The Decoupling Dilemma: How Allied Distrust Weakens American Power and made Denmark create the "Night Watch"
November 28, AD2025
In international relations, we use the word âdecouplingâ to describe the deliberate effort by one country or bloc to reduce how much it depends on another. The focus is on key areas of power and vulnerability, especially:
trade (imports and exports)
investment and finance
technology and data flows
supply chains and production
To the point, decoupling is about loosening tight economic and technological ties so that a crisis in one country does not automatically cascade into another, or so that one country cannot easily use those ties to coerce or weaken your country.
These days you most often see the term in debates over:
the future of U.S.âChina relations, like moving production out of China to places like Vietnam, India, Mexico or reshoring to the USA itself
restricting technology exports in fields such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and 5G and screening or limiting Chinese investment in sensitive industries
rethinking security alliances and dependencies
reducing energy dependence, as when Europe tried to pull away from Russian gas after 2014 and especially after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
reducing dependence on strategic and rare natural resources like minerals from countries and regions that might turn on you or are likely to become otherwise unstable
Decoupling is also linked the idea of the strategic dilemma. A dilemma is a difficult choice between two or more alternatives, neither of which is clearly preferable. It is a situation that often results in an uncomfortable or unpleasant outcome no matter what, but you are in a position where you have to pick one. The best bet is normally to pick the option that may provide short-term pain to long term benefit; especially if you think a bad situation is the new normal and a not temporary difficulty. Generally speaking, strategic problems tend to be long term. Such as if you are a weaker country you need long term solutions because the factors that make you vulnerable like geographic location or population size cannot be simply changed. However, if you are stronger, you can risk thinking and acting with a short term mindset. The more powerful you are the larger your acceptable margin for error, but repeated and compounding errors will weaken even the most powerful country.
It is important to understand what these terms mean and what they tell us about attitudes and intentions. When decoupling happens it is the complete opposite of a vote of confidence. It is a open or stealth declaration of concern or worry at best, and distrust and suspicion at worst. Stealth because you do not have to scream âI do not trust you!â No, instead you can simply do it while paying lip service to old relationships and flattering governments and administrations who do not pay attention to the how international relations have worked. Frankly, when you are dealing with a foreign leader or movement that does know, nor care to know, how great powers remain great powers, it is not your job to waste your governmentâs time attempting to wise them up. You can move on. This is an autumn where much of the Western world is deciding to move on from the USA and it may turn into a winter of American discontent, because much American prosperity has been built on the USAâs preeminence in the West.
Americaâs allies, know they are weaker than the United States, and if the USA is unreliable they have to decouple with an intentionality that will render them less vulnerable to American caused problems or to manipulation and blackmail due to dependency on the USA. This attitude is a problem for the USA, but a dilemma for its allies. The decisions they are being forced to make to solve their dilemmas will leave the USA and the American people weaker and poorer. Essentially the USA has put itself in the position of hoping their most important allies are too incompetent to pull off a successful decoupling. It does not matter who you are, but wish-casting for someone else to fail is a foolish and passive strategy. But that does not mean that the decisions will be easy.
True North, Canada Knows no King but Charles III
First, Canadian defense experts, active and retired are planning to secure their country against the United States and are doing so seriously. Here is their dilemma:
How do you stay militarily modern and interoperable with the US, without being permanently dependent on US industry and while also worrying about China getting everyoneâs secrets anyway?
Many are worried about the eagerness of the USA to share the military equipment with governments that do not have a natural affinity for the West. The current US administration is eager to make peace in the Middle East, a region that most American actually want to have less to do with. But, in their efforts push their agenda in the Middle East, the US government is giving regimes that share little of Americaâs old values or principles access to top-tier military hardware. Yes, other western countriesâ defense industries are doing the same, but those tended to be neutral countries rather than the leader NATO on whom all the other depended. Now this kind of arms dealing was always problematic, but is made more problematic by the claws of China in the region. The fear is that if you buy American equipment, and the Middle East also buys it, how long before the China is able to get all the secrets from their âeasy to bribeâ friends in the region? If so do you as a Western country like Canada really want to buy war-fighting kit that is exposed to the Chinese? Alternatively, you do not want to be cut off from top tier American tech yourself.
As I mention dedicated minds in Canada are considering what to do and many are advocating for a strong Canadian defense industry. For example, due to the current relationship breakdown among the North American neighbors sharing the worldâs longest border, the US produced F-35 stealth jet is a less than optimal choice for Canada to buy, but it is currently better than alternative peer aircraft like the Swedish produced Saab JAS 39 Gripen E/F. In that case, Canada should still buy the F-35 to retain high-end capability and US/NATO interoperability, but simultaneously pursue long-term autonomy by building a serious domestic aerospace defense industry.
