Insisting that all security issues be addressed and resolved through NATO—with Washington in charge of policy—is a manifestation of obsolete thinking that imposes needless burdens and responsibilities onto the United States. It is a strategy reflecting national narcissism.

Not only should the major European powers, through either the EU or another “Europeans only” mechanism, oversee dealing with all modest challenges on Europe itself—they should have responsibility for addressing problems in the Middle East and North Africa (also known as the Greater Middle East). That region is adjacent to Europe but thousands of miles from the American homeland. It is unfair and unrealistic for Washington to insist on directing efforts to preserve stability, protect the oil flow, prevent human rights abuses and confront the multitude of other problems that bedevil that chronically volatile part of the world. Developments in the Greater Middle East have a direct impact to varying degrees on the well-being of European countries. The wave of refugees currently fleeing war-torn Middle East nations and causing political, economic and social strains throughout Europe is an example of the region’s substantial relevance to the continent.

The impact of adverse Greater Middle East developments on the United States is far milder by virtue of greater distance. America’s minimal dependence on oil from that area also gives this country more options than those available to European powers. Moreover, Washington’s track record in trying to manage Greater Middle East affairs to maintain stability there is dismal. Even before the recent U.S.-led fiascos in Iraq, Libya and Syria, America’s meddling had created far more problems than it solved. The 9/11 attacks were an especially graphic manifestation of blowback from Washington’s clumsy, tone-deaf behavior.

Given their own history of colonial misdeeds in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (especially by Britain and France), the European powers would confront significant obstacles of their own to developing a united, coherent policy regarding the turbulent Greater Middle East. But they could scarcely do worse than the U.S. record. Since they have more at stake than does America with respect to Middle East affairs, they should have responsibility for policy toward their difficult neighbors. American involvement, to the extent that it takes place at all, should be confined to a marginal, supportive role.

THE MOST plausible case for preserving a dominant U.S. role in transatlantic security affairs through NATO is that it would be an insurance policy against the re-emergence of a rogue great power that could pose a broad, lethal security menace. U.S. leaders and those in some European members of NATO clearly have designated Russia for that role already. But their view is based either on misperceptions or a deliberate attempt to create a new rationale for preserving and expanding NATO.

Whatever the motive, the strategy is both dangerous and unnecessary. A willingness on the part of the Western powers to accept a modest Russian sphere of influence and treat that country’s government with greater respect would solve most of the current problems in East-West relations and markedly reduce tensions. Adopting a less confrontational course, however, requires more realistic thinking on the part of U.S. policymakers. In particular, it means recognizing that spheres of influence are still very much a part of the international system and that major powers are likely to insist on enjoying that prerogative.

Unfortunately, too many U.S. officials seemingly regard the idea that major powers will insist on maintaining spheres of influence as distasteful and illegitimate. Both Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush’s second secretary of state, and John Kerry, Barack Obama’s second secretary of state, made that argument explicitly. They clearly were not willing to acknowledge that Russia could have such a zone of preeminence. Indeed, Rice condemned the entire concept of spheres of influence as “archaic.”

Adopting a more realistic, nuanced position also would require modifying the professed faith of U.S. officialdom that the United States is the leader—and has been since the end of World War II—of a liberal, “rules-based,” international order. Under that system, all countries are supposed to abide by the strictures of international law and not threaten, intimidate or attack other countries.

The history of the post-World War II era, however, confirms that the United States and its allies have violated those principles whenever it seemed convenient to do so. It is very hard to square a liberal, rules-based international system with episodes such as the U.S.-led military interventions in Vietnam and Iraq, NATO’s military missions in the Balkans during the 1990s, the NATO-assisted overthrow of Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi, or the ongoing military meddling by the United States and several allies in Syria.

Respecting spheres of influence would require a reduced definition of Washington’s own power prerogatives. U.S. leaders implicitly assert the right to intervene anywhere in the world to advance the country’s foreign policy objectives. In practice, recent generations of policymakers have globalized the Monroe Doctrine; to them, America’s rightful sphere of influence is “the sphere”—planet Earth.

But Russia and other major powers are not willing to accord the United States the status of global hegemon. They are digging-in their heels and insisting that Washington respect their own (much more modest) spheres of influence. For Russia, that means asserting preeminence regarding nations along its borders in both Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Moscow is not alone in pushing back against Washington’s attempts at asserting global hegemony. China’s actions in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait provide ample indications that Beijing is setting limits to what it will tolerate from the United States.

To prevent the escalation of dangerous tensions with Moscow (and Beijing), U.S. leaders must dial-back their insistence that all nations, even great powers, adhere to the principles of a U.S.-led liberal, rules-based, international order. That system has been more fictional, or at least aspirational, than factual in any case. To maintain peace, American policymakers must accept that Russia and other great powers will insist upon and act according to the reality of spheres of influence. The objective of the EU powers, with Washington’s quiet, limited support, should be to place some limits on the extent of the Russian sphere of influence, since at some point, Russia’s concept will impinge on significant EU interests. It is the mission of effective diplomacy to sort out such matters and set workable, recognizable limits on the ambitions of contending parties. But seeking to delegitimize the entire concept of spheres of influence is a nonstarter for even reasonably cordial East-West relations.

THE BASIC principles of an improved transatlantic security relationship are reasonably straightforward. One recognizes that while American and European security interests overlap, they also diverge in many cases, and require a more flexible security structure so that the United States does not intervene in every unpleasant development that Europe might encounter. Only when vital interests on both sides of the Atlantic are at stake is joint action warranted. Less severe and more geographically limited problems in Europe can and should be addressed by regional or even subregional actors.

A second component acknowledges that the European Union already is a leading global economic player, and that it is important for the European nations acting either through that body or another European-only mechanism to play a security role commensurate with that economic power. Accepting such a change in the transatlantic power structure means understanding how much the world has changed since the United States put a weak, devastated Europe behind the American security shield seven decades ago.

A third feature of a more enlightened, effective policy recognizes that Russia, for all its flaws, is not a messianic expansionist power. Treating Russia as merely a more recent incarnation of the Soviet Union has been counterproductive, if not outright corrosive to prospects for regional and global peace. Moscow does not pose an existential threat either to the United States or to Europe. Russia may behave from time to time as an abrasive—even overbearing—power. But the Kremlin’s conduct is not out of the ordinary in how major regional powers tend to treat smaller, weaker neighbors. Russia’s disruptive behavior is far more limited—both in intensity and scope—than the kind of threat that such countries as Napoleonic France, Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union posed. The United States must grasp that crucial difference. A robust, engaged European security entity is quite capable of balancing a relatively mundane, if somewhat prickly, regional power like Russia. The United States should let such balancing behavior take its normal course.

The final component of a new U.S. policy would avoid trying to enshrine an exaggerated, inconsistent and largely aspirational liberal international order as the operational reality in global or even European affairs. Longstanding features of international politics still apply, despite Western rhetoric to the contrary. Such features as security zones and spheres of influence are key aspects of international relations, however much some policymakers wish to deny that reality. A new, more effective transatlantic security strategy must acknowledge and respect a reasonable Russian sphere of influence on its perimeter, including in Eastern Europe. It would be a policy based on both realism and restraint.