Military leaders should take an active role in strengthening allies through burden sharing

The military and its members are no strangers to navigating shifts in domestic, geopolitical, and defense policy. They do so from year to year and budget to budget, within administrations and in transitions between them. Elected and appointed civilian leadership in Washington, namely the commander in chief and Congress, make policy. Military members offer their best professional, honest, risk- and threat-informed advice and ultimately execute in accordance with the directives of civilian leadership. One defining characteristic of the U.S. military is its ability to remain apolitical and nonpartisan in the face of those changes, and it has developed extensive muscle memory in doing so.

That said, the military is clearly an instrument of national policy and does engage in inherently “small p” political activities. For instance, service members often advocate before Congress on behalf of various program or policy positions in accordance with the intent of their military departments. Military members can and should continue such advocacy and expand it in areas that support allied burden sharing, such as acquisition and leveraging the defense industrial base (DIB) of the United States and its allies.

How the military should respond in the current political climate

To say the military is apolitical is not to say it is blind to changes in the political landscape or immune to its effects. Recent strategic policy changes and political discourse pertaining to Greenland and Arctic security, war in Ukraine, and the United States’ relationships economically, politically, and militarily with its European and NATO allies have driven headlines over the past year. These issues can have ramifications for military members and their families, particularly those living in overseas communities, and can impact long-held relationships and interactions with our foreign partners. 

A key element of the recent U.S. National Security Strategy is the U.S. defense relationship with Europe, and in particular, how the United States can help enable “Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense.” This directive is echoed in the recently released U.S. National Defense Strategy. It has also been reflected by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who stated, “The time when we conveniently let the United States carry much of the burden of our shared security is over. It’s fair and appropriate that Europe and Canada take more of the burden of their own security – and the good news is, they do.”

Military leaders should focus on the active nature of the verb “to enable” and resist the urge to be passive when there is room for meaningful action. Within the boundaries of each organization’s or individual’s prescribed remit, they can be creative in actively searching for ways to operationalize this guidance to support the enablement of our allies to build their self-defense capabilities, self-reliance, and national and industrial resiliency. Two areas ripe for such enablement are acquisition and partnerships in training and operations.

Partnership and burden sharing in acquisitions and development

U.S. commercial partnerships, foreign military sales, and military coproduction efforts remain robust and important to shared national security interests. This is illustrated by the U.S. joint development and export of F-35 aircraft, a decades-long, enduring effort to increase the lethality and interoperability of the U.S. military and its allies in Europe and elsewhere. The United States can continue to help allies maintain their status as a preeminent, highly interoperable fighting force through smart acquisition decisionmaking.  

Military leaders within the F-35 program advocated for streamlining funding mechanisms to simplify bilateral codevelopment and integration efforts with allies. One example is the Norwegian-developed Joint Strike Missile (JSM). Its codevelopment and integration not only provide a long-range, internally carried precision strike weapon, but the JSM also supports Norway’s defense industry and contributes to overall burden sharing. U.S. servicemembers can identify and encourage other such efforts where Europeans can take the lead.

U.S. military defense and industrial partnerships with U.S. European allies will continue even as they inevitably evolve. Military leaders should help manage that change to our mutual benefit. The U.K. nuclear deterrent is heavily integrated technically and industrially with the United States. This enables U.K. operational control but with access to U.S. technology and economies of scale. This partnership remains key to the shared defense of Europe and involves many layers of integrated, international manufacturing and sustainment. This is just one of countless amicable and effective relationships that exist between the United States and European partners.

NATO members have pledged to meet or exceed the 3.5% threshold for defense spending, with notable examples like the U.K., which plans to reach 3.5% in 2026 and up to 5% by 2035. These nations will allocate funds according to their sovereign interests and parliamentary processes. Nonetheless, it is incumbent upon U.S. military leaders, with their subject matter expertise, to identify areas where financial or industrial burden can shift, make recommendations to that effect, and thereby free up U.S. resources that can be put to other uses.

For example, Europe is heavily reliant on U.S. key enablers such as airlift, refueling, reconnaissance, and space-based capability. Europe’s air refueling fleet is composed of about 150 tankers, in comparison to the United States’ fleet of about 450. With planned increases in allied budgets, the U.S. military can play a role in helping its allies acquire more of these assets to reduce the capability gap. This includes using the military’s unique U.S. expertise to identify bureaucratic and structural barriers, such as export controls and defense agreements, that may hinder access to the U.S. DIB and growth of the European DIB. These changes would tangibly shift the burden back to European forces while preserving, and ideally improving, combat effectiveness.

Burden sharing and burden shifting in training and operations

Increased allied interoperability is essential to their increased military effectiveness and resiliency. To the extent the United States steps back, and Europe takes on a larger role in its own security, codified interoperability between the United States and Europe will be even more important when they fight together. Above all, military members must leverage their relationships to seek continued empowerment of our allies, even if that entails suggesting changes to the way existing organizations are structured and operated.

The U.S. military has been intertwined with NATO and its members since the alliance’s inception. They have worked together in training environments such as the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training Program (ENJJPT), creating military officers with shared training and knowledge to facilitate our nations’ ability to work and fight together effectively. The United States and its allies cooperate in operational and exercise environments such as Steadfast Noon, NATO’s annual dual-capable aircraft nuclear deterrent exercise, and Neptune Strike, whose objective is “to integrate high-end maritime strike capabilities of Allied aircraft carrier strike groups and expeditionary strike groups to support the defense of the Alliance.” Joint training, such as ENJJPT, and joint exercises, like Steadfast Noon, are examples of the type of mutually beneficial programs that should continue.

Within existing operational and policy-defined limits, however, leaders should lean into opportunities for NATO and allied partners to take on more leadership roles in military operations and other areas of international cooperation. They must manage operational risk while identifying and leveraging shared or alternative command structures that can build a more resilient force. At the highest levels, this could translate to modifying NATO’s command structure to allow for more European leadership. At lower levels, it could mean enabling more partner military members to lead joint exercises, thereby increasing their experience and improving interoperability in peacetime before it is put to the test in war.

Relationships with military counterparts

Relationships at the operational level of our military are essential. They provide for both practical coordination and basic human interaction and friendships that translate into successful cooperation. For example, when I worked as a field-grade officer with NATO allies during dual-capable aircraft exercises, operational success was bolstered by the camaraderie and improved communication I developed through personal but professional relationships with my European peers. Frequent conversations exposed gaps in capability that we were able to solve ahead of time rather than during execution. One example solution was as simple as an off-the-shelf computer chat capability that streamlined communication within the operations center.

These relationships depend on trust and credibility. Particularly in the current political climate, that trust must be grounded in as much transparency as possible, without making promises or assurances that fall above one’s pay grade. As military members continue to strengthen these professional relationships at lower levels of military-to-military operations, they can also encourage more participation of non-European Union or non-NATO allies, when appropriate, to improve coordination within Europe. As with agreements governing acquisition, military members should examine NATO and bilateral training agreements and standards with an eye toward improving and further codifying interoperability. This includes interoperability both with and between European allies, especially where increased European defense spending can make a significant difference.

It is in the U.S. interest to have a stable, reliable Europe with a formidable military ready to defend itself and its allies. For military leaders, meaning all of us who serve, staying in your lane and remaining true to the military’s core apolitical identity in a time of political turmoil does not prescribe keeping your head down and letting policy change, particularly controversial change, wash over you. Remain technocratic and mission-focused, but keep your head up to identify opportunities that those not in your position may not otherwise see, so long as they align with national strategy to support a strong and increasingly self-reliant allied bulwark in Europe.