X Close

Why Nato fears for its future America could scale back its involvement under Trump

Biden meets not Putin. (Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg/ Getty)

Biden meets not Putin. (Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg/ Getty)


July 15, 2024   8 mins

This year’s Nato summit was supposed to be a muted, celebratory affair. In contrast with last year, when President Zelensky aired his fury about Ukraine being denied a clear path to membership, it was to be cohesive and restrained. Before gathering, the outgoing Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, had emphasised the importance of predictability, stability, and unity.

If there were fissures, they had been smoothed over: deviant Hungary, long a blemish on the pact’s public-facing unanimity, had agreed not to block military aid to Ukraine provided it would not have to partake in any Nato operations there. All members of the alliance were in total agreement on the basic facts of the war, Stoltenberg insisted. Under Biden’s steadfast leadership, he asserted, the world had united behind Ukraine.

The self-mythologising PR was fitting for a summit that was also the 75th anniversary of the alliance’s founding. And 75 years after the 12 original signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty gathered in Washington to pledge collective defence, the alliance and the world look very different. NATO has always cast itself as a moral arbiter, disseminating “values” and ideology, while simultaneously fostering member states’ dependency on the United States and securing American hegemony over Europe. But this vassalisation has reached a new stage since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The invasion brought a Cold War alliance of questionable 21st-century utility roaring back to life; the long-time neutral holdouts of Sweden and Finland have even opted to join. During the Cold War, NATO counted many of its most ardent critics among left-wing opponents of US militarism; today, its most prominent skeptics are on the Right, and include Donald Trump.

Small wonder, then that American domestic politics loomed large. Held just days ahead of the Republican National Convention, the gathering was timed perfectly to allow Nato leadership to ensure one of their key points for this year — that many hitherto freeloading allies had stepped up their defence spending — would be fresh in the minds of its Republican critics. Back during the now infamous 2018 summit, Trump lambasted flunkies for not paying their fair share and even threatened to withdraw the US from the alliance. This year, though, Nato leaders could boast that at least 20 out of 32 member states would be spending 2% of their GDP on defence. Both anxious Atlanticists and Nato sceptics would be reassured that the alliance was, as Stoltenberg said, adaptive and agile; it would endure, regardless of dramatic changes in political leadership in its member states. And it was responsive both to events on the ground and internal criticism.

But efforts to make the event about the steadiness and durability of Nato — a rare fulcrum of stability in an unpredictable world — were challenged by mounting concerns about the cognitive fitness of 81-year-old President Biden. Despite the usual pomp and pathos, along with attempts to pander to Trump Republicans, inevitably, it became a referendum on Biden’s age. Then, during the brief interlude between the summit and the start of the Republican National Convention, an assassination attempt on Trump’s life made it clear that there would be no assurances forthcoming about Nato’s future, that nothing would be predictable.

Things had begun on a triumphant note, in the Mellon Auditorium in Washington, where the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in 1949. There was no shortage of grandiosity on display. “The most successful military alliance in history”, claimed Stoltenberg, had now become the longest-lasting — outliving even the Delian League of ancient Greek city-states. The auditorium looked like Nato’s holy temple, with Biden describing the US commitment to the Alliance as a “sacred obligation”. His performance was better than at last month’s debate, but it wasn’t reassuring. His eyes were glued to the teleprompter as he seesawed back and forth between jingoistic shouting and barely audible, indecipherable mumbling. He managed to muddle through.

“Inevitably, it became a referendum on Biden’s age.”

The President’s lapses of memory and coherence weren’t such  a surprise. Earlier this year, Biden twice referred to dead European leaders — former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and former French President François Mitterrand — when referring to recent discussions with foreign counterparts. At the summit, Biden did not mistake contemporary leaders for those long dead, but he did confuse allies with enemies, calling Ukrainian President Zelensky “Putin” and Kamala Harris “Vice President Trump”.

