Don’t be too alarmed. The essence of Nato will survive, maybe not in its current form but certainly as a security and military alliance embracing Europe’s democracies and other allies. However, incredibly, the United States may soon not be among these allies if Trump follows through on the threats and imprecations against democratic Europe made by vice president JD Vance and defense secretary Pete Hegseth at last week’s Munich Secretary Conference.
Either Nato or a direct successor organisation will survive, even if its only North American member is Canada, because the threat of invasion and destabilisation from Russia has not dissipated. And such an organisation is essential for European democracies to be able to pledge collective security and pool their military efforts, separate from—but intimately linked to—the European Union, whose remit is economic not military.
When Nato was founded in 1949 by Ernest Bevin and George Marshall, the foreign ministers of Britain and the US, the imperative was to prevent Josef Stalin taking over western Europe, as he had most of central and eastern Europe. Britain and the US had just held on to the British and American zones of West Berlin—within the territory of Soviet-controlled eastern Germany—after Stalin’s bitterly fought Berlin Blockade. They were determined to prevent further incursions, and in particular to protect the nascent West Germany, which for obvious reasons lacked an army.
Nato has succeeded spectacularly as a defensive alliance. By 1955 Stalin was dead, West Germany and Turkey had joined Nato, the Russians had withdrawn from Austria and western Europe was secure. Nato was an indispensable part of the west’s resistance to Soviet communism until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, after which almost all of the formerly Soviet-controlled central and eastern European states—including the newly united Germany—joined the Nato club.
For a brief period in the 1990s, it looked as if Nato might become largely redundant because Boris Yeltsin’s Russia itself might become a western democracy. Russia might then have joined Nato too, alongside former Soviet republics including Ukraine. But Yeltsin’s successor was Vladimir Putin, and the rest is history.
The key point is that, Ukraine apart, the entire European border of Russia now comprises Nato members—including Finland which, together with Sweden, rushed to join after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago. It is only Nato’s collective strength which gives credibility to the defence of this long border against an increasingly belligerent Russia. So with or without the US, if Nato did not exist, it would have to be created. And this collective entity will need to enhance Europe’s engagement with free Ukraine to prevent a Russian takeover.
Trump is now weighing up whether his preferred partner is democratic Europe or Putin’s Russia—or an opportunist combination of the two. This incredible geopolitical crisis is being played out in the negotiations over the fate of Ukraine. If Trump abandons Ukraine, Europe will have to step up and in effect take over Nato, with or without the US as a continuing member. The alternative—leaving Europe without any collective defence—is unconscionable. This is the significance of the European leaders coming together for an emergency meeting in Paris this Monday, in reaction to Vance and Hegseth’s alarming speeches and statements in Munich. Taken together, their speeches amount to a massive appeasement of Putin and a huge question mark over Trump’s commitment not only to Ukraine but to the wider defence of Europe.
The immediate emergency issue is how to protect the currently unoccupied majority of Ukraine from falling to Putin. It is imperative to prevent an outright Russian victory in the current war if it continues and the US withdraws support. It is equally important to be able to defend Ukraine effectively against renewed Russian aggression should there be a ceasefire. Either way, Europe is going to have to make a much larger contribution to collective defence.
But there is another possibility. Great dictators often fall out. Maybe the current Trump/Putin bromance turns sour and/or the threat from China becomes too serious for the US to risk a complete rupture with Europe on trade and defence. There are still plenty of Washington bigwigs, including Republican politicians and military and economic strategists, whose heart is firmly with the Atlantic alliance. They may be down, but they are not yet out.
