Janan Ganesh’s opinion piece “Western voters will refuse to give up the peace dividend” (Opinion, March 29) explores the trade-off that voters will have to make between guns and butter in the west. As retirement age protests sweep France, this concern is valid — western European voters today don’t know what it’s like to live without the “peace dividend”.
But ultimately, they soon won’t have a choice. The US, on which Europe is largely dependent for its security via Nato, is increasingly shifting its focus to China and the Indo-Pacific. While Russia’s unjust war in Ukraine has slowed this pivot, it has not altered the underlying calculus behind it: America can’t be the chief security guarantor to everyone, everywhere, all at once.
When tensions all but inevitably spike between the US and China, the focus of my fellow Americans will not remain on the European continent. When equipment and manpower deployed through Nato and our bilateral security agreements is reduced or eliminated entirely to meet the challenge of a peer or near-peer competitor in the Pacific, Europe will find itself underarmed and insecure.
Only the voters of western Europe have the resources and manpower to correct this imbalance.
If Europe is to remain free and prosperous, they’ll need to make a choice for guns over butter that today seems inconceivable.
Robert Clarke
Director of Foreign Policy Marketing
Stand Together
Alexandria, VA, US
