What Outlasts America First

Two Days in October

On October 7, 2026, Marco Rubio stood on the Pnyx hill in Athens, the Acropolis rising behind him, and spoke about the future of Western civilization. The American secretary of state invoked ancient Greece, Rome, and the traditions that had carried European political and intellectual life across the Atlantic. He called for renewed national confidence, military strength, industrial ambition, and cooperation between the United States and Europe.

The appearance was carefully staged. The American side had requested the historic venue; the Greek government made it available. The U.S. Embassy assembled an invited audience of political, diplomatic, and business figures, and American reporting noted the address's presidential presentation. Greek officials had their own reasons to welcome Rubio. The two countries were deepening their defense and energy relationships, while Athens valued a political connection that might endure beyond the current American administration. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis later congratulated Rubio on a speech he expected to resonate well beyond its setting.¹

The encounter showed how a smaller ally can exercise influence without controlling the decisions of a larger one. Greece offered diplomatic hospitality, a distinguished audience, and a stage of unusual historical prestige. Washington obtained a setting in which to articulate a renewed Western identity. The two governments participated in the same event for partly different purposes.

Two days later, European Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič emerged from negotiations in Beijing with a preliminary understanding on Chinese vehicle exports, European market access, and rare-earth licensing. According to his account, the proposed arrangement would reduce Chinese hybrid and plug-in-hybrid vehicle exports to the European Union by more than half over four years and improve access to China for products representing roughly €4 billion in existing European exports. The parties had not finalized implementation, and European political consideration remained ahead.²

The Beijing discussions were not a declaration of friendship or the abandonment of Europe's commercial defenses. They involved concessions extracted amid serious disagreements over Chinese industrial competition. That is precisely what made them revealing. Europe could negotiate firmly with Beijing while preserving its American security partnerships.

Athens and Beijing were not opposite European choices. They showed two activities carried out at once: cultivating a security relationship across the Atlantic and negotiating economic interests across a geopolitical divide. Together they raised a question extending beyond either event. As the United States renegotiates the costs of international leadership, how will its partners use the room they gain—or seek—to make decisions of their own?

The argument of this essay is that hedging changes international influence when the institutions built as insurance acquire continuing value of their own. Those institutions can alter an ally's bargaining position long before they replace American protection. Whether the result is a stronger alliance or a more decentralized order depends on which capabilities can be built, sustained, and used.

The Bargain Behind Leadership

The order established after 1945 rested on American economic and military strength, but its durability cannot be explained by superiority alone. The United States supported European reconstruction, provided security guarantees, promoted commerce, and helped establish institutions through which governments coordinated their interests. These arrangements served American strategic objectives. They also gave participating countries reasons to remain involved: protection, markets, access to capital and technology, and expectations of continuity.

The system was neither equal nor consistently governed by its professed principles. Washington often applied pressure and sometimes intervened against the wishes of other governments. Nevertheless, repeated cooperation became embedded in military procedures, financial practices, production networks, and diplomatic expectations. American leadership operated partly through institutions that reduced the need to bargain anew over every decision.

Those arrangements carried domestic costs. American communities experienced industrial dislocation, unequal gains from globalization, and controversy over overseas commitments. Trade was not the sole source of these changes; technology, domestic economic policy, and demography also mattered. But the distribution of international benefits and obligations became a persistent political issue.

America First recast that dispute as a demand for more explicit returns from American power: greater allied defense contributions, more favorable trading terms, and stronger protection for domestic industry. Its supporters point to longstanding imbalances in allied burden-sharing and strategic supply chains. Critics question whether the methods of renegotiation undermine the confidence on which American leadership also depends.

These positions need not be reduced to an argument between strength and restraint. A demanding renegotiation can produce a more capable alliance; it can also encourage partners to build alternatives to dependence on the negotiator. What separates those outcomes is not the volume of concessions obtained today but the organization of capabilities and relationships tomorrow.

After Athens had suffered reverses in the Social War, Isocrates argued in On the Peace that voluntary cooperation and peaceful commerce offered a different basis for prosperity from costly coercion. He was writing about a radically different political order, yet his underlying question remains useful: when does extracting more from a relationship begin to diminish the value of the relationship itself?³

What America First Adds

Not every investment in autonomy is a response to Trump. Russia's invasion of Ukraine changed Europe's assessment of military danger. China's industrial growth and technological capacity intensified competition in both Europe and Asia. Pandemic disruptions, energy shocks, and restrictions on critical materials exposed supply vulnerabilities. These forces would have induced adjustment under many American administrations.

