BRUSSELS — The United States risks moving from a policy of “America First” to “America alone” if it antagonizes its allies in Europe, Belgium’s new defense minister warned.
“If you chase your allies away, in such a brash way, then you’re going to stay ‘America alone,’” Defense Minister Theo Francken told POLITICO in an interview.
Washington’s brazen moves in the past week — when it blew past European leaders in starting negotiations with Moscow over the war in Ukraine — have shocked officials in Europe.
“We have a U.S. president that speaks very loud, and carries a big stick,” Francken said, a contrast with former President Theodore Roosevelt’s big stick policy.
But, he said, NATO “is the strongest military alliance in the history of mankind. Even with an ‘America First’ policy, you still have every interest” in keeping the alliance intact.
In facing the blowback over the U.S. administration’s maneuvering, Europe doesn’t have the leadership to respond, Francken said: “There is a power vacuum right now. There is a problem with leadership, a really big problem.”
“We also sometimes speak very loud, but we don’t have a stick,” the minister said.
His New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) party that now leads the Belgian government is ideologically aligned with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, as well as Poland’s Donald Tusk and the man expected to become chancellor in Germany, conservative leader Friedrich Merz, Francken said.
He said this “small group” of center-right to hard-right forces, which could also include the Netherlands, could take leadership of key files like defense, migration and more.
The 47-year-old Francken is a key figure in the Flemish-nationalist N-VA. He is a hardliner on migration, and was central to the Belgian government’s breakup in 2018 over a disagreement on the issue.
European defense consolidation
Faced with pressure to boost spending on defense and to increase arms production, Europe’s fragmented defense industry needs to consolidate to compete, Francken said.
“We’re getting beaten because we’re not efficient enough … We’re also constantly competing with each other,” he said, arguing that national defense firms have received preferential treatment from their own governments but haven’t managed to join up and speed up innovation in the sector.
“I personally think you have to move to a situation where you have two, three or four European [massive] companies” that can produce and develop military equipment much more efficiently, he said. “A couple of large players that exist now should merge.”
Belgium is already an observer in Europe’s Future Air Combat System project developing a sixth-generation fighter jet, Francken said, and he will soon propose becoming an observer in the Main Ground Combat System, a Franco-German program to develop a main battle tank.
Belgium — which hosts NATO’s headquarters — has fallen short of the military alliance’s defense spending target of 2 percent of GDP for years. In 2024, it spent only 1.3 percent on its military. The new government has set the goal of reaching 2 percent — though only in four years’ time, as the country is undertaking a deep reform to plug its budget deficit.
Francken said his government is in talks with the European Commission to allow for defense spending flexibility, including allowing it to reach the NATO threshold outside of EU rules that limit deficits to 3 percent of GDP.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s most recent suggestions were “promising,” he said.
Boots on the ground
The new Belgian government is one of the few to say it would contribute to a peacekeeping force in Ukraine. But Francken underlined it would only be under certain conditions.
“If there is a peace deal, and part of that peace deal is an international peacekeeping force … with clear rules of engagement, with clear air support, clear security guarantees, then it seems logical that if we’re asked to contribute to keep the peace in the international coalition, we’d contribute,” he said.
He confirmed that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on his visit to Brussels last week clarified the U.S. wouldn’t send soldiers to Ukraine.
But, Francken said, the U.S. “didn’t discuss air support, didn’t support command and control, didn’t discuss air to air refueling.” Those things aren’t off the table, he argued.