President Trump is very, very disappointed in NATO. He has been critical of the alliance for years, but the refusal of other members to participate in the war in Iran seems to have finally sunk his sense of its worth to zero — perhaps permanently. “I was never swayed by NATO,” he told a British newspaper in April. “I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way,” he said.
Last week Pentagon officials announced that they were pulling 5,000 troops out of Germany, after a spat between Mr. Trump and Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor. The president said that he was considering similar withdrawals from Italy and Spain. The United States is also canceling a plan to deploy a battalion to operate Tomahawk cruise missiles in Germany, which was agreed as part of a deal with the Biden administration in 2024.
The question is often posed as whether Mr. Trump would — or even could — really withdraw the United States from NATO. An unlikely outcome, since it would require a two-thirds majority in the Senate or an act of Congress. But the more useful question is whether Mr. Trump could undermine NATO to the point that he has effectively withdrawn the United States, to which the answer is: Maybe he already has.
Deterrence happens in the mind of the adversary, and NATO’s ability to deter relies on both its military might and confidence that Article 5, the commitment to collective defense, will be honored by all its members. For the NATO deterrent to work, Europe and Russia both have to believe that America is coming. Is anyone confident that America is coming?
During Mr. Trump’s first term, the strategy of most NATO members to keep the president on their side was flattery, promises and increases to military spending — an approach that Mark Rutte, the current NATO Secretary General, tried to continue into Mr. Trump’s second term. (This approach is sometimes referred to as “daddy diplomacy,” after Mr. Rutte joked to Mr. Trump that “daddy has to sometimes use strong language.” )
In Mr. Trump’s second term, however, obsequiousness is no longer enough. His administration’s policy on Ukraine has been to negotiate on terms largely set by Russia, and Mr. Trump has often treated Russia more as a potential partner rather than as an adversary. Many Europeans saw Mr. Trump’s threats to annex Greenland in January as proof that the U.S. government does not respect international law, acts unilaterally and uses force to get what it wants. Any hope that Greenland was an aberration rather than a precedent was dashed with the war in Iran.
The Iran war is an economic disaster for most of Europe. The near-complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of global oil and gas exports flowed before the war, has driven up energy prices, increased inflation and smothered the timid economic growth that was underway; the German government has halved its growth forecast for 2026, to 0.5 percent, because of war-related price increases.
Turning points are usually only clear in retrospect, but Iran and the Greenland crisis may prove to be the turning points that confirmed what negotiations over Ukraine merely suggested: This United States, far from being an ally of Europe, acts against Europe.
In response, Europe is quietly reimagining what deterrence and defense might look like with limited or no U.S. assistance. The Europeans have already increased military spending — after decades of low spending, Germany will allocate 3.5 percent of its gross domestic product by 2029; Poland plans to spend 4.8 percent this year, and Estonia, directly bordering Russia, is planning to spend 5.4 percent. There are more Europeans than there used to be in command posts, doing more so that the Americans can do less. And there are initiatives to develop stockpiles of domestic deep-strike precision missiles — essentially, European Tomahawks.
The task is monumental, and will require more than just replacing U.S. weapons and personnel. The U.S. approach to planning and waging wars has shaped Europe’s defense for decades. A Europeanized NATO will have to develop a European way of deterrence and defense that reflects the continent’s political culture, geography and resources. It will need political leadership, which could take the form of the existing informal E5 format, comprising France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Britain, or the coalition of the willing, the group formed in response to the war in Ukraine, in which the United States has only a supporting role.
Nuclear deterrence currently relies primarily on U.S. weapons, and there is no indication that the United States intends to limit its nuclear guarantee. But both France and Britain, which have their own nuclear weapons, are reviewing their policies. Last July, the two countries signed a new nuclear pact to intensify cooperation, and in March President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would expand its arsenal and increase cooperation with neighboring countries, with an eye toward creating a European deterrent.
Europeans are not naïve. NATO countries are stronger together, and Europe cannot maintain the same level of defense without the United States. But the risk of an unreliable Washington is real, as is the risk of a Russia that believes Washington to be unreliable.
There is a path — incremental, cooperative — to responsibility sharing in the interests of both sides; to a relationship that is newly balanced, pragmatic and unsentimental. There is also a path to chaos and hostility, and a relationship that is damaged beyond repair.
Europeans may hope for the former, but it is prudent to be prepared for the latter.
Claudia Major is a senior vice president at the German Marshall Fund.
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