In the March/April issue of the global edition of the Foreign Policy, Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University, argued the unthinkable: the retreat of the US from NATO. His article “Let Europe be Europe-Why the US must withdraw from NATO” could easily become the Manifesto or the flag ship of a new intellectual trend in the U.S. foreign policy community: the retrenchment school. Its core message is: come home America! Europe is mature enough to handle its own stuff. In the latest issue of FP Romania (the May/June issue), A. Wess Mitchell, an influent euroatlantic public intellectual, gave the reply

Dr. Bacevich’s argument that the United States should begin to downscale its security role in Europe in order to push the Europeans toward greater collective self-help is part of a larger intellectual trend toward strategic retrenchment that is gradually gaining traction in some circles in the U.S. foreign policy community. Similar views have been expressed about the U.S. role in Asia. This “tough love” philosophy has sprung up because of the growing awareness in the United States that the world is moving into more complex geopolitical waters. The goal of the retrenchers (finding intelligent, even unorthodox, ways to cope with systemic change) is noble, but their ideas are flawed. The prospect of devolving global security responsibilities to the regional level may seem seductive on a philosophical or emotional level to Americans suddenly absorbed with the advent of multipolarity. But it is a form of radical experimentation, and experimentation should be examined with greater scrutiny in geopolitics than in philosophy.

At the root of Bacevich’s argument is the assumption that it is the U.S. security presence itself that is acting as the main impediment to the European responsibility in the world; that, by sheltering Europe from