The additional effect of America First is an altered assessment of future American behavior. Allies must consider not only whether Washington possesses the capacity to help but whether access to that capacity will remain predictable across governments, negotiations, and crises. Where that uncertainty matters, it can influence the design of new investments: who controls them, where they are located, whether they can operate without foreign authorization, and what premium governments will pay to secure that option.

Hedging does not require a prediction of abandonment. A government invests in an alternative when the expected harm it can avert is worth more than the cost of creating and maintaining it. That calculation depends on the perceived risk of disruption, the damage that disruption would cause, and the extent to which a feasible substitute would provide protection.

The distinction between complements and substitutes follows naturally. When no credible alternative exists, new allied capacity generally complements an American guarantee. When alternatives are technically feasible and affordable, some investments also become substitutes for particular American services or permissions. Governments can pursue both strategies within the same alliance.

This supplies a test of America First's contribution. If uncertainty about Washington matters, governments should show a greater willingness to pay for capabilities that are independently controlled—even where equivalent allied equipment or supply arrangements appear cheaper. Announcing autonomy does not establish that such decisions have been made. Procurement contracts, technical control, operational performance, and actual bargaining behavior provide stronger evidence.

From Insurance to Bargaining Power

The European Union's Security Action for Europe program, established in May 2025, offers a concrete institutional test. SAFE makes available up to €150 billion in loans to support common defense procurement. Eligible procurements generally limit components originating outside the EU, EEA-EFTA states, and Ukraine to 35 percent of estimated component costs. For specified advanced defense products, contractors must retain authority over design changes and substitutions without restrictions imposed by third countries or their entities.⁴

These provisions are not proof that European producers have reached efficient scale or that procurement has already satisfied the ceilings. They are rules shaping which capabilities governments seek to build and control. Europe is attempting to address urgent defense shortages while retaining more authority over the systems it buys.

The distinction matters politically. A country may continue depending on American nuclear deterrence while gaining the ability to service aircraft, modify software, manufacture ammunition, or deploy conventional equipment without waiting for an external supplier's approval. Such capabilities create choices inside the alliance before they create any plausible option to leave it.

The motives are mixed. Russia's military pressure and European underinvestment provide strong reasons to expand production. But the European Parliament's January 2026 security-and-defense resolution also warned about unpredictable American policy and called for contingency plans in the event of a rapid U.S. troop withdrawal, while explicitly recognizing the United States as essential to European security.⁵ That evidence establishes uncertainty as one stated consideration, not its share of the overall increase in defense investment.

Three stages must be distinguished. First, a government plans an outside option, through rules, financing, or a proposed production facility. Second, it acquires a usable option, with adequate scale, personnel, maintenance, and reliable output. Third, it exercises bargaining freedom, making procurement, operational, or diplomatic decisions it previously could not make without American agreement. The stages are related but none follows automatically from the last.

There is also a condition for persistence. Once created, an industry can gain customers, skilled workers, supplier networks, export markets, and political constituencies. Continuing to operate it may cost less than starting again, and its insurance value can endure after tensions ease. Yet these benefits depend on efficient scale. If European governments divide orders among incompatible national programs, unit costs rise, facilities remain underused, and established American suppliers retain an advantage. Under those conditions, an expensive hedge may wither instead of becoming durable autonomy.

Thus the ratchet is conditional: uncertainty can initiate investment, but capability and continuing usefulness determine whether it survives.

Three Clocks, Two Security Frontiers

The process operates on three different clocks. Electoral time is measured in years: governments change tariffs, budgets, messages, and diplomatic priorities. Institutional time is longer: firms relocate production, ministries build procurement systems, and armed forces learn to operate new equipment. Structural time extends across decades: demography, productivity, debt, education, and technological capacity determine which commitments societies can sustain.

A change on the first clock can set the second in motion without controlling it. A later American administration can offer reassurance or remove a tariff. It cannot assume that the industrial and political incentives attached to the alternative arrangements built during the dispute have vanished. Conversely, a project announced in electoral time may never become an operational capability if structural resources are inadequate.

Europe and the Indo-Pacific reveal why no single outcome follows from this mechanism.