With Biden faltering so badly, the spectre of a new Nato-sceptic Trump administration drew closer, prompting some of the more hawkish member states to tailor their talking points to address the Republicans. At one panel composed of the three top defence officials from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, participants spoke in a language they knew the Trump camp would understand: golf. “Nato is a club,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said. “When you have club rules, then you respect the rules and you expect that everyone will also respect the rules. When you pay your fee in the golf club, you can play. It doesn’t matter how big is your wallet.” They hammered away at the idea of all those members who were now spending 2% of GDP on defence, hoping to convince Republicans that Europe was now pulling its weight. And yet, as international relations theorist Patrick Porter told me, this “magical 2% figure” was arrived at with full US commitment in mind. Europeans are still avoiding the difficult question: if America scales back its commitments in Europe under a Trump presidency — many in his camp advocate for a “pivot to Taiwan” and a shift of focus to the Indo-Pacific — who will fill in the gap?

In fact, much of the summit did seem to be a carefully calibrated pitch to America — or at least those Nato sceptics at the RNC. Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti, whose country is a Nato aspirant, wrote a front-page op-ed in the New York Times with the title “Don’t Doubt NATO, it Saved My People”, outlining the role the alliance played in ending the Kosovo conflict in 1999. Meanwhile, Latvia’s President Edgars Rinkevics addressed the criticism that the US does much more than Europe to support Ukraine, claiming that in truth, it was the other way around. “It’s also very important to explain to the American public,” Rinkevics said in a speech on Tuesday. European Atlanticists fear an American retreat from the continent under Trump, who has complained that Europe has given too little aid to Ukraine, while the United States has given too much.

The contentious subject of Ukraine’s future membership in Nato was the other big theme of the summit. Germany and the United States are unwilling to extend full Nato membership while Ukraine is still at war with Russia. Instead, they say, Ukraine should be granted a “bridge to Nato”, a nebulous promise that fell far from aspirations of full membership that Ukraine has been waiting for since 2008. However, some felt the language of the communique was made stronger by the insertion of the word “irreversible”: apparently the bridge to Nato can only be crossed in one direction. But the Ukraine section of the Washington Summit Declaration, published last week, was ambiguous about its future. “We reaffirm that we will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine and its supporters in Eastern Europe are adamant that the country be granted membership, or at least a timetable for it. Only full membership, they claim, can deter Russia. Some suggest that Article 5 security guarantees — the provision that states that an attack on one member state is an attack on all — be introduced incrementally, first on territory already under Ukrainian command, and eventually under those parts of the country Zelensky’s forces win back.

But critics counter that admitting Ukraine risks triggering all-out war with Russia. They contend that membership would make it far more difficult to negotiate a ceasefire or engage in peace talks, since Russia has long insisted that Ukraine in Nato is a “red line”. And they point out that, contra the exalted Atlanticist rhetoric surrounding the current war, Nato has no intention of fighting for Ukraine. And if Nato is not committed to entering the war now, as Ukraine is fighting for its life, then it certainly isn’t going to make any promises about some undefined point in the future. They suggest a dialing down of the rhetoric and scaling of expectations. In fact, dozens of foreign policy experts signed a controversial letter ahead of the summit urging caution. “If Ukraine were to join NATO, Russia would have reason to doubt the credibility of NATO’s security guarantee — and would gain an opportunity to test and potentially rupture the alliance. The result could be a direct NATO-Russia war or the unraveling of NATO itself.”

Notwithstanding membership, Ukraine won’t leave the summit empty-handed. Nato has pledged five strategic air defence systems over the coming year, as well as F-16 fighter jets. These will be donated under the proviso that they can’t be used to strike targets inside Russia. Along with the equipment, a new Ukraine command, staffed with 700 employees, will be established in Germany, and Nato will deputise a senior representative to Kyiv. Ukraine will also receive at least €40 billion of assistance within the next year. The Alliance is also looking to “Trump proof” its assistance for Ukraine and will take over coordination of military aid for Ukraine through the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, a role hitherto played by the US Department of Defence. This reorganisation was made to ensure that Ukraine will continue to receive military aid, even if a new Trump administration decides to cut it.