But, and this is the risk to America, Canadian strategists argue for buying fewer F-35s, using the budget savings to fund Canadian aerospace R&D and manufacturing. They want to deliberately trade current fleet size now for greater industrial and strategic autonomy over time. However, the Royal Canadian Air Force is too small to sustain a bleeding edge aerospace defense industry; they would have to compete on the global market with the USA and find markets to export Canadian hardware which would act as a subsidy for the Canadian R&D budget.
Bottom line: fewer sales and more competition for the US defense industry and the jobs dependent on it. The only way to forestall this would be to repair the relationship with Canada or hope they chicken-out and fail. It is a relationship that will not be repaired without trustworthy American leadership. SoâŠ
Across the Pond, Europe
In Europe, the adjustment to American untrustworthiness in the face of Russian aggression and increasing fear of China continues.
French President Emmanuel Macron has announced plans to reintroduce voluntary military service for youths. I know it sounds odd because military service is already voluntary in France. So let me unpack it in North American speak: what Macron is doing is recreating a social norm and expectation around national service, whereby it will become a more direct path that links hitting adulthood to then serving France. Sure they can do that already, but there is currently no formal program to make it a part of a limited service contract: in this case he proposes 10 months. Currently if you volunteer you sign a regular military contract of two-to-ten years of service. Under his proposed plan you would effectively have a voluntary draft for 18 year olds to serve a reduced term. But, and this is where I think Macron is showing his intelligence, he is deliberately creating a social expectation of service to your country. The ideal of service and sacrifice will be necessary to make the French military deterrent really credible. As Napoleon the Greatâs favorite marching song went âTremblez, ennemis de la France.â
âThe only way to avoid danger is to prepare for it,â â President Emmanuel Macron
Europe is also declaring orbital military independence from the USA without outright saying so.
European Space Agency (ESA) member states have agreed a record âŹ22.1bn three-year budget. Critically this comes a new mandate for an explicit military role. Officially this is directed at Russia and China and in response to the lessons from the Ukraine war. But what are those lessons in 2025? Unsaid is that this is about being able to counter Russia and China without too much dependence on the USA. The European Space Agency is an intergovernmental organization of European countries that develops and coordinates space missions, satellites, and space science programs, and is basically like a European NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in one and may be turning into a European Space Force too. They should go full star fleet.
Interestingly the Danish â who started 2025 with an unexpected American threat to seize Greenland â have been big boosters of the project, using their rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union to launch the idea for discussion at the Space for European Resilience conference last month. This has led to the new European Resilience from Space (ERS) project, which was granted about âŹ1.2bn, including a plan to build a military-grade âsystem of systemsâ that links European national satellites. The national defense ministries of the member countries plan to appropriate more money for the program. The new plan will make military programs 5% of the ESA budget which will work out to âŹ370 million per year. This should be seen as the beginning of something new and lasting. Yes, it is small compared to the US Space Force budget of $25 billion per year. But it is an initial investment to make Europe competitive in space.
Another King in the North?
The government of Frederik X, King of Denmark, led by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark and Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen of Greenland has established a Nightâs Watch. Okay, no warriors pledging to defend the realms of men, the Nattevagt or Night Watch is a special monitoring group of Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. While Greenland is an autonomous part of the Danish Realm with its own parliament for domestic issues, the responsibility for foreign relations belongs to the government based in Europe led by Ms. Frederiksen, the leader of the Social Democracy party. To secure the realm, literally during the night, the Night Watch team notes US President Donald John Trumpâs activities, tweets, and statements, looking for any sign of threat, and producing a report at 7am the next day for the government. Denmark a NATO member should not think this is necessary. Again, the Europeans are demonstrating they do not trust America. Denmark, formerly a loyal ally, now believes â publiclyâ that the United States government would take advantage of the time zone difference to conqueror Greenland before the Realm government in Copenhagen could respond, basically an attack an sleeping country. De facto Denmark is not a US ally anymore. American voters should not shrug this off.
The false realism of the Trump-Vance team is a gift to US enemies. Americaâs opponents are salivating not trembling.
La victoire en chantant nous ouvre la barriĂšre ;
La liberté guide nos pas.
Et du nord au midi la trompette guerriĂšre
A sonnĂ© lâheure des combats.
Tremblez, ennemis de la France,
Rois ivres de sang et dâorgueil !
Le peuple souverain sâavance ;
Tyrans, descendez au cercueil :
La république nous appelle,
Sachons vaincre ou sachons périr ;
Un Français doit vivre pour elle,
Pour elle un Français doit mourir.
Victory, hymning loud, our pathway makes,
While freedom guides our steps aright ;
From North to South the martial trumpet wakes
To sound the moment for the fight.
Tremble, ye enemies of France,
Kings who with blood have slaked your thirst !
The sovereign people see advance
To hurl ye to your grave accursed.
Come, brethren, the Republic calls ;
For her our hearts and lives we give ;
For her a Frenchman gladly falls,
For her alone he seeks to live.
âLe Chant du DĂ©part