Few global institutions are as given to indulgent self-flattery as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Last June, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of NATO’s creation, Joe Biden voiced the typical establishment view of what he called “the single greatest, most effective defensive alliance in the history of the world.”
Donald Trump, for better or worse, doesn’t share this reverence for the glory of NATO. One of the few major ways Trump has broken with the bipartisan foreign policy consensus has been his belief that NATO and America’s other major alliances should be explicitly organized as protection rackets rather than as partnerships. For Trump, the function of NATO is to kick back money to the United States in terms of defense spending, deference on trade, and even outright control over member states’ natural resources. In addition, Trump wants NATO countries to kiss the ring ideologically by empowering far-right parties that share his worldview.
Over the past week, Trump’s desire to run NATO like a Mafia boss has become undeniable—particularly as he’s used the leverage of the Ukraine/Russia war to extract concessions. Last Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried to extract an agreement whereby the United States—in compensation for earlier military assistance to Ukraine—would get ownership of 50 percent of that country’s rare earth minerals. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected the request because it came with no security guarantees. In other words, Ukraine was asked to give up wealth for nothing, recalling a famous scene in The Godfather II. Zelensky continues to scramble to either placate Trump or encourage Europeans to continue supporting the war effort.
Concomitant with this shakedown, both Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have indicated that the United States will negotiate with Russia over the Ukraine war unilaterally, with little or no input from European leaders. Vice President JD Vance used a European trip to meet Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party. Vance also gave a much-discussed speech that criticized efforts to marginalize racist and anti-immigrant parties, who were heartened by this American championing of their cause.
The New York Times reports:
A separate New York Times analysis concluded that:
Speaking to Politico, former Lithuanian foreign mnister Gabrielius Landsbergis bleakly argued, “It may well mark the advent of the twilight of NATO. Especially when you combine it with what I think Washington will soon announce—the withdrawal of 20,000 U.S. troops from Europe.”
But talk of the end of NATO has to be qualified by two facts: Historically, European elites have been reluctant to abandon the alliance, which has served the continent (although perhaps not the rest of the world) well. In 2022, top EU diplomat Joseph Borrell expressed the implicit politics of Fortress Europe: “Yes, Europe is a garden.… Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden.”
European elites have put up with much erratic behavior from American presidents—Richard Nixon’s dollar shock, Ronald Reagan’s nuclear brinksmanship, George W. Bush’s destabilizing regime change wars, Trump’s open Mafia-style shakedowns—because they fear that to step outside the shield of NATO’s protection is to put themselves at the mercy of “the jungle.”
Trump himself, despite often being mislabeled an isolationist, doesn’t actually want to end NATO. Rather, his goal is to have the NATO countries act like a restaurant in the sway of the Mafia, remaining healthy enough to serve as a regular source of protection money.
Writing in The New Statesman, Bruno Maçães carefully parsed the speeches of Hegseth and Trump to make clear the underlying intent:
European elites are now faced with an existential question: Is Trump’s protection racket worth the price? They might fear “the jungle” of the wider world, but as long as they remain subservient to the USA under the supposed shield of NATO, they will have to placate Trump or some future gangster president such as Vance. The regular Mafia merely demands money and occasional displays of deference. What American gangsters will want is more: European economic regulatory policy set to please plutocrats such as Elon Musk, European political taboos against the far right undermined, and European trade under the thumb of nationalist America. European countries would no longer be allies but mere satrapies, always fearful of angering their capricious and cruel sovereign. This is not protection from “the jungle” but just another patch of jungle.
Building an independent Europe would require radical steps. It would mean the end of NATO and the creation of an independent defense alliance, complete with a much higher spending on arms. It might also mean opening up to the overtures China is making toward greater economic ties, including integrating the Belt and Road Initiative with European transportation networks. It’s hard to imagine the comfortable ruling class of Europe taking such radical steps—but Trump is rapidly changing the incentive structure of the world.
The current reality is that the United States has no coherent foreign policy with regard to Europe, swinging wildly back and forth between Democratic administrations that believe in multilateral engagement (as Obama and Biden did) and Republican administrations that are either openly disdainful of European concerns (evident in George W. Bush’s administration’s dismissal of “Old Europe”) or trying to turn Europe into a subservient client (Trump’s policy).
The problem here is the swings in policy as much as the policies themselves. The swings in policy incentivize Europeans to take risks when Democrats are in power, notably the gamble to expand NATO and antagonize Russia, with the illusion that they are safe in counting on American backing.
But once Trump or someone like him is elected, Europeans find they don’t actually have the means to back the policies they’ve adopted under the assumption of permanent American support. Without their reliance on the United States, Europe would have to make a serious cost-benefit analysis about the size of NATO and the risks of antagonizing Russia, along with other foreign policy commitments. The only path for European states to achieve a realistic and stable relationship with Russia is by giving up the fantasy that the United States is a reliable partner.
Trump’s gangster foreign policy is despicable and destabilizing—but it can only be countered by governments that honestly look after their own interests rather than nostalgically holding on to institutions that don’t work. As long as America is willing to elect a gangster president like Trump, NATO makes no sense. Trump has won two of the last three elections and the Republican Party is more in thrall to his version of unilateral nationalism than ever. The era of American foreign policy consensus, which ran from Pearl Harbor to the end of Obama’s term, is clearly over. In the new age of non-consensus, America’s erstwhile allies would be well advised to take command of their own destiny.
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