Considerations on the Atlantic Alliance

It has now become a question of the real need of the Atlantic Alliance; until a few decades earlier this question was typical of far-left circles, but now the reasons for the opportunity of a transatlantic alliance, with these features seem to come less and less every day. This involves different reasoning, influenced by the emergence of too many variables that can influence opinion on the subject. Trump's tendency to want to break away from a vision of defense where the western part is central, turns out to be a very well-known thing, but the American elections are very close, however to wait for such a long period without thinking a reorganization could be very deleterious for the Europe; in fact the possible, but not certain re-election of the current US president, must not become a factor capable of delaying a decision that is undoubtedly necessary. Certainly the time to re-discuss and eventually rethink the alliance must not be short: the Atlantic Alliance ensures a more than positive functioning, above all in military terms, but certainly less satisfactory as regards relations between states and common decisions. At this moment, the issue of the withdrawal of the American military from the Kurdish areas on the border with Turkey appears to be central, leaving loyal and above all fundamental allies to the Islamic State, at the mercy of a member of the Alliance, which has proved repeatedly unreliable. The fundamental question is that the withdrawal of a force operating in a theater of war of common interest has not been decided with the allies, but independently by Washington. Certainly this is not enough to undermine a multi-year alliance on which the very idea of ​​the West was founded, but this represents yet another important sign of a situation that seems increasingly deteriorated. The question is that the operation of the Alliance should have repercussions on all its members, instead the majority shareholder, the USA, too much condition its aims. If Trump's requests for greater financial participation can be corrected, there should be an equally correct attitude in relations with the European Union as an international institution and cornerstone of the alliance, on the contrary the US administration has set a policy of division between member states, which denotes the unreliability of the main ally. On the European front, the French president is the one who most urges for European military independence, achievable with the establishment of an autonomous force and the unity of continental foreign policy. Indeed these are the two necessary presuppositions, but French activism could induce some suspicion for the probable will of an intention to exercise the French supremacy in European ambit. Germany, the only country that can exercise continental leadership, is experiencing a period of uncertainty, due to the decline of Chancellor Merkel and an uncertain foreign policy direction, also due to internal tensions and the slowdown of the economy. The factor that could erase suspicions about the real French intentions is that of Paris's willingness to share its atomic bomb at the community level. France is the only continental nuclear power, due to the choice, made in the second half of the fifties of the last century, to proceed individually, rather than together with Italy and Germany, in the construction of the atomic bomb. Now a common European army, in order to have a consistent geopolitical weight, has a completely different consistency if it can dispose, at the deterrent level, of the nuclear weapon. However, it is also necessary to make considerations on the perimeter of a common European military force, in fact we could think of a reduced involvement on the basis of the conviction of Brussels membership, currently, in fact, the Eastern European states do not seem to present that sharing necessary European values ​​and this leads to the reasoning of a re-discussion of the standards of access to the Union or solutions of the European type at different speeds to be applied not only on economic issues, but also to political and military ones. As we can see, the construction of the alternative to the Atlantic Alliance, although necessary, presents several question marks, which will have to be solved if we want to arrive at a positive solution, which allows the Union to play an autonomous and important role in international politics .