Europe is expanding conventional defense capacity against a backdrop of Russia's war in Ukraine and uncertainty about the long-term distribution of transatlantic responsibilities. The course of the war, the credibility of any settlement, and Russia's subsequent posture will affect the value of both independent European capabilities and American protection. The NATO allies reaffirmed Article 5 at Ankara in July 2026 while emphasizing greater European responsibility and closer transatlantic industrial cooperation.⁶

Nuclear deterrence imposes a further limit. France and the United Kingdom maintain national nuclear forces, but a comprehensive European alternative to American extended deterrence would require much more than increased defense expenditure. It would demand durable political commitments, command arrangements, and credibility under extreme risk. The March 2026 Franco-German declaration expressly described closer deterrence cooperation as adding to, not replacing, NATO's arrangements.⁷

In Northeast Asia the incentives differ. Japan and South Korea face a regional security environment shaped by China's growing military capabilities and North Korea's nuclear forces. Taiwan's security adds a further source of strategic risk, while Australia is deepening advanced military cooperation through AUKUS. Japan and the United States reaffirmed American defense commitments, including nuclear capabilities, in June 2026.⁸ Greater allied spending in this environment can deepen coordination with Washington because the most consequential American capabilities have few credible substitutes.

The contrast is not between an independent Europe and a dependent Asia. Both regions can invest simultaneously in self-protection and deeper alliance cooperation. The difference lies in which components of protection can be replaced or independently controlled. That distinction will shape the geopolitical consequences of the same American policy across different regions.

Four Paths Through the 2030s

The possibilities can be organized around two questions. Does the United States remain the indispensable security coordinator for major allied regions? And does economic organization increasingly follow security divisions, or continue to cross them? These dimensions interact, and different regions need not move together.

I. A Rebalanced Alliance

American protection remains credible and allied contributions rise within a shared institutional framework. Europe expands conventional capacity, but the new forces are integrated with NATO planning and operational structures. Japan, South Korea, and Australia deepen allied cooperation. Sensitive technologies and strategic supplies are sourced increasingly within trusted security networks.

This arrangement requires durable American assurances and allied willingness to treat additional capabilities as contributions to a common system. Its distinguishing result is greater allied strength without a substantial loss of U.S. coordinating authority. Its vulnerability is that tighter economic alignment can make production more expensive and encourage excluded countries to create alternatives of their own.

II. Managed Dual Dependence

American extended deterrence and strategic coordination remain central, while allies gain broader economic and selected operational choices. European producers develop usable alternative suppliers and more control over conventional defense systems. Governments continue trading with China while protecting sensitive sectors. In Asia, American security guarantees coexist with diversified commercial relationships.

The decisive change from 2026 is that hedging arrangements have become operational rather than aspirational. Washington still supplies protection that its partners cannot readily replace, but it has less leverage over selected procurement, industrial, and diplomatic decisions. This configuration persists if the major powers tolerate cross-bloc commerce and prevent security crises from turning every economic relationship into a strategic test.

III. Fortified Regional Blocs

Repeated security shocks and doubts about commitments accelerate both military decentralization and economic separation. Governments build regional production systems, restrict sensitive trade, and seek security arrangements less exposed to distant decisions. Such blocs do not emerge merely because countries want independence: they require political agreement within regions, industrial capacity, credible deterrence, and continuing domestic support.

The resulting order is costly. Production is duplicated, opportunities for trade narrow, and smaller countries face pressure to align with one security and industrial network. This path becomes visible when decentralized security institutions and bloc-aligned commerce reinforce one another, rather than when tariffs alone increase.

IV. Negotiated Multipolarity

Regional countries develop credible arrangements for major security responsibilities while commercial ties continue to cross political divisions. Europe acquires stronger command, logistical, intelligence, and deterrence arrangements; Asian regional security cooperation becomes more capable without depending on Washington to organize every response. The United States remains powerful, China remains commercially important, and other centers negotiate coalitions around particular interests.

This configuration demands the largest institutional transformation. It requires sustained fiscal capacity and political agreement, not simply additional procurement. Its advantage is greater freedom to cooperate across several networks; its weakness is the difficulty of organizing collective responses when no country or institution routinely supplies leadership.

The Order May Be Mixed

These four paths are best understood as regional configurations, not four mutually exclusive global destinations. Europe could develop managed dual dependence while the Indo-Pacific remained a more tightly organized American-centered security system. Within Europe, conventional procurement might become more independent while nuclear planning remained integrated with Washington. Such differences are part of the emerging order, not exceptions to the analysis.

Three observations would distinguish the paths. The first is indispensable security provision: who supplies nuclear deterrence, strategic intelligence, logistics, and crisis command? Continued American centrality separates the first two configurations from the more decentralized ones. The second is economic organization: do long-term production and technology commitments increasingly follow security blocs or cross them? That separates the first and third from the second and fourth. The third is effective discretion: which consequential decisions can a partner now make without American participation or approval? That detects shifts in influence within any configuration before alliances themselves change.

