Reuters: NATO without the Americans?

Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte

The NATO alliance has in recent years survived existential challenges – ranging from the war in Ukraine to multiple bouts of pressure and insults from U.S. President Donald Trump, who has questioned its core mission and threatened to seize Greenland, Reuters notes.

But it is the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, thousands of miles from Europe, that has nearly broken the 76-year-old bloc and threatens to leave it in its weakest state since its creation, say analysts and diplomats.

Trump, enraged that European countries have declined to send their navies to open up the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping following the start of the air war on Feb 28, has declared he is considering withdrawing from the alliance.

"Wouldn't you if you were me?" Trump asked Reuters in an interview.

Combined with other barbs aimed at Europeans in recent weeks, Trump's comments have provoked unprecedented concern that the U.S. will not come to the aid of European allies should they be attacked, whether or not Washington formally walks away.

“We must be capable of thinking of NATO without the Americans”

The result, say analysts and diplomats, is that the alliance created in the Cold War that has long served as the basic fabric of European security is fraying and the mutual defense agreement at its core is no longer taken as a given.

"This is the worst place (NATO) has been since it was founded," said Max Bergmann, a former State Department official who now leads the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"It's really hard to think of anything that even comes close."

That reality is sinking in for Europeans, who have counted on NATO as a ⁠bulwark against an increasingly assertive Russia.

As recently as February, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte had dismissed the idea of Europe defending itself without the U.S. as a "silly thought." Now, many officials and diplomats consider it the default expectation.

"NATO remains necessary, but we must be capable of thinking of NATO without the Americans," said General Francois Lecointre, who served as France's armed forces chief from 2017 to 2021. "Whether it should even continue to be called NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization – is a valid question."

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said: “President Trump has made his disappointment with NATO and other allies clear, and as the President emphasized, ‘the United States will remember.’”

This time it's different

NATO has been challenged before, not least during Trump's first term from 2017 to 2021, when he also considered withdrawing from the alliance.

But while many European officials until recently believed that Trump could be kept on board with pomp and flattery, fewer now hold that belief, according to conversations with dozens of former and current U.S. and European officials.

Trump and his officials have expressed frustration over what they see as NATO's unwillingness to help the United States in a time of need, including by not directly assisting with the Strait of Hormuz and by restricting U.S. use of some airfields and airspace. U.S. officials have declared NATO cannot be a "one-way street".

European officials counter that they have not received U.S. requests for specific assets for a mission to open the strait and complain that Washington has been inconsistent about whether such a mission would operate during or after the war.

"It's a terrible situation for NATO to be in," said Jamie Shea, a former senior NATO official who is now a senior fellow at the Friends of Europe think tank.

No going back

Legally, Trump may lack the authority to withdraw from NATO. Under a law passed in 2023, a U.S. president cannot exit the alliance without the consent of two-thirds of the U.S. Senate, a nearly impossible threshold.

But analysts say that, as commander-in-chief, Trump can decide whether the U.S. military will defend NATO members. Declining to do so could imperil the alliance without a formal withdrawal.

Even if Trump and the Europeans find a way to stay together in NATO, diplomats, analysts and officials say, the transatlantic alliance that has been central to the global order since World War Two may never be the same.

"I do think we're turning the page of 80 years of working together," said Julianne Smith, the U.S. ambassador to NATO under Democratic President Joe Biden.

"I don't think it means the end of the transatlantic relationship, but we're on the cusp of something that's going to have a different look and feel to it."

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