از اتحاد تا معامله

چکیده فارسی:

عنوان: از اتحاد تا معامله

آمریکا اروپا را رها نکرده و اروپا هم از اروپا بودن دست نکشیده؛ آنچه پایان یافته، معامله بزرگ ۱۹۴۹ است

چکیده: آیا آمریکا اروپا را رها کرده است، یا اروپای دو دهه اخیر دیگر همان اروپایی نیست که آمریکا به دفاع از آن متعهد شد؟ این مقاله مروری با تکیه بر منابعی که نیمی اروپایی و نیمی آمریکایی اند، ریشه های همکاری دو سوی آتلانتیک را از جنگ جهانی دوم، طرح مارشال و جنگ سرد تا تنش های ۲۰۲۵ و ۲۰۲۶ بررسی می کند. شواهد نشان می دهد فاصله گرفتن دو طرف ساختاری است و پیش از دولت ترامپ آغاز شده بود، اما سخنرانی ونس در مونیخ، راهبرد امنیت ملی ۲۰۲۵، تعرفه ها و بحران گرینلند سرعت و لحن آن را دگرگون کرد. اروپا نیز از نظر اقتصادی، نظامی و انرژی تغییر کرده و در برخی شاخص ها از آمریکا عقب مانده است، هرچند ادعای از دست رفتن هویت تمدنی آن با آمار همخوانی ندارد. افکار عمومی دو طرف سرد شده است، اما پیوندهای اقتصادی با ارزشی نزدیک به ۹٫۸ تریلیون دلار و حضور نظامی آمریکا همچنان پابرجاست. مقاله سه مسیر برای دهه آینده ترسیم می کند: جابه جایی مدیریت شده بار دفاعی، رانش معامله گرایانه و بازسازی نسبی. نتیجه آنکه آنچه در راه است طلاق نیست؛ اتحاد قدیم جای خود را به ترتیبی محدودتر، مشروط تر و مبتنی بر چانه زنی می دهد.

کلیدواژه ها: روابط اروپا و آمریکا، ناتو، طرح مارشال، خودمختاری راهبردی اروپا، تعرفه، آینده پژوهی

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-alliance-arrangement-america-has-abandoned-being-mahdavian-sadr-4ysee

From Alliance to Arrangement

America has not abandoned Europe, and Europe has not stopped being Europe. What has ended is the bargain of 1949.

Dr. Mehdi Mahdavian Sadr

Two questions now run through almost every conversation about the transatlantic relationship. The first is asked mostly in European capitals: has the United States walked away? The second is asked, more and more openly, in Washington: is Europe still the Europe that America chose to defend?

Both questions contain part of the truth, and both miss the larger point. Drawing on sources from both sides of the Atlantic, roughly half European and half American, this article looks at what built the partnership, what has changed in the past two decades, and where the relationship is likely to go. My conclusion is that we are watching the end of a specific bargain, struck in the shadow of war and the Soviet threat, and the start of a narrower, harder and more transactional arrangement.

A partnership forged by war

The partnership was born in emergency. American supplies and then American soldiers helped defeat Nazi Germany, and the peace that followed was built partly with American money. Announced by Secretary of State George Marshall in June 1947 and enacted in 1948, the European Recovery Program provided more than 12 billion dollars to rebuild Western Europe. It revived European industry and, not incidentally, created markets for American goods (Office of the Historian, n.d.). In 1949 came NATO, and with it a permanent American military presence. At the height of the Cold War roughly 350,000 US troops were stationed in Europe, 274,000 of them in West Germany (Kane, 2023).

It is worth being clear about what that bargain was. America provided security and underwrote an open economic order; Western Europe accepted American leadership, rebuilt itself as a prosperous democratic bloc and served as the front line against the Soviet Union. The shared values were real, but so was the shared enemy, and it was the enemy that kept the arrangement simple.

