich Merz is expected to take over with a right-of-center coalition after snap elections in the first quarter of 2025. However, the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, whose leader recently chatted with Elon Musk, remains a wild card. Germany has yet to define and fund its defense budget at the 2 percent of GDP threshold.

Chancellor Scholz, who paid a last visit to Ukraine in early December 2024, committed to deliver Patriot systems in 2025. Merz wants to up the ante with the delivery of Taurus medium-range missiles to Kyiv. While the Ukraine dossier is being used as a political football, a root cause of the problem is that NATO’s defense math just does not add up.

In France, the downfall of the Barnier government stems from rejection of his budget. The new centrist prime minister François Bayrou now faces the same budgetary dead-end and parliamentary gridlock. Barnier was punished for trying to reduce the French deficit to 5 percent of GDP in 2025. The European Union (EU) rule is 3 percent as the maximum.

France’s current deficit is over 6 percent of GDP and might end up closer to 7 percent. France is in third place for debt-to-GDP ratio at 111 percent. Only Greece and Italy have a worse situation.

The EU average is 82 percent, with Germany maintaining a healthy 62 percent. There is a looming debt crisis, and it will not be possible to kick the can down the road forever. France already passed its 2024–2030 Military Programming Act (Loi de Programmation Militaire).

President Macron is committed to seeing it through until the 2027 presidential election. Yet the funding needs to be in place for France to remain the top European spender in civilian and military space.

At the other end of the spectrum is Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden. These Nordic and Baltic states clearly lead the way, as they are all becoming increasingly significant players in European security. In particular, Sweden and Finland’s membership in NATO plays a central role in securing the High North and deterring Russia, as these two countries continue to supercharge NATO’s deterrence.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin placed his economy on a war footing. His defense budget steadily increased over the past two years. Of course, this strains society’s resources and patience after nearly three years of war. The vast majority of Russian society is wired to bite the bullet and take the pain for as long as necessary until an endgame pans out. And for good measure, Putin will maintain his nuclear swagger at the highest level.

For the West, it is time to think deeply about deterring the use of low-yield theater nuclear weapons. This is a capability that not only Russia but China has deployed in great numbers and is in the process of augmenting.

The latest uncertainty comes from NATO member Romania. The courts unexpectedly nullified the results of the first round of presidential elections—deeming them unlawful because of alleged Russian interference.

The establishment candidate, who favors EU and NATO, is likely to win. But blaming the surge on an alleged TikTok-driven Russian conspiracy misses the deeper picture: across Europe, from France to Germany to Austria to Hungary to Romania, there is a rising wave of discontent with the current European order. Thus, “extremist” parties are supported in disrupting mainstream left-of-center politics.

The grapes of wrath stem from stalled economies, unwanted immigration from Africa and the Middle East, growing crime and social disruption, and a welfare state that cannot afford both native born citizens and the influx of immigrants. Europe’s wealth level gap with the United States is 30 percent and growing.

By culture, Europe disdains billionaires and even taxes or tries to interdict their free speech, as exemplified in a recent exchange on X (Twitter) between former European Commissioner Thierry Breton and Elon Musk. Not wired for animal instinct, creative destruction, freedom of innovation, entrepreneurship, and disruptive capitalism, European socialism loathes wealth creation as a positive value.

Even though history shows that socialism only leads to failure, or, in the words of Lady Thatcher, “running out of other people’s money,” Europeans tend to shrug and call that state of things “Venezuela without the sun.”

As long as this does not change, the best and the brightest will keep flocking to the US, be it from India, Latin America, or South Africa. To say that it is time for Europe to get its act together would be an understatement. Europe needs to understand that it can never develop into an autonomous power without the free creation of wealth, which is required to fund the defenses Europe requires.

Christophe Bosquillon is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. He has over 30 years of international experience in general management, foreign direct investment, and private equity and fund management across various industries in Europe and the Pacific Basin. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

More Political Uncertainties Affecting Europe’s Defense Build-up was originally published on Global Security Review.

NATO is now in its third decade of the post–Cold War era—a period during which all member-states ought to have fulfilled their GDP defense obligation. However, this was never done by the vast majority of NATO members. Most countries maneuvered to avoid this obligation.

European countries comprise 30 of the 32 NATO members, together with the US and Canada. Of the 30 European members, only 10 fulfilled their 2023 2 percent of GDP goal. This leaves a sobering 20 European NATO countries that do not expend the minimum on defense. The “honorable 10 European NATO countries” that do pay their dues are: Poland (3.9 percent), Greece (3.01 percent), Estonia (2.73 percent), Lithuania (2.54 Percent), Finland (2.45 percent), Romania (2.44 percent), Hungary (2.43 percent), Latvia (2.27 percent), the United Kingdom (2.07 percent), and the Slovak Republic (2.03 percent). Outside Europe, the US spent 3.49 percent of its GDP on defense in 2023, while Canada spent 1.38 percent. Overall, it is the 10 honorable European countries and the US that carry Europe’s defense burden.

A decade ago, the Obama administration made it clear to NATO countries in their failure to meet funding obligations, “Everyone has to step up.” The Trump administration called for “burden sharing.” Yet no improvement was made.

The states failing to meet their obligation failed to grasp that today’s global security threat is not just limited to Europe. Their assumption that the US will always be available in an emergency to protect them is no longer viable.

The United States is overextended militarily and economically due to its worldwide security obligations. By necessity, America’s security focus has shifted away from Europe to two other strategic regions: the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East. These increased global threats necessarily draw upon US defense resources—away from Europe. European countries failed to recognize this long ago. It is now time for Europe to have a reality check and to initiate new corrective actions to remedy the ongoing malaise—and the sooner the better.

Non-compliant NATO member-states justifiably deserve a nudge out of their self-imposed “NATO welfare cocoon.” While Russia is rated as the world’s third or fourth military power, it would pale in comparison to a fully funded European NATO superpower. Economically, it would become a European titan versus a Russian pauper. Demographically, it is NATO Europe’s billion inhabitants versus Russia’s 144 million inhabitants. The European component of NATO alone would have deterrence supremacy that casts a protective veil over European countries. As such, Russia would cease to be a bona fide threat to Europe.

To correct the present European security deficiency, the alliance end the manipulation by under-spending NATO member-states. NATO’s Secretary General has long failed to encourage, cajole, or coerce member-states into meeting their obligations. As such it is important that a new Secretary General be appointed from one of the obligation-meeting countries, who can more effectively influence those states that do not contribute adequately. Among those countries who meet their defense spending obligations, there are qualified statesmen ready to lead NATO. A fully funded NATO that can far more effectively deter Russian aggression is the objective.

A new-era Secretary General, to reshape NATO and redirect it toward Europe’s real-world milieu, could redefine the alliance’s perception of the threat it faces and reshape its principles. These principles may well include: (1) accepting that Europe is primarily Europe’s responsibility; (2) realizing America’s global defense commitments extend beyond Europe; (3) acknowledging that America’s army is no longer Europe’s defensive army; (4) insisting that all NATO member-states must meet their minimum 2 percent defense expenditure; and (5)  Acknowledging that Europe can no longer fear Russian aggression.

Peace for all of Europe is better assured through a stronger NATO. This must start with a change in leadership. Credible deterrence begins with the financial commitment of NATO’s member-states. Recent moves by Finland and Sweden to join the alliance demonstrate the real strategic threat Russia poses. It is a threat all alliance members must work collaboratively to deter. Russian threats to use nuclear weapons against NATO are only possible because there is a lack of commitment and capability across the alliance.

