Can Europe Fill the Void in U.S. Military Leadership?

This article lays out the case for why Washington's European allies are incapable, both now and in the foreseeable future, of replacing American military leadership. Despite recent substantial force contributions in Iraq and Afghanistan and small-scale interventions in Africa, European military capabilities are limited, declining, and unlikely to rebound, regardless of whether the United States is in strategic retreat. As a result, the United States faces a bleak choice: not whether to trade American global leadership for an equally benevolent European world order, but whether to give up its mantle of leadership and thereby create a void that may be filled by unfriendly, if not overtly hostile, actors.