The drift began long before 2025

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the glue weakened. US forces based permanently in Western Europe were cut by more than half during the 1990s (Kane, 2023). The Iraq war of 2003 split the alliance in public, and in the same year the American writer Robert Kagan captured a widening difference in outlook: Americans, he argued, had come to see the world in terms of power, while Europeans preferred law, negotiation and rules, a contrast he famously summed up as Mars and Venus (Kagan, 2003).

Complaints about burden-sharing did not begin with Donald Trump either. In June 2011 the outgoing defense secretary, Robert Gates, warned in Brussels that NATO faced a “dim, if not dismal” future unless Europeans invested more in their own defence (NPR, 2011). The Obama administration’s pivot to Asia made the same point with geography rather than words. The drift, in other words, is structural. What changed after 2025 was its speed and its tone.

The rupture of 2025–26

The tone changed first. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, Vice President JD Vance told European leaders that the gravest threat to the continent came from within, from a retreat from free speech and democratic values, rather than from Russia or China (PBS NewsHour, 2025). Ten months later, the White House’s National Security Strategy of December 2025 framed Europe’s central problem as possible “civilisational erasure” driven by migration and signalled sympathy for what it called patriotic European parties. Brookings scholars counted 48 references to Europe in the document and read it as an attempt to shape European domestic politics rather than to strengthen the alliance (Brookings Institution, 2025).

Material pressure followed. The Turnberry agreement of July 2025 capped US tariffs on most EU goods at 15 per cent in exchange for large EU pledges of investment and energy purchases (Euronews, 2026b). In January 2026 President Trump threatened new tariffs on eight European countries until they supported an American acquisition of Greenland, dropping the threat only after a “framework” was agreed with NATO’s secretary-general at Davos (Euronews, 2026a). When the US Supreme Court struck down the legal basis of the original tariffs in February 2026, Washington rebuilt them under other statutes; since July 2026 most EU goods have faced duties of 10 to 12.5 per cent through a new legal route (Grant Thornton, 2026).

On security, the United States approved no new financial military assistance for Ukraine in 2025 (SIPRI, 2026). In October 2025 the Pentagon decided not to replace a rotating brigade in Romania, cutting the American presence there from about 1,700 to 1,000 troops. RUSI’s Oana Lungescu called the move neither a surprise nor a catastrophe, but a signal sent at the wrong moment and in the wrong place (Lungescu, 2025). At the Munich conference in February 2026, the Pentagon’s Elbridge Colby described the model Washington now wants: a “NATO 3.0” in which Europeans lead on conventional defence while the United States keeps its nuclear umbrella and some supporting forces (Ellehuus, 2026).

Has Europe changed?

The American complaint has a factual core, even when it arrives wrapped in culture-war language. Europe has changed in at least three ways that matter to Washington.

Economically, it has fallen behind on the measures that translate into power. EU per capita GDP has diverged from the US level since the financial crisis, America spends far more on research and development relative to its economy, and more than half of the world’s unicorn start-ups are American (Real Instituto Elcano, n.d.). The picture is less dramatic than dollar headlines suggest. Measured at purchasing power parity, Bruegel’s Zsolt Darvas shows EU per capita income rising from 67 to 72 per cent of the US level between 1995 and 2022, with several European countries as productive per hour worked as the United States (Darvas, 2023). But on technology, capital markets and scale, the gap is real.

Militarily, Europe let its armed forces wither for two decades and is now paying to rebuild them. European military spending rose 14 per cent in 2025 to 864 billion dollars, the sharpest annual increase in Central and Western Europe since the end of the Cold War; Germany’s spending grew 24 per cent and passed 2 per cent of GDP for the first time since 1990 (SIPRI, 2026). At The Hague in June 2025, NATO allies pledged 3.5 per cent of GDP for core defence plus 1.5 per cent for related security spending by 2035, although the IISS noted that support was not universal and that the target will require hard fiscal choices (IISS, 2025).

In energy, Europe swapped one dependence for another. Russia supplied about 40 per cent of the EU’s pipeline gas imports in 2021. By 2025 the United States had become the EU’s second-largest gas supplier after Norway, providing 26 per cent of all gas imports and almost 58 per cent of liquefied natural gas (Council of the European Union, 2026).

