Bill Emmott: As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, Japan and Europe must remind Washington that they need their allies

By Bill Emmott, freelance writer, speaker and international affairs consultant

As America marks the 250th anniversary of its declaration of independence from Britain, its allies in Europe and Asia easily understand that their ties to the United States must never be taken for granted. After all, it was the first president, George Washington, who warned in his farewell address in 1796, after eight years in office, that America must “avoid any permanent alliance with any part of the foreign world.” As the young country grew in population, territory, and economic and political power, the capacity to turn this aspiration for freedom of action into reality only grew.

Avoiding permanent alliances is perfectly natural for any independent, sovereign nation. Next to George Washington’s statement, we can also place a famous quote from half a century later, Lord Palmerston, British Prime Minister, who said: “We have no eternal allies, nor perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and it is our duty to follow these interests.”

Still, despite this history, allies do not easily understand why the 47th president, Donald Trump, is so hostile to his country’s longtime partners. The reason is not what some Republicans and other Trump supporters want to think, which is that the Europeans, in particular, want to continue profiting from U.S. defense spending as they did between 1989-91, when the Cold War ended, and 2022, when Russia attempted to invade Ukraine. This is because it does not seem to Europeans and Asians that America’s national interests have changed to the point of making post-1945 allies as redundant as the Trump team often suggests.

In particular, we do not understand why Vladimir Putin’s Russia appears to have transformed, under the Trump administration, from a major threat to America’s national interests to a potential partner. This gives the impression that Europe and America are no longer on the same side, because we have divergent views on the origin of the main threats. This is not yet the case with China, but Asian allies are right to fear that it could also happen with Xi Jinping. In the US National Security Strategy that the US administration released last December, neither Russia nor China was cited as a major strategic threat.

Some of this can be seen as personal to Trump: a consequence of his taste for deals and his undisguised admiration for dictators and the power they wield. However, the most important geopolitical question about how America will develop after Trump leaves office in January 2029, not only under his immediate successor but in the decades to come, as the country approaches its 275th birthday, concerns the persistence of a significant part of Trump’s interpretation of American national interests.

Trump’s direction away from Western leadership and toward a more independent status as one of the world’s three great powers – now considered China, Russia and the United States, but perhaps in the future with India added or replacing Russia – can be seen as a logical conclusion to draw from the way the world has evolved over the past few decades. China, today a country whose economic power in some respects exceeds America’s and whose military appears to be a match for that of the United States, demands treatment equivalent to that of the United States globally, which means an equal right to ignore international law or conventions when it chooses. So maybe Trump is just accepting this reality.

On the other hand, many Americans, particularly within the Democratic Party but also some Republicans, believe that in any confrontation with China or Russia, whether military, geopolitical or economic, their country has held a great advantage since 1945. This advantage lies in the network of security alliances that America has built in Asia and Europe, and the military basing rights that come with it.

This does not necessarily mean that the United States, now 250 years old, should, with or without the rest of the West, want to act as a global policeman, or bear the kind of burdens that President John F. Kennedy pledged to shoulder in his famous 1961 inaugural address. But it does mean that when America seeks to achieve an international goal or deter a threat, alliances are an asset. At least that’s what a major faction in America continues to believe.

Under President Trump, America is clearly less reliable and unpredictable than the world has become accustomed to in recent decades, but this is largely due to the administration’s concentration of power in the hands of one man. However, in the longer term, although this unreliability will normally not be so personal, it appears that the style and stance of the country’s foreign policy will vary much more between parties and therefore administrations than during the Cold War.

Faced with this new, highly variable sense of America, Europeans must learn from Japan the importance of resilience in the face of harassment and the need to focus on common interests rather than shared values. Japan has been hit by the Trump experience, but it has also been battered by previous presidents, notably in the 1980s.

On the other hand, Europeans have a big advantage over Japan. The fact is that even without America’s support, they are militarily capable of deterring and responding to the main threat to their security, namely that of Russia. If tiny Ukraine can get Russia to sacrifice more than 1.3 million dead or seriously injured troops and can prevent the Russian military from seizing more territory, then the combined military forces of France, Britain, Germany, Poland, Scandinavia, the Baltic states and other European countries are more than capable of blocking Russia’s advances, especially now that they have significantly increased their defense spending. As for nuclear deterrence, they would prefer to remain under American protection, but if that were also the case, they would still have their two nuclear powers, France and Great Britain.

Japan, on the other hand, has no realistic hope of building a military capable of blocking China’s advances, nor does it have a group of regional allies strong enough to help it do so. Therefore, unlike Europe, it has no feasible alternative to the US-Japan alliance. If he wants this alliance to ignore Washington’s words and become permanent, or at least to last as long as China remains a serious threat, he must continue to persuade the United States that having bases in Japan is in its national interest because they are necessary to deter China and maintain, in the words of the late Shinzo Abe, a free and open Indo-Pacific.

As we mark the 250th anniversary of one of the greatest political documents in history, the United States Declaration of Independence, which persuaded America that it needed its allies, both in Europe and Asia, appears to be the most important task facing the West in the coming decades.