That’s why NATO was never a love story

79 years later, this scene seems surprisingly relevant. Donald Trump’s Greenland ambitions have damaged the very hoped-for “lasting bond” on which the alliance rests. “This is worse than any previous dispute between member states. When France left the integrated military structure in 1966, that was also critical, but now it is existential,” he says Military historian Manfried Rauchsteiner.

NATO history shows that conflicts are not an industrial accident, but a normal state of affairs.

Examples

• In 1956, Britain and France joined Israel in attacking Egypt during the Suez Crisis – against the wishes of the USA. Washington forced its allies to withdraw. The alliance survived, but the illusion of unity did not.
• The next break came in the 1970s: Greece and Turkey faced each other militarily over Cyprus. NATO proved incapable of action – it was never intended to resolve conflicts between members.
• France also distanced itself in 1966 to escape American dominance. You remained a member, but independent. All of this was possible because NATO does not have its own army.

As one diplomat later put it ironically: “NATO is like a security system – you hope you never have to use it.”

Even extreme cases fit this logic. Iceland joined NATO – without an army, air force or navy. Instead, Reykjavik argued, “Our geography is our army.”

prehistory

To understand the USA’s ambivalent relationship with NATO, one has to go back a long way – to the end of the First World War. In 1919, the League of Nations was the first attempt at collective security. It failed spectacularly: the USA never joined, sanctions remained toothless, and aggressors remained unmolested. The trauma of this failure was deep. “No more complicated alliances” remained the leitmotif of American politics for decades.

The Second World War changed everything. Europe was in ruins, the Soviet Union controlled Eastern Europe. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman stated to Congress: “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples resisting subjugation.” This marked the end of isolationism and the beginning of transatlantic integration.

Two years later, on April 4, 1949, twelve countries signed in Washington North Atlantic Treaty. Article 5 obliged all members to stand together in an emergency. Rauchsteiner: “It was about forging an alliance against the Soviet Union. At the center: not the American motherland, but Europe.”

Between success and failure

This model worked for decades. NATO survived the Cold War without fighting directly. Article 5 was never triggered – until September 11, 2001. The allies declared the attack on the USA to be an attack on everyone.

Tensions remained: disputes over the Iraq war, different threat perceptions, unequal distribution of burdens. The current conflict over Greenland is therefore not a break, but rather an escalation.

The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Hastings Ismay, once summed up the philosophy as follows: “To keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.”

Today, the question of how firmly the Americans remain in the alliance will decide not only the future of Greenland – but also that of NATO.