What does not hold up is the claim that Europe is losing its civilisational identity. As I argued in an earlier piece in this series, official statistics do not support stories of demographic takeover. The more serious change is political: fragmented parliaments, stronger populist parties and slower collective decisions. That makes Europe a more difficult partner. It does not make it a different civilisation.

What the publics now think

Opinion has moved on both sides of the Atlantic, and in Europe it has moved a long way. In the European Council on Foreign Relations’ May 2026 survey of 15 countries, only 11 per cent of respondents described the United States as an ally, down from 22 per cent in November 2024. Half called it a necessary partner and a quarter a rival or adversary. Majorities in almost every country doubted that the US would defend them if attacked, while most trusted their European neighbours to do so (European Council on Foreign Relations [ECFR], 2026). Pew Research Center’s 2026 survey found majorities in all ten European countries polled lacking confidence in President Trump, a median of 85 per cent disapproving of his handling of Greenland and tariffs, and steep falls since 2022 in the share of people who see the US as a reliable partner (Pew Research Center, 2026).

American opinion has cooled as well, though more conditionally. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that the share of Americans confident that European allies would defend the United States fell from 62 per cent in 2025 to 47 per cent in 2026. Yet only 12 per cent of Americans think the relationship is damaged beyond repair, and about half expect it to improve under a future administration (Smeltz, 2026). Most Europeans in the ECFR survey said much the same. On both sides, the public mood looks less like divorce than like estrangement.

The ties that still bind

Beneath the political noise, the structural ties remain unusually dense. The transatlantic economy is worth an estimated 9.8 trillion dollars and supports around 16 million jobs. More than 6.4 billion dollars of goods and services cross the Atlantic every day, and Europe accounted for 56 per cent of all US foreign direct investment between 2009 and 2025 (Hamilton & Quinlan, 2026). EU–US trade in goods and services even grew by 4.5 per cent in 2025, to 1.8 trillion euros, despite the tariff disputes (Euronews, 2026b).

The security ties persist too. Between 75,000 and 105,000 US troops remain in Europe, more than before 2022 (Lungescu, 2025), and the American nuclear guarantee has not been withdrawn; even the NATO 3.0 model keeps it. On Ukraine, Europe has absorbed much of the burden. The Kiel Institute found that European military aid in 2025 was 67 per cent above its 2022–24 average, and that EU institutions now provide nearly 90 per cent of Ukraine’s financial and humanitarian support (Kiel Institute, 2026). The partnership is being rebalanced by force of circumstance rather than dissolved.

Three paths for the next decade

Forecasting politics is a hazardous business, but the evidence points to three broad paths.

The first, and in my view the most likely, is managed burden-shifting. Europe takes the lead in its own conventional defence, spends far more, buys more from its own industry, and keeps the American nuclear guarantee and access to American technology. Trade frictions continue but are contained by the sheer weight of economic interdependence. This is roughly the NATO 3.0 model, and the current behaviour of both sides already points towards it.

The second is transactional drift. The relationship becomes a sequence of deals and threats, as it did over Greenland and tariffs, with security guarantees implicitly linked to trade and political concessions. Europe responds by hedging more widely, including towards China and other middle powers, and the alliance survives in form while emptying in substance.

The third is partial restoration after a change of administration in Washington. Publics on both sides expect something like this, and the institutional ties would make it possible. Restoration would not mean a return to the 1990s, however. America’s strategic priorities have moved towards Asia and the Western Hemisphere, and European rearmament, once under way, generates its own momentum.

A few signposts will show which path is being taken: the terms of any settlement in Ukraine, whether higher European defence budgets turn into real industrial capacity, how Washington manages its rivalry with China, and the outcome of the American elections of 2026 and 2028.

An arrangement, not a divorce

So has America abandoned Europe? Not in any literal sense: its troops, its nuclear guarantee and its companies are still there. What it has abandoned is the idea of the relationship as a community of values in which Washington paid the security bill without asking much in return. Has Europe stopped being Europe? No. But it has grown poorer relative to America, weaker militarily than it should be and more politically divided, and that makes it a less attractive partner for a country that now counts costs.