The difference between aspiration and achievement is essential. Budgets, declarations, and eligibility rules indicate intended adjustment. Competitive production, operational readiness, and decisions taken under pressure show whether new capabilities actually matter. Fiscal limits and industrial fragmentation can stop a transition even when its strategic motivation is strong.

What Remains

A post-America First order need not begin when a new administration changes course. Tariffs can be removed, alliances reaffirmed, and diplomatic language softened. At the same time, the capabilities established during a period of uncertainty may remain economically useful, politically supported, and strategically valuable.

They can have different consequences. Some reduce the cost of American leadership by creating more capable partners. Others reduce Washington's leverage over particular choices. Full strategic independence is not required for either result. The relevant change is a redistribution of effective discretion: what states can decide, finance, produce, or undertake without seeking the leading power's assistance or consent.

Thucydides preserved Pericles' warning that Athens had acquired an empire whose burdens could not safely be relinquished. The comparison with modern alliances is limited, but the difficulty he identified runs in two directions. Partners become dependent on a leading power's protection; the leading power becomes committed to relationships whose withdrawal could undermine its own position.⁹ These constraints do not disappear merely because one side demands a different bargain.

Cicero distinguished authority maintained through goodwill from authority dependent upon fear, while Laozi's image of the great state as the lower reaches of a river located influence in the ability to draw others into a relationship. Neither writer supplies a blueprint for the twenty-first century. Together with Isocrates and Thucydides, they direct attention to something that measures of national power cannot reveal on their own: the terms on which other political communities continue to cooperate.¹⁰

The United States in 2040 can retain formidable military, financial, and technological capabilities. China can enlarge its commercial reach without commanding the political allegiance of its trading partners. Europe can become more capable without leaving NATO. The international order depends on how these overlapping relationships are organized, not on a simple exchange of one hegemon for another.

America First seeks a different return on American power. Its more lasting consequence may be the new capacity other countries acquire while adjusting to those demands. If those capabilities become useful and durable, they will change the terms on which American leadership is exercised—even where the alliance itself endures.

Source Notes

1. Associated Press, “From the Acropolis, Rubio urges Europe to defend Western values and strengthen alliance with US”, October 7, 2026; The Washington Post, “Rubio's speech in Greece hints at grander ambitions”, October 7, 2026; Proto Thema, report on the American request for the Pnyx venue, October 7, 2026; Office of the Greek Prime Minister, transcript of Mitsotakis's remarks to Rubio, October 7, 2026. The “presidential” description is a characterization in reporting, not an announced candidacy.

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2. Reuters, “China, EU strike deal to halve Chinese hybrid exports”, October 9, updated October 10, 2026; Associated Press, report on the interim trade understanding, October 9, 2026. The proposed reduction was a prospective outcome described by Šefčovič, not an observed change in shipments.

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3. Isocrates, On the Peace, especially §§20–23, on the economic and political costs of coercive relationships and the benefits of willing cooperation; George Norlin translation. This is a paraphrase of the argument, not a quotation.

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4. Council of the European Union, SAFE adoption release, May 27, 2025; Regulation (EU) 2025/1106, especially Article 16(10)–(11). The 35% limit is an eligibility ceiling on component cost and does not describe observed procurement outcomes.

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5. European Parliament, Implementation of the Common Security and Defence Policy — Annual Report 2025, adopted January 21, 2026; European Parliamentary Research Service, summary of the report, January 2026. The resolution expresses the Parliament's position, not a binding decision by all EU governments.

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6. NATO, Ankara Summit Declaration, July 8, 2026, especially §§1–4.

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7. Élysée, Joint Declaration of President Macron and Chancellor Merz, March 2, 2026. The declaration states that the cooperation will “add to, not substitute for” NATO deterrence and nuclear-sharing arrangements.

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8. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Joint Statement on the June 2026 Japan–U.S. Extended Deterrence Dialogue, June 10, 2026; the dialogue took place in Tokyo June 8–9.

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9. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, II.63.1–3, Pericles' warning on the difficulty of relinquishing empire. See the Perseus collection (Charles Foster Smith translation). The essay applies the problem of reciprocal constraint analogically; Thucydides was describing an empire, not a modern treaty alliance.

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10. Cicero, De Officiis, II.22–29, Walter Miller translation; Laozi, Daodejing, Chapter 61, D. C. Lau translation. The discussion paraphrases their interstate and political arguments rather than reproducing translated passages verbatim.

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Methodological note: The hedging mechanism is a conceptual proposition, not an estimated causal model. No numerical share of European or Asian defense adjustment is attributed to America First. The four paths specify conditional institutional configurations rather than probabilities or predicted political outcomes. This essay evaluates developments known through October 11, 2026.