Is NATO nailed to the perch?

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Whether NATO is merely slumbering while it waits for the end of Trumpism in the US, or whether it has been nailed to its perch to give a misleading impression of life is an academic question, since in neither case can it be relied on (in the short term at least) to meet its stated objective of providing a collective system of defence. The Prime Minister of Denmark told us this week that it would be dead if the US launched a military attempt to take over Greenland. That sounds logical, although NATO ‘allies’ behaving aggressively towards each other isn’t exactly new. Think of the Cod Wars between NATO members Iceland and the UK in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, or the recurrent near-wars between Greece and Türkiye, occasionally involving the firing of real bullets. Threats by right-wing UK politicians against France or Spain were perhaps never really a practical proposition, but the mere fact that they were expressed shows that not everyone takes the alliance very seriously.

Invading and seizing part of the internationally-recognised territory of a fellow member state is on a different level, though. And when the invading force belongs to the largest and most powerful member of the alliance – the one which has been seen as the ultimate backstop since the founding of the alliance – that puts a more serious perspective on the question. Perhaps Trump will hold back from the military option. There are other approaches to getting what he wants (which seems – just like in Venezuela – to be more about oil and natural resources than about national security) although his love of macho action suggests he’d sooner deploy the military whether he needs to or not. Whether bullying, intimidation, and threats are any less of a danger to the NATO alliance than an actual military intervention is an interesting question; but one rather suspects that most of the members would prefer to keep their mouths shut and put the alliance on some sort of life support than pronounce it dead in such circumstances.

The wider question, though, is whether the alliance is already dead, de facto if not de jure. Trump has already made it clear that he will not come to the aid of any European country which hasn’t spent as much money as he declares necessary on buying US military hardware defence, and it's not at all clear that he would aid even those that do. In fairness to Trump – not a phrase which trips easily off the keyboard – I’ve long held doubts about the reliability of the US as a backstop under previous administrations, as well as about the role of the alliance itself. The difference between Trump and his predecessors is that he can’t help blurting things out where others preferred to maintain a more ambiguous silence. The bottom line is that an alliance dominated by one member and unable to operate effectively without that member ceases to be of any value if that one member goes rogue. Waiting for Trump to invade a fellow NATO member before declaring the organisation dead is pretending that the decaying corpse in front of us still shows signs of life. The question which European leaders should be debating is about building a new international order, starting in Europe, which does not depend on the dubious commitment of the military might of the US, and which is oriented towards avoiding wars rather than fighting them.