The partnership born in the war and built through the Marshall Plan and the Cold War rested on a common enemy and on American generosity. Neither can be taken for granted any longer. What replaces them will be an arrangement rather than an alliance in the old sense: narrower, more conditional and constantly negotiated. That is a loss. It need not be a catastrophe, provided Europe uses this moment to become the capable partner it has promised to be for thirty years.

References

European sources

Council of the European Union. (2026). Where does the EU’s gas come from? [Infographic]. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/where-does-the-eu-s-gas-come-from/

Darvas, Z. (2023, October 26). The European Union’s remarkable growth performance relative to the United States.Bruegel. https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/european-unions-remarkable-growth-performance-relative-united-states

Ellehuus, R. (2026, February 18). Barometer check: Transatlantic security and the Munich Security Conference. Royal United Services Institute. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/barometer-check-transatlantic-security-and-munich-security-conference

Euronews. (2026a, January 21). Trump suspends European tariffs after “framework” Greenland deal agreed. https://euronews.com/2026/01/21/trump-suspends-european-tariffs-after-framework-greenland-deal-agreed

Euronews. (2026b, July 21). Four things to know one year after the Turnberry agreement. https://www.euronews.com/2026/07/21/four-things-to-know-one-year-after-the-turnberry-agreement

European Council on Foreign Relations. (2026). Home alone: Europeans are ready to defend themselves. https://ecfr.eu/publication/home-alone-europeans-are-ready-to-defend-themselves/

International Institute for Strategic Studies. (2025, June 27). NATO agrees on investment pledge. https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2025/062/nato-agrees-on-investment-pledge/

Kiel Institute for the World Economy. (2026, February 11). Ukraine support after 4 years of war: Europe steps up. https://www.kielinstitut.de/publications/news/ukraine-support-after-4-years-of-war-europe-steps-up/

Lungescu, O. (2025). US troop cuts on NATO’s eastern flank. Royal United Services Institute. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/us-troop-cuts-natos-eastern-flank

Real Instituto Elcano. (n.d.). Competitiveness: The widening gap between the EU and the US. https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/analyses/competitiveness-the-widening-gap-between-the-eu-and-the-us/

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. (2026, April). Global military spending rise continues as European and Asian expenditures surge [Press release]. https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2026/global-military-spending-rise-continues-european-and-asian-expenditures-surge

American sources

Brookings Institution. (2025, December 8). Breaking down Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/breaking-down-trumps-2025-national-security-strategy/

Grant Thornton. (2026, July 28). New tariffs imposed on countries as Section 122 expires. https://www.grantthornton.com/insights/newsletters/tax/2026/hot-topics/jul-28/new-tariffs-imposed-on-countries-as-section-122-expires

Hamilton, D. S., & Quinlan, J. P. (2026). The transatlantic economy 2026. U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AmCham EU. https://www.uschamber.com/international/the-transatlantic-economy-2026

Kagan, R. (2003). Of paradise and power: America and Europe in the new world order. Alfred A. Knopf.

Kane, T. (2023). History of U.S. troop deployments, 1950–2023. Hoover Institution. https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/24116-Kane.pdf

NPR. (2011, June 10). Gates rebukes NATO members on Libya mission. https://www.npr.org/2011/06/10/137112899/gates-rebukes-nato

Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State. (n.d.). Marshall Plan, 1948. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/marshall-plan

PBS NewsHour. (2025, February 14). Vance lectures European allies on democracy at security summit in Munich. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/vance-lectures-european-allies-on-democracy-at-security-summit-in-munich

Pew Research Center. (2026, June 23). European views of Trump and the U.S. are especially negative in 2026. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/06/23/european-views-of-trump-and-the-u-s-are-especially-negative/

Smeltz, D. (2026, July 23). Transatlantic publics lose confidence that allies will help in event of attack. Chicago Council on Global Affairs. https://globalaffairs.org/commentary/blogs/transatlantic-publics-lose-confidence-allies-will-help-event-attack