This article is the fifth in a five-part MSNBC Daily series, “The Future of NATO.” With the Trump administration attacking allies, removing troops from European training missions, handing Ukraine’s bargaining chips to Russia and refusing to guarantee European security even as “backstop” — we’re asking five crucial questions about the future of NATO, the U.S. and Europe.
Any assessment of NATO’s future based on a pre-Jan. 20, 2025, calculus is wrong.
The United States is not only no longer a dependable ally of the other countries in the alliance it played a central role in building, it has switched sides. The Trump administration is now openly hostile to those allies, actively working to weaken the trans-Atlantic partnership and heavily supportive of the Kremlin and the loose alliance of ethnonationalist, anti-democratic nations it leads.
That is no exaggeration. It is not a politically biased assessment.
Just last month, we heard senior U.S. officials talk of lifting sanctions against Russia without receiving any concessions from Russia for doing so. The positioning has naturally caused a furor among European leaders who consider it, rightly, