Toward a New Grand Design?

In the Grand Design, Sully alluded to some of the same challenges that bedevil European rearmament today — most notably the fact that duplication across disparate national defense industries means that much of Europe's spending is wasted. Commenting on the need for greater economies of scale, the 17th-century military planner commented on how, provided it was better pooled and organized, Europe's defense would appear "inconsiderable and little burdensome" in comparison to the unnecessary expenses individual European states "kept on foot to awe their neighbors."

In today's largely pacified Europe, the issue is thankfully not so much one of intra-European balancing as one of industrial fragmentation. Unfortunately, European leaders also have to balance certain competing political imperatives — and most notably the fact that their citizenries are unlikely to acquiesce to massive hikes in defense expenditure — with all its associated tradeoffs with regard to social security and public benefits — absent a confirmation that much of said expenditure will be funneled back into their local economies.

This is an uncomfortable reality that disgruntled U.S. policymakers will eventually have to wrap their heads around. Notwithstanding the recent Hague Summit declaration's call for greater trans-Atlantic defense industrial cooperation, large-scale European rearmament efforts such as the 170 billion dollar ReArm Europe Plan are going to focus as much as possible on supporting local industries, technologies, and jobs, rather than those of a more distant and disinvested partner across the Atlantic.

Similarly, NATO's recent 5 percent defense spending pledge includes 1.5 percent on somewhat nebulously defined — and purely domestic — security-related expenses, ranging from civil preparedness to physical infrastructure or cybersecurity. This was probably the only way to render the 5 percent pledge politically palatable to European allies.

Once again, the voluntary ceding by the United States of a certain measure of primacy — be it for sound strategic reasons — can never be entirely cost-free. Nor will this transition unfold overnight, notwithstanding the seeming recent acceleration in geopolitical shock events. It is therefore in America's interests to maintain a steady level of military support long enough for Europe to remedy its key deficiencies in a coordinated and systematic fashion, rather than in dread-filled agitation over the possibility of a precipitate U.S. withdrawal. Only then, perhaps, can the old world finally fulfil that fugacious fantasy of strategic unity — a dream once conjured up by a weary, battle-scarred aristocrat in the cavernous stone halls and flickering chambers of his Loire Valley castle.