With Biden’s cognitive state drawing all media attention, some significant developments received far less scrutiny. There was, for example, a joint-statement by the US and German governments announcing that the US would, in 2026, begin “episodic deployments” to Germany of long-range missiles, including SM-6, Tomahawk, and developmental hypersonic weapons. Some of these weapons have a range that would have seen them banned under the defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. Russia’s response to news of the planned deployments was dramatic. “Without nerves, without emotions, we will develop a military response, first of all, to this new game,” deputy minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, told Interfax. But what was most remarkable about news of the imminent deployment was how closely it echoed events of the Cold War — but with one glaring difference. During the early Eighties, the United States began deploying Pershing II missiles to West Germany. The news was met with deep anger by the European Left. More than one million people took to the streets in West Germany as weeks of demonstrations also swept through Paris, Stockholm, Rome, and London.

Today, in contrast, the announcement was met with comparative silence. This is doubtless down to the fact that the Left is being slowly absorbed into the Nato project. All four of Nato’s newest member states — Sweden, Finland, North Macedonia and Montenegro — opted to join with Social Democratic-led governments in power. Emblematic of this shift are the German Greens. One former party leader, Petra Kelly, was a star of the anti-missile protests in West Germany, yet some 40 years on, the Greens are now among the most hawkishly Atlanticist in Europe. Meanwhile, many peace initiatives and calls for a ceasefire in Ukraine have come from the Right. Hungary’s Viktor Orban has been on a self-styled “peace mission” in recent weeks, visiting Moscow, Kyiv, and Trump in Mar-a-Lago in an effort to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table. Orban and his ilk are not the dedicated anti-war activists of the Cold War. They support conflict; they just don’t like this one, which they view as an unwinnable liberal pet project. But broad swathes of the Left have also proved inconsistent: they may say they dislike the foreign policy of the United States, but they have uncritically embraced a military alliance that ensures its hegemony over Europe.

As Biden stumbled through his final, possibly terminal, press conference, he did manage to make one clear point: that Trump and his ilk were a threat to Nato. Why the average American voter should care as much as the tbose assembled in Washington, he did not say. And while the eyes of the world watched this very public demonstration of his vulnerability, it was clear that the future of Nato and the entire transatlantic order will be determined by who is elected president in November. The summit that was supposed to be a celebration of the alliance’s stability and longevity was instead a testament to its frailty.


Lily Lynch is a writer and journalist based in Belgrade.


Join the discussion


Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber


To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.

Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.

Subscribe
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

35 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Billy Bob
Billy Bob
2 months ago

Trump won’t leave NATO. For all his bluster the yanks won’t want to lose any influence in Europe (which is what will happen if Europe becomes more self sufficient) and will want the appearance of unity and strength in numbers to deter the Chinese from Taiwan

Tim Clarke
Tim Clarke
2 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

I suspect that his main aim is to get the Europeans to pay for more of their defence.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
2 months ago

Instead of the U.S. leaving NATO, doesn’t it make more sense to kick out the chronic underfunders?

Andrew Roman
Andrew Roman
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

One of the unarticulated reasons for the underfunding by countries like Canada is that much of the money spent to get to 2 percent of GNP would be spent on buying weaponry from the US. So the US pressure for that level of expenditure is seen as self serving.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Roman

Both Britain and France have significant armament industries. They will just have to ramp up production.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
2 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Roman

I’ve never once heard this uttered by anyone.

David B
David B
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

A lot of US foreign aid is similarly conditional on it being used to buy American products.

Ex Nihilo
Ex Nihilo
2 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Roman

So, manufacture your own. What is stopping you? The Chinese have certainly learned how, and rather quickly as well. Go ahead and take full responsibility for your own destiny. Trust me, there are lots and lots of Americans eager to see you do just that, no matter its effect on our defense industry.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

At face value that would seem to be the case, but some NATO members were recruited primarily because they control some very important strategic territory. Turkey, Iceland, Norway, and Denmark spring immediately to mind. The US wouldn’t kick any of the four if they spent nothing on defense. Of the four, I would bet all but Turkey are at less than the 2 percent requirement. Their territory has strategic value that can’t be easily calculated in terms of military spending.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
2 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

Fair comment

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
2 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

The Turkish army used to be good.
How long have countries under paid and how much money is missing from NATO funds?

