By Arnout Nuijt

Remarkable news from Washington today and of great importance to European nations’ maritime defense. While a number of European navies are working hard to maintain a regular presence in Asia to support the Americans against an increasingly powerful and aggressive China, the Pentagon now says it does not need our ships at all. According to the Financial Times, Elbridge Colby, under-secretary of defense for policy, has now stated that European navies should focus on defending the European continent against the threat from Russia. This is a painful break with the policy of the previous American administration under Biden, which encouraged European countries to strengthen Western defense in the South Pacific.

Colby made the statement yesterday during a visit by a British delegation, but the new policy also affects other nations’ defense policy. Ships from various European navies, like the Netherlands, Italy and Germany, ares sent to Asia regularly and usually sail through the Taiwan Strait, among other things, to emphasize the international character of those waters towards China. Very recently, a large European naval squadron has also set sail led by a British aircraft carrier, in order to train their sailors in the Far East in cooperation with the American and other navies. Shockingly, Colby is now expressing his concern about this flotilla. The Americans’ concerns about the European show of power in Asia are said to be mainly based on the lack of resources and capacity of European defense in general. The European show of power in the South Seas, a tour de force in itself, would only fragment those scarce resources across the globe.

Colby is not just anyone. He is one of the grown ups in the room among the political leadership of the Pentagon and is known for his radical position to focus American defense as much as possible in order to deny any Chinese military adventure in advance. He has laid down this policy in his book The Strategy of Denial (2021). Colby does not shy away from stating that even the Middle East should be left to its fate, again in order to be able to concentrate all available resources on China. Partly because of this attitude, his appointment by the Senate took extra long, undoubtedly delayed by the pro-Israeli lobby in the US that saw its interests being damaged.

But one swallow does not make a summer and we have seen some erratic policy from Washington in recent months. So let us wait and see whether this new policy will really be implemented and the US Navy declines any offer to help from Europeans. But the message is clear: if Europe lacks sufficient capacity, let it focus first and foremost on the defense of its own region: the Euro-Atlantic area. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but of course European navies must still be able to focus on the protection of the maritime supply routes from the Indian Ocean and around the Cape.

Colby’s point is interesting: by removing the burdensome and costly task for European navies to maintain a regular presence in far-flung Asia, we could indeed focus scarce resources and capacity on the Euro-Atlantic area, making our own region a lot safer. Of course, this does not affect the fact that individual European navies are free to send ships anywhere in the world to defend the interests of their nation.