At the latest G-7 summit in Japan, President Biden signaled he would allow Ukrainian pilots to be trained on American-made F-16 fighter jets, moving toward permitting other countries to transfer the planes to Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. It was the latest in a series of policy decisions his administration has made this spring to apparently bolster America’s international partners as they face potential threats.
However, the Biden administration’s actions over the last several months show U.S. allies are still overwhelmingly reliant on Washington. This dependence hurts America’s ability to focus on its core national interests and to invest its limited resources in the American people at home.Washington’s alliance network is often praised for ostensibly helping to strengthen America’s global influence, to enhance U.S. credibility, and to reduce the costs incurred for accomplishing national foreign policy objectives.
U.S. allies’ growing dependency, however, is revealed through several of the Biden administration’s recent undertakings: it sold nuclear-powered submarines to Australia as part of the AUKUS security pact, agreed to supply Ukraine with battle tanks despite Pentagon resistance, and recommitted to using the U.S. nuclear arsenal to deter a North Korean attack on South Korea. Finland finalized its NATO membership in April, but instead of its supposedly capable military guarding its border with Russia, it appears U.S. forces will be shouldering that burden instead.
American partners in Europe and the Indo-Pacific initially reacted to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by pledging to rapidly increase their defense spending and expand their military capacities, but over a year later, there is little evidence this has occurred.
Three days after the invasion began, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, Europe’s wealthiest country, proclaimed a Zeitenwende in German defense policy and committed 100 billion euros to significantly expand Germany’s military budget. Yet since then, Berlin has slowly backtracked on this commitment for several reasons: Russia poses a much more limited threat to European security than initially feared and Washington has sent additional U.S. troops to Europe and provided the bulk of military aid to Ukraine.