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Not just them, but the traitors (Hungary) too.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago

I don’t know whether the US will leave (or pull back from) NATO, but the possibility exists. The European nations must accept this, and increase their military spending significantly. 3% isn’t going to be good enough, it is going to have to be 5% (and the “nuclear” nations of Britain and France must give some thought to increasing their capability in that area). Also, thought must be given to getting rid of Hungary, which is clearly on Russia’s side.

Michael Semeniuk
Michael Semeniuk
2 months ago

European NATO has an equal economy and greater population to the U.S., and two nuclear powers. You can certainly keep ramshackle Russia in check. This U.S. taxpayer is tired of Europe hiding behind our skirts and wallets. NATO would be fine, and Europe safe, without U.S. membership if only there is the will to simply do what is required. If not, well – TS.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago

Both Britain and France will need to ramp up their nuclear deterrent.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
2 months ago

You ignore that NATO members are US vassal States which the US will not want to lose. The American people no doubt agree with you, as I do…but not their rulers who are the ultimate beneficiaries…

Rachel Taylor
Rachel Taylor
2 months ago

Article 5 represents a visceral red line, equivalent to the French and British response to the German invasion of Poland in 1939. No ifs, not buts.
The significance of US membership, of course, is that they did not participate in the 1939 declaration. Through membership of NATO, now they would.
But you cannot maintain this visceral red line when it is extended to include many small countries, and countries that refuse to pay their way. I remember Merkel’s insulting offer to increase spending some time in the far distant future.
They got complacent, with the peace dividend, and lazy, with the extension to small countries as a form of social club.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
2 months ago
Reply to  Rachel Taylor

Article 5 is in fact rather rubbery – yes, an attack on one member must be considered as an attack on all, but what each member does in response to an attack is up to each member; each member may do what it “deems necessary”. Not what the attacked member deems necessary, and not what NATO deems necessary. Each member individually decides.
There is no automaticity. Congress would never have signed up for automaticity.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
2 months ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

Yes exactly! And for anyone who thinks any US President will risk New York for the sake of another country I have a bridge in London they can buy…

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
2 months ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

Europe post 1990 has decided not to pay. The debacle over Jugoslavia in the early 1990s showed how useless were the EU countries. Europeans flatly refuse to undertake the hard training and risk taking need to produce effective fighting troops.
Lt Col Peter Walter MC and Bar his maxim ” Any fool can run and everyone can run like a rabbit under fire.. It is whether a soldier march long distances carrying all his kit , across all terrains, in all weathers and still be fit to fight. That is the mark of a good soldier “. On ex SAS man recalled “He was hard man and he trained hard men for war “.
When European countries train according to the standards of Lt Col Peter Walter, they they will be effective.
Srebrenica is in Europe and the EU filed.This massacre led to a rise in Muslim terrorism.
Srebrenica massacre – Wikipedia

Michael Spedding
Michael Spedding
2 months ago

To a certain extent Starmer’s wish to build 4 new nuclear submarines is a busted flush (and would take all the money used on conventional arms), as is relying on nuclear weapons as a deterrent against anything other than a direct nuclear attack. Putin has >5000 nuclear weapons, enough to reduce all Europe to cinders, but is massively ramping up his conventional army. So if he wins in Ukraine he can attack who he wants, and the UK won’t have a conventional army effective enough to stop him. Would Starmer then pull the nuclear trigger first; knowing it would be the obliteration of the UK? No. so what to do? How about reinvigorating the territorial army? Putin trains everybody (even some schools) with Kalashnikovs and drones, so why not train patriotic UK citizens?

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
2 months ago

So if he wins in Ukraine he can attack who he wants
In 20+ years, ‘who he wants’ appears to have been no one. Ukraine didn’t happen because Vlad woke up one day and said, ‘Let’s strike.’ How many times must a nation say that putting NATO on its borders is untenable before allegedly rational people concede that this is a valid point?

