NATO without Donald Trump? Europe accelerates its backup plan, which guarantees the Alliance the possibility of self-defense using existing military structures even in the event of withdrawal of the United States from the Atlantic Pact. The Wall Street Journal writes this, explaining that the officials who are working on the plan, who someone calls the “European NATO”aim to maximize the involvement of Europeans in the command and control roles of the Alliance and to integrate US military resources with their own.
The plans – which are being worked on informally through sidelines and working lunches in and around the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – are not designed to rival the current Alliance, participants explain. European officials aim to preserve deterrence against Russia, operational continuity and nuclear credibility even if Washington withdraws forces from Europe or refuses to defend it, as President Trump has threatened.
Europe is moving
The plans, first conceived last year, underline Europe’s deep disquiet about the reliability of the United States. They accelerated after Trump threatened to take over Greenland and are now gaining new momentum amid the stalemate following Europe’s refusal to support America’s war in Iran. Berlin’s change in position also pushed for an acceleration: For decades, Germany has resisted French-led calls for greater European defense sovereignty, preferring to keep America as the ultimate guarantor of European security. This is changing under German Chancellor Friedrich Merz due to concerns about Donal Trump’s US reliability as an ally.
The challenge is enormous. The entire structure of NATO relies on American leadership at almost every levelfrom logistics to intelligence to the Alliance’s highest military command. Europeans are now trying to take on more responsibility, as Trump has long called for. The alliance will be “led by Europe to a greater extent”, Secretary General Mark Rutte said recently. The difference now is that the Europeans are taking measures on their own initiative, due to Trump’s growing hostility. In recent days, Trump has called European allies “cowards” and called NATO a paper tiger, adding, in reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Even Putin knows it.”
“A shift in weight and responsibility from the United States to Europe is underway and will continue… as part of the US national defense and security strategy,” said Finnish President Alexander Stubb, one of the leaders involved in the plans. “The most important thing is to understand that it is happening and also to do it in a managed and controllable way, rather than through a rapid US withdrawal,” he added in an interview.
Trump’s threats
Earlier this monthTrump threatened to leave NATO due to allies’ refusal to support his campaign in Iran. Any withdrawal from the Alliance would require congressional approval, but the president could still move troops or resources out of Europe, or deny economic support to the Alliance, using his authority as commander in chief.
Immediately after Trump’s threat, Stubb called the president to brief him on Europe’s plans to strengthen its defenses. “The fundamental message to our American friends is that, after all these decades, it is time for Europe to take greater responsibility for its own security and defense,” Stubb said. The decisive political accelerant for Europe was the historic change that occurred in Berlin, which hosts US nuclear weapons and has long avoided questioning America’s role as guarantor of European security. Germans and other Europeans feared that promoting European leadership within NATO might give the United States an excuse to reduce its role.
Yet late last year, Merz began to rethink this long-held position after concluding that Trump was ready to abandon Ukraine, according to people familiar with his thinking cited by the Wall Street Journal. Merz was concerned that Trump was confusing victim and aggressor in the war, and that there were no longer clear values guiding US policy within NATO.
Despite that, the German leader did not want to publicly question the Alliance. The Europeans, according to the chancellor, should have taken on a more important role within it. Ideally, the United States would remain in the alliance but most defense would become the responsibility of the Europeans, according to the same sources. Germany’s change unlocked a broader agreement involving other countries including the United Kingdom, France, Poland, the Nordic countries and Canada, which now present the contingency plan as a coalition of volunteers within Nato, according to officials involved.
The ‘Germany effect’
Only after the change of pace in Berlin planning moved on to practical military matters and their managementfrom NATO air and missile defenses, to reinforcement corridors in Poland and the Baltic states, to logistics networks and major regional exercises, after the eventual American withdrawal. Officials spoken to by the newspaper say that the reintroduction of military conscription is another crucial aspect for the success of the plan. Many nations abandoned it after the Cold War.
The officials involved want to speed up European production of vital equipment in areas where Europe lags behind the United States, including anti-submarine warfare, space and reconnaissance capabilities, air-to-air refueling and air mobility. Officials point to last month’s announcement by Germany and the United Kingdom of a joint project to develop stealth cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons as an example of the new initiative,
The transition is already underway. An increasing number of key NATO command positions are now held by Europeans, and many of the major exercises held recently or planned in the coming months will be led by European forces, particularly in the Nordic region, where the alliance borders Russia. A particularly difficult gap to fill concerns intelligence and nuclear deterrence.
European officials say no troop redeployment can quickly replace the US satellite, surveillance and missile warning systems that form the backbone of NATO’s credibility, putting France and Britain under pressure to expand their roles in both nuclear and strategic intelligence. Germany’s change of course paved the way for the most delicate element of European sovereign defense: the replacement of the US nuclear umbrella. After Trump threatened Greenland, Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron began discussions with the aim of extending the French nuclear umbrella to other European nations, including Germany. Trump himself appears to have recognized that Greenland was the turning point.