Alarm bells are ringing. Prime ministers and presidents; security officials; news editors and commentators: all those across Europe are reckoning with the idea of a NATO without America. Since the Munich Security Conference a fortnight ago, messaging from the Trump administration seems to have shifted up a gear, from stern finger wagging to borderline apoplexy; Up to rage, you might say.
The President’s false claim that Ukraine started a war which has trundled on for three years and has taken thousands of Ukrainian lives is not only a cruel joke. It’s a sign that Trump wants to now define the Continent in his own terms; to do away with the conventions of diplomacy and detente, and instead to beat the breast of MAGA America. When his vice-president, J. D. Vance, said that Europe’s biggest threat is “from within” he ought to have also added that he believes it to be the United States’ greatest threat too. For the statesmen of Europe seem to be less of an irritant now to Trump, and rather more of an enemy.
But should we be surprised? Marc Trachtenberg, professor of Political Science at UCLA, thinks not.
“The fact Trump has been so despised by European elites is bound to have an effect on his reasoning. Did you see the way Germany’s Die Zeit Online welcomed his election, for example?” – for context, they welcomed it simply with “F***”.
“This sort of thing isn’t ignored by Trump and his circle. Their natural reaction would be: ‘why the hell should we defend people who feel this way about us?’”
What is most startling is how the President has broken from his former ambiguity about NATO. In the past, he has at once described the alliance as “obsolete”, while in the same breath calling it “very important”; he has publicly said that NATO serves “a great purpose”, while privately indicating a desire to withdraw the United States from the organisation. But now, with Trump openly seeking some kind of reconciliation with the Kremlin, it seems his administration is at odds with the organisation’s core values.
Some have wondered if it’s a bluff. Like Nixon, he’s only playing the “madman” in order – in this case – to get Europe spending more on its own defence.
“The danger is that Nixon understood power relations at an advanced level – as good as any academic. I’m not sure Trump quite has that skill” says Seth Cropsey, former Assistant Secretary of Defence to H. W. Bush.
Possessing a strategic blindspot perhaps, Mr Cropsey still queries how serious Trump is about the prospect of American departure from NATO. “All this rhetoric about freeloading is just him hyperventilating. But the strategic idea is sound, and it’s to get NATO members contributing more, so that the United States can increase its focus on the Far East and the Western Pacific.
“Europe can complain about lacking the fiscal headroom. Well, okay. But defence spending is a political decision. So you will have to live with the consequences, and those consequences could be very bad.”
The issue at hand here – beyond the obvious one of European security – is how America wishes to define itself in the international order. World policeman, or a stone-faced bystander? Interventionist or isolationist? These are questions which that nation has grappled with for two centuries. So when former president, Joe Biden, decried Trump’s remarks about NATO as “un-American” he was – in one way – off the mark; the U.S. has been speculating about its commitments since the organisation’s inception. Perhaps the tone has changed from equivocation to belligerence, but the tendency to question NATO is an American tradition.
From Secretary of State Dean Acheson threatening Britain and France with pulling from Europe in the 1950s; to the Obama administration gently nudging the continent in 2012 by saying that Europe is now a “producer of security rather than a consumer” – the States has been weighing up its side of the bargain for decades.
“The claim is often made nowadays that Trump differs from his predecessors. But no American government ever felt it should provide for the defence of NATO without getting anything in return” says Dr Trachtenberg.
Mr Cropsey affirms: “As far as the general themes that we understood as U.S. defence policy, I think things are more similar now than they are different to back in my time. Certainly similar in goals, in objectives.”
In Trumpian terms, NATO has always been a “deal”. That Trump’s negotiating style is to bludgeon and bully his allies into submission should be (and is) deplored. But Trump 2.0 will be devoid of any kind of diplomatic properness; it will be a presidential term that looks to do away with particular internationalist values, rather than simply altering them. And this change is not only being driven by Trump and his psyche, but too the American people on which his power relies. As Dr Trachtenberg reminded me:
“The shift among Republican voters on these issues has been amazing. So NATO will continue being a major issue even after Trump leaves office within four years.
“The tectonic places of American politics have been shifting dramatically, and people need to focus less on Trump and more on the fundamentals.”
That strange, symbiotic relationship between voters and elected will continue between Trump and his supporters over the next four years, driving each other potentially father away from any kind of Europhilic sentiment. Europe and its leaders – as I’m sure they are already aware – must start working towards operating in an increasingly transactional global order. Right or wrong, such questioning might soon become an irrelevancy, as nations big and small eye up opportunities in a world where America has put away its truncheon.
Things are moving quickly. Keir Starmer’s decision to up UK defence spending by 2027 is a welcome one. Not because his cuts to international aid will be painless, but precisely because its a tough reality check for Britain. The “concert of Europe” has come to a stop, because its conductor might be on the way out. So it will need to find a replacement – and soon. But importantly, it shouldn’t act surprised; America has never been quite sure about NATO. It just so happens that it’s taken a reality TV star with a very long tie to finally play Uncle Sam’s hand.
