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So what will NATO be able to do, now that the US no longer sees it as a priority?
It was November 2001. NATO Secretary General Geoffrey Robertson was visiting Russia, which had expressed sympathy and willingness to cooperate after the September 11 attacks, especially on the fight against Islamic terrorists, such as those whom Vladimir Putin was blaming for the war in Chechnya.
Following tensions with Russia over NATO's air campaign in Yugoslavia and the decision to admit former Soviet states into the alliance, Robertson believed it could truly be the beginning of a new era in NATO-Russia relations.
He had already discussed with Putin the possibility of Russia joining NATO: "I told them they could apply for NATO membership if they wanted, but that there would be no tolerance for the criteria."
They reminded each other that in the entire history of NATO, the mutual defense clause, Article 5, had only been used once, and not against Russia, but when terrorists attacked America. And then Putin, as Robertson recalled in an interview with BBC Radio 4, told him in English: “If what you propose can work, we will change the world!”
In retrospect, we can laugh today at the naive optimism of that era. But despite all the evidence of Russian aggression in recent years, for most Europeans NATO has remained a shield, a guarantee of protection.
After the invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland rushed to abandon their neutrality and join the alliance. Meanwhile, the United States “remains committed” to NATO, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in Brussels. But he said it “will no longer tolerate an unbalanced relationship that encourages dependency.”
Europe must “take responsibility for its own security.” He spoke of the need to make NATO “great again.” Hegseth’s warning came shortly after President Trump announced his desire to invade Canada and Greenland. Nothing in Article 5 would allow its most powerful member to invade the territory of an ally. Then came Trump’s vicious attack on Ukrainian President Zelensky, which caused another worrying rift between the US and Europe.
This is NATO, but not as we know it. However, if this has been described as shocking to many European citizens, defense experts are unmoved. “I am shocked that NATO has been surprised. The Europeans have ignored the warnings that have been given for a long time. Now the US is telling us: Solve this problem yourself, because we have other priorities,” says Ed Arnold, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
Arnold, a former U.S. Army infantry officer, was working at NATO’s European headquarters when Russia invaded Odessa in 2014. Even before Trump’s reelection, America was “frustrated with Europeans not shouldering their share of the security burden, especially when their own risks are much greater.” The U.S. currently has 80,000 troops in Europe, and Trump wants them home. Europeans who believed that Article 5 gave them automatic protection against aggression were wrong all along, Arnold points out.
“The treaty was specifically written to be ambiguous, precisely because the Americans did not want to get involved in World War III,” he underlines. In fact, each member of the alliance is responsible for deciding what it deems necessary to protect the integrity of the alliance.
And it may not be military aid. “If Russia were to invade and annex Estonia and the US were to send even a single AWACS surveillance plane, then it would be respecting the letter, not the spirit, of Article 5,” Arnold says.
And there is no certainty that NATO would agree to this article being mentioned. The leaders of Hungary and Slovakia are openly sympathetic to Russia, and they have a vote in the council. “For some of the younger generation, NATO is not the Cold War organization that protected us for 80 years, but an institution that has failed,” Arnold says.
So what will NATO be able to do, now that the US no longer sees it as a priority? And who will take primary responsibility when America withdraws? The Supreme Allied Commander Europe has always been an American.
But that could change, says Gesine Weber, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund. Weber has written about the model of a “sleeping” NATO, which she says is the most reasonable response to uncertainty about the US commitment to the alliance.
Uncertainty, which Weber believes will not disappear even when Trump leaves office.
"The Europeans would be responsible for most of the conventional capabilities, but the US would remain involved in the deterrence mechanism. Thus, the nuclear umbrella would continue to exist," she emphasizes.
The US may remain permanently in the "backwaters", so European countries will have to invest much more in weapons, soldiers and equipment. For Europe to have true strategic autonomy, it will have to produce as many weapons as possible itself.
The European defense industry is not yet ready for this scenario. But Weber thinks it could provide a much-needed boost to European military production. In fact, some countries are already thinking in this direction.
It didn't get much attention in the media, but in October 2024, Sheffield Forgemasters in the UK signed an agreement to supply gun barrels to the German company Rheinmetall AG as part of the Trinity House Agreement.
Being outside the EU, the UK is not part of the European Defence Fund. But that may matter less than it once did. As geopolitical realities change, and the EU struggles to find consensus, Poland is more likely to find a suitable defence partner in Britain than in a very Putin-friendly Hungary.
But Zelensky's ambition for a "European army," an idea that was once part of the Eurosceptic lexicon, is unlikely to be realized. "This idea is out of the question. Because it would mean creating everything from scratch, which would take a lot of time and resources. It would be much easier for us to take advantage of the fact that the EU and other armies already have interoperability with each other," Weber emphasizes.
Ultimately, it's all driven by fear. Is the European public ready to live in a war economy? How worried is the rest of the EU and Britain about its newest members in the east?
If Western Europeans conclude that they have enough problems to solve at home, NATO will be de facto dead. But if Russia is once again perceived as an existential threat, then the alliance will be relevant for a long time to come. / Adapted from "Pamphlet" by "The New European"
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