Why Eastern Europe shouldn't bet on the United States forever
The history of American foreign policy shows us that Eastern Europe should be wary of putting all its eggs in one basket
In April, after Emmanuel Macron suggested that Europe should decouple itself from the American sphere, especially in the realm of European security, Eastern European leaders and diplomats strongly rebuked him, asserting, correctly, that without the United States, Europe’s security blanket would be in tatters. This would be especially true for Europe’s eastern half, which is obviously most vulnerable to Russian aggression, and benefits the most from NATO’s US-backed defense guarantees. Ukraine, and Georgia before it, serve as prime examples of what countries in NATO’s eastern flank would have to worry about it were it not for Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Even in Ukraine — the AFU’s prowess, determination, and resilience notwithstanding — the country’s defense effort would be in a dramatically different place were it not for NATO weapons.
Although countries in the region like Poland are steadily upgrading their military readiness, there’s no denying the fact that the region’s security relies wholly on the American empire — a global force that, while aligned with Eastern Europe’s interests vis-à-vis Russia, has historically exacted brutal hegemonic agendas of its own in other parts of the world. Where does this put Eastern Europe? What conclusions should governments in the region draw from the reality that although we would like to think otherwise, America’s interest in protecting Poland, the Baltics, Ukraine, and beyond stems not from some common brotherhood, but from geopolitical interests and the realpolitik of great power struggles?
Sure, protecting democracy and self-determination is a value that the US has claimed to advocate for in its foreign policy, making the countries of Eastern Europe obvious beneficiaries of the US-led world order. But all we need to do is look at America’s backyard to see how quickly such a façade can collapse in the pursuit of keeping its own sphere of influence intact across Latin America. During the Cold War, the US repeatedly intervened, either directly or indirectly, in countries like Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Colombia, El Salvador, Cuba, and beyond to destabilize unfriendly yet often popular governments, foment civil wars, or overthrow leaders who did not align with America’s vision for the hemisphere, all in the name of combatting communism and the drug trade.
Further afield, in Iraq, the US indeed toppled a dictator, but did so in just as much of an unprovoked fashion as Russia invaded Ukraine, killing thousands of civilians through negligent, indiscriminate warfare. By the same token, the US would hardly sanction its own allies in the Arab Gulf like it has Russia, even though the cruelty of Emirati and Saudi forces in Yemen is at times comparable to Russia’s brutality in Ukraine. And on several occasions, most notably in certain parts of northeastern Syria’s Kurdish-led territories in 2019 and in Afghanistan in 2021, American forces abandoned their local allies as soon as it became politically inexpedient to continue supporting them and their own dreams of democratic self-determination. I don’t bring up these examples to moralize American foreign policy, although there are plenty of reasons to do so — the point here is that the US has pursued a variety of different policies across the world, often without regard for the values it is purporting to support in Eastern Europe. As America’s about-face in Syria and Afghanistan showed, just because it is interested in maintaining security and democracy in one part of the world today does not mean this will be the case tomorrow.
For Eastern Europe, this last point isn’t just a mere hypothetical — it’s a real possibility that people in the region have been considering in light of Russia’s resurgence as a threat over the last two years. People in Poland have asked me what would happen if, for example, in the next five years, China would invade Taiwan, and the US would opt to reposition its focus to the western Pacific? Even for the most powerful military in the world, fighting a war with Beijing while singlehandedly propping up Eastern Europe’s security architecture would be hard to pull off without letting at least a few balls drop, especially if the war in Ukraine would continue to remain unresolved. American force capacity will still be finite even with technological advances, and in the logic of great powers, maintaining a robust presence in one part of the world is only worthwhile until circumstances change. The difficult truth is that, if the choice is between guaranteeing Eastern European defense and surrendering hegemony over the Pacific Ocean, a cornerstone of American global power, the decision is obvious. On top of this, although a breakdown of unity within NATO today feels nearly unthinkable, we need only to think back to the Trump years when the president of the United States openly floated the possibility of withdrawing from NATO entirely. Five years from now, we could be looking at an equally dramatic change in western support for regional security.
How should Eastern Europeans come to terms with the fact that in many ways their fate rests not on shared values with the West, but on the shifting geopolitical interests of an often impulsive global empire? One answer is to become self-sufficient — an objective that countries like Poland are already pursuing. Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki has advocated the position that only nation-states can ultimately be responsible for their own defense and their political destinies, and others in the region appear to be following suit. But even coming close to replicating the regional capabilities of the United States is a monumental task that would at best take a decade to realize, and could come at a significant cost to the GDP of the mid-sized countries that make up the backbone of Eastern Europe. Regional alliances like the Lublin Triangle, which had already started to take shape even before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, would have to come to replace NATO in the event of an American withdrawal, but would struggle to mount the kind of coordinated resistance that makes NATO so effective.
The other option would be to simply incentivize the United States to entrench itself to such a degree in Eastern Europe that it would be difficult for it to disengage, even in changing global circumstances. Once again, Poland is trying to do exactly that by petitioning the US to set up permanent military bases on its territory, but that alone wouldn’t be enough to achieve the desired effect. Besides, an even deeper reliance on the US would come with even more serious costs to countries’ ability to maneuver geopolitically, diminishing the region’s sovereignty.
Evidently, there are no easy answers to these questions. For a region of mid-sized countries and economies, navigating a multipolar world means that they will inevitably be at the mercy of those more powerful than they are, and will be forced to find clever ways to maintain both their security and their independence by balancing the interests of empires all around them. It might be tempting to believe that the days when Eastern European countries, especially those that are part of NATO, had to worry about things like this are long gone, and spending time on such hypotheticals might seem like a waste of time. But while these might not be immediately pressing concerns, failing to prepare for them would set Eastern European countries up for ruin if and when dramatic global reorganizations would eventually take place. Every student of Eastern Europe’s history understands that tailoring your behavior to the status quo is how you survive — but that playing the long-game and preparing for future contingencies is how you win.