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
2 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Are you just totally ignorant? Who he wants includes Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, Armenia, Syria and, courtesy of the Wagner Group, large swathes of central Africa.

Ex Nihilo
Ex Nihilo
2 months ago

Such irony: the Domino Theory of the 1950’s Right resurrected by the modern Liberal Left. Ukraine may turn out to be the Left’s Vietnam.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

And yet he pretty much personally facilitated Finland (which has a very long border with Russia) joining NATO.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
2 months ago

Putin has an awful long way to come to get to the UK…even if he wanted to, which I doubt.

Also it may well be that patriotic UK citizens don’t want to be used as cannon fodder just because their rulers want to pose on the world stage pretending that the UK is a world power.

The UK should fulfill obligations to defend its fellow NATO members. None have been attacked during NATO’s existence…except possibly Germany when Nordstream was blown up but not by Russia…more likely the USA or Ukraine. The UK should not participate in NATOs aggressive wars of choice eg Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria…

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
2 months ago

NATO’s – and the US’ – problem is that 30 years of relentlessly pursued policy have produced a crop of European “leaders” (place-holders would be more appropriate) who are so craven and incompetent that the only “plans” they are capable of pursuing is to nod to any inanity produced by Washington’s neocons.
To please the US, Europeans gutted their armed forces, first to better serve as minions in the US’ colonial adventures, and then to empty their arsenals for the “benefit” of Ukraine.
The US’ cunning plan of leveraging NATO to force Europeans to buy US weapons is doomed to failure for the simple reason that Europe has been bankrupted by its idiotic sanctions, and to pay the US for the weapons the US is shipping to Ukraine.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
2 months ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

And precisely right again…

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

Russia is a “forever enemy”, and taking it down is existential for Western Europe (and probably for the US too).

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
2 months ago

Maybe NATO’s fear that the gravy train ride is over is because the ride is over. The Soviet Union, the whole point of NATO, no longer exists and no, Putin is not going to resurrect it. The organization has become one more source of centralized power in an increasingly un-democratized West where mediocre people get cushy sinecures and the American taxpayer is, once more, paying the freight.
The US can be an ally; it need not be a bodyguard. EU countries are capable of standing up their own militaries and forming alliances among themselves. The US munitions industry may not like it but so what? That bunch has done enough damage as it is.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Russia still exists, and it is just as much “the Evil Empire” as the Soviet Union ever was.

Raccoon Whisperer
Raccoon Whisperer
2 months ago

I’m slightly surprised that there is no mention of Turkey and its behaviour as part of the organisation. It’s a significant part of NATO yet Erdogan seems far closer to Russia than the alliance. If there’s fear about the future it’s got a big Turkey-shaped cloud above it.

George K
George K
2 months ago

Suzerain has responsibility for its vassals. By retreating from Europe the US will effectively drop its imperial project

Graff von Frankenheim
Graff von Frankenheim
2 months ago

For the perfect grave-digger NATO could not have done better than appointing mr Rutte as its next secretary-general. He ran The Netherlands into the ground and he will do the same with every institution he leads. His ineptitude knows no bounds.

Francisco Menezes
Francisco Menezes
2 months ago

NATO is an instrument of American imperialism, as was the Warschau Pact an instrument of Soviet-Union imperialism. Main difference being todat that the Warschau Pact was dissolved and NATO expanded. Fundamentally there is no difference between Panama and Kosovo. The first was a part of Colombia and created as a vassal state for a canal. the second was a part of Serbia and created as vassal state for a military base. Many vassals have prospoered under the American umbrella and even cut corners on their mandatory tributes. But Pax Americana has come to an end due to imperial overstretch, frivolous spending, decadent culture, creative destruction and new big boys in the playground. The more insignificant, irrelevant, wasteful the country, person or institution the tighter the pearl clutching. 30 million people killed since WWII and that is called the rule of law. No wonder everyone loathes these people.