The American
electorate and foreign policy elite’s dissatisfaction with NATO, the
decades-long debates about the balance of benefits and costs attending American
retrenchment from overseas engagements, the narrowing of power differentials
between the United States and China, and a growing animus towards Europe on
issues ranging from gender-mainstreaming to trade to defence suggest that it is
time for Europeans to reconsider their fidelity to NATO, participation in the
American-dominated and -instrumentalized NATO integrated military command
(IMC), the continued basing of US armed forces in Europe, and the unrestricted
American use of European air and maritime spaces for conducting global military
operations. In other words, it is well past time to ask: Is the hedged American
security guarantee sufficiently robust to justify continued American
leadership? Would Europeans be better off – or at least no worse off – if they
were to leave the IMC and initiate a Europe-dictated American departure? If the
major European powers decided to send Americans home, would it contribute to
the European Union (EU) goal of strategic autonomy, lend Europeans greater
leverage in shaping US foreign policies within the European neighbourhood, and
make Europeans less susceptible to American ultimata? This article addresses
those questions.