The underlying issue addressed here is that a fully funded NATO can become the dominant military power in Europe. The resulting nexus of such military supremacy is an interconnected Europe composed of NATO countries and those aligned with the alliance. Such a force is one that despite Russian President, Vladimir Putin’s bluster, he knows that war is a lose-lose proposition. Creating that perception in the mind of Russia’s president is the continued purpose of NATO.

Warren K. Christolon is an international geo-economics and security expert in London, UK Views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

A Restructured NATO That Will Benefit All of Europe was originally published on Global Security Review.

Data source: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59710#data

Deficit spending is a long-standing tradition in the US, with a budget surplus occurring in only four of the past 50 years. Debates about the size and importance of the federal debt raged for decades. With interest rates at historically low levels prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, debt financing came at a relatively small price soothing many concerns about deficit spending. Over the 2010s, net interest to finance the debt averaged only 6.8 percent of government spending and just 1.4 percent of GDP. Low interest rates led some to argue that “[t]he economics of deficits have changed,” and that reducing the debt and deficit spending should be a low priority compared to continued government investments in security, infrastructure, and well-being.

Two fundamental factors emerged to accelerate debt accumulation during the COVID-19 pandemic and aftermath. First, federal deficit spending limited the negative economic consequences of federal, state, and local responses to COVID-19. Second, the Federal Reserve sought to control inflation, a result of the Federal Reserve’s practice of “quantitative easing,” by increasing interest rates following the end of the pandemic—increasing government borrowing costs. The overall result was that net interest on government debt more than doubled between 2019 and 2024 in actual dollars. More funds spent to finance the debt leaves a smaller fraction of outlays available for discretionary spending, including national defense.

Data source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historical-tables/
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59710#data

As the above chart illustrates, the percentage of GDP allocated to debt repayment surpassed defense spending in 2024. Future CBO projections appear in dashed lines. Major wars in Korea, Vietnam, and the height of the Cold War increased defense spending in the short term, but the overall trend was downward. Future defense spending is increasingly constrained by spending growth in both debt and nondiscretionary programs. With debt repayment exceeding defense spending, the American people should see this as a warning that must be redressed. Given great-power competition with China and several active hotspots around the world, decreasing American defense funding as a fraction of GDP is a significant concern. However, defense spending remains at a relative high point when examined in constant-year dollars.

Data source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historical-tables/
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59710#data.

The size of defense budgets, accounting for inflation, provides a more optimistic view. The solid line presents historic defense spending in constant 2024 dollars and the dashed line, again, represents CBO projections. From 1950–2000, US defense spending increased significantly during major conflicts and at the height of the Cold War. Over those fifty years, peaks in defense spending remained below $750 billion in fiscal year 2024 dollars. Post–September 11, 2001, operations resulted in much higher levels of spending, approaching $940 billion at its peak. Even with reductions over the 2010s, spending over the next decade projects to be 15 percent higher annually than at the peak of the Cold War.

Even with high levels of spending, the current US force structure is in desperate need of modernization due to a laser-sharp focus on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations in prior decades. Since the year 2000, operations and maintenance (O&M) spending has taken an increasing share of the national security budget. This means the United States is using its assets in combat and on deployment. Over the past 24 years, O&M averaged 39 percent of the national security budget. In the 35 years prior to 2000, this number was only 30 percent.

The growing fraction of O&M costs left a smaller fraction of the budget available for system acquisition. What funds remained were heavily focused on winning the Global War on Terrorism, meaning that investments in technologically advanced systems to counter threats posed by China and Russia often took a back seat. A second effect of the lack of procurement is that today’s military is simply smaller. For example, the US Air Force will soon have a fleet of less than 5,000 aircraft for the first time in its history and the US Navy will sail only half the ships it did 40 years ago. The outcome of these decisions, according to leading researchers, is that the “US defense strategy and posture have become insolvent.”

What does this situation mean for the security of the US and its allies? While American involvement in a major conflict would certainly result in increased defense spending, there is precious little room for the peacetime defense budget to grow without large tax increases or significantly reduced spending on entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. The most likely outcome is that new investments will need to come at the expense of other platforms or spending inside the defense budget.

Closing the gap between strategic goals and the means needed to achieve those goals during this dangerous time of strategic competition requires a thorough examination of solutions beyond increasing defense spending. The defense strategy needs rightsizing and a focus on the most stressing threats to the nation’s security. New concepts for imposing costs on competitors need to be developed. Methods to deter conventional and nuclear conflict should also be prioritized with special attention paid toward developing methods to prevent a conventional conflict from escalating across the nuclear threshold.

Carl Rhodes, PhD, is a Senior Fellow with the National Institute for Deterrence Studies and the founder of Canberra-based Robust Policy.

The US Must Handle Its Fiscal Challenges was originally published on Global Security Review.

In Washington policy and political circles, the former President’s comments are met with both shock and disdain. The familiar tropes about the indispensability of the Western alliance and the civilizational connection with Europe are trotted out to defend NATO. In the Pentagon, there is even an optimistic belief that Europe is the security partner of future expeditionary missions around the world.

While Trump may talk like a shock jock, what he says about NATO and Europe hold true. Unless some tough love is imposed on the Europeans, American taxpayers will foot Europe’s security bill indefinitely. What Europe needs to understand is that America is changing, and with it Europe’s free pass is getting rescinded.

The Demographic Transition

One reason the Trans-Atlantic political and military alliance will change is the demographic transition in both the United States and Europe. In the US, by about 2045, citizens not of European extraction become a slim majority. Surveys of the next generation show that the affinity for Europe and with traditional American foreign policy imperatives is shrinking. The younger generation’s position on the Palestine-Israel conflict is a case in point. Latinos, Asians, and black Americans do not have emotional ties to Europe. They are, therefore, less inclined to tolerate and support the subsidizing of European defense efforts.

Instead, much like Trump, they will call on Europe to pay its bills. Europe, however, cannot pay those bills since it is an aging society with a large welfare state. As Table 1 shows, major European societies are rapidly aging. Not only that, but their median age is also going to rise to the extent that they will have a hard time fielding women and men of a fighting age.

 Table 1

Source:  Data retrieved from UN Population Revision 2019. (These numbers do not account for the recent population transfer from Ukraine to Russia or to the millions of Ukrainian refugees now in other parts of Europe who are unlikely to return.)

These numbers paint a bleak future. The nations listed above have the largest and most capable armed forces among NATO. In short, they all have greying populations and, by 2030, except for Turkey, will have a median age that is greater than 40. Italy, for example, is in serious demographic trouble with a median age of 50.8. Spain and Greece also have a median age of nearly 50. Worse, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Spain are all going to see a major decline in their populations. The priority of these countries is focused on meeting the social needs of their populations—something which is very expensive and can only come at the cost of reduced defense expenditure.

The other big problem for the Europeans is finding people who are willing to join the armed forces. After the Cold War, most European countries eliminated conscription. Reintroducing it would be political suicide for even the most conservative politician. Thus, while German Prime Minister Olof Schulz has committed 100 billion euros to defense modernization, he cannot realistically bring about force expansion without bringing back conscription. Further, 100 billion euros are not primarily going to buy more weapons but, instead, refurbish and modernize the existing force, much of which is mothballed.

The fact that the European nations lack manpower and the fact that rebuilding the forces will be expensive leads to the modest size of the militaries of the major NATO countries (as shown in Table 2). The question then arises, how many troops and weapons can these nations realistically field in modern combat? The answer is very few as these countries are likely to be casualty averse given their shrinking and aging demographics.

Table 2: Cuts in Force Levels of Major European Nations

Source: The Military Balance [IISS: London], 1972, 2017, and 2023 editions.

The Two Percent Myth

The other myth that Europe must stop hyping is that of how these countries are going to reach 2 percent of GDP in their defense spending. A remilitarization of Europe would require the Germans to cross the 2 percent threshold, but, by the end of 2022, the German government was admitting that it is unlikely to raise defense expenditure to 2 percent of GDP.

Table 3: NATO Defense Expenditure as a Percentage of GDP, 2023

Source: Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2023), NATO Communique, July 7, 2023.

            The news is not all bad. Those NATO member-states who most fear Russia, or, in the cases of Greece and Turkey, are spending the required 2 percent of GDP on defense. However, except for the United Kingdom, the further geographically from Russia a NATO member-state gets, the less the country spends on defense.

Table 4: NATO Nations Spending Two Percent of GDP on Defense

Source: Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2023), NATO Communique, July 7, 2023.

With only a third of NATO member-states contributing 2 percent of GDP, it begs the question to what end? Estonia, for example, has a population is 1.3 million. Is 2 percent of Estonia’s small GDP a meaningful contribution to the Continent’s collective defense? Latvia, similarly, has 1.9 million citizens. Lithuania has 2.79 million citizens. In practical terms, this means that for credible militarization the rich and populous states of Europe need to reach a similar level of defense expenditures.

Most NATO nations intend to raise their defense expenditure to 2 percent by 2026. Italy and Spain expect to reach it by 2028 and 2029, respectively. This is, however, a medium-term projection which does not consider the state of the economy. Neither does it explain where funding will come from. The social democracies of Europe are unlikely to agree to a transfer of resources from social welfare programs to defense expenditures. In fact, with rapidly aging populations the cost of elderly care will grow.

The other alternative, raising taxes, is unpopular in European societies, which already carry a heavy individual tax burden. Further, in some countries, notably Britain, the prevailing mood is to cut taxes, making it unfeasible to ask the citizenry to agree to a tax increase to fund defense expenditures. The question arises, therefore, where will the money come from to pay for new weapons, the development of a defense infrastructure, and the intake of more troops to boost larger military formations?

A European Nuclear Deterrent

 One way out is for Europe to field a Euro-centric nuclear umbrella. Talk is already ongoing as some suggest the French nuclear force transform into one requiring joint authority to permit employment. The British nuclear force, since 1962, has been committed to the protection of NATO members.

One way to achieve this integration painlessly would be to state which missions fell under the purview of the French or British nuclear authority and which would be covered by the joint command. Thus, a French decision to use a tactical nuclear weapon in response to a 9/11-style terror attack, for example, would be the country’s sovereign right while a Russian assault would fall under the category of a jointly authorized strike. NATO member states would contribute to the cost of maintaining and fielding the force—perhaps increasing its size and capability.

One can also speculate on whether other NATO states may decide to cross the nuclear Rubicon given the changed security environment on the continent. Sweden and Poland would certainly fall into this category given their fears of Russian expansionism. If this happens, it is well within the scope of nonproliferation laws since countries are allowed to leave the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty if their core security interests are threatened (The problem for the US, however, is how to prevent non-Western states from taking a similar step).

While this may compensate for the inability to field adequate forces it would certainly meet with considerable opposition from the peace groups in Europe and the general population which is wary of nuclearization.   Which then brings the issue back to the need for conventional militarization.

Fielding capable militaries that can defend Europe and project power in alliance with the United States requires NATO member-states to make hard choices about spending and compulsory military service. For the reasons cited above that is unlikely. For the United States, therefore, the best course of action is to redefine its commitment to Europe and let the continent make the diplomatic and political compromises needed to bring about regional stability.

For those in the Pentagon who think Europe is a partner to help maintain global security, it is time to look for new security alliances. The evidence is clear. Europe has neither the funds nor the manpower to be a partner of the United States.

Amit Gupta was on the faculty of the USAF Air War College and is now a Senior Advisor on Peace and Conflict Resolution to the Forum of Federations, Ottawa. The views in this piece are his. He may be contacted at agupta1856@gmail.com.

Is Trump Right About Europe? was originally published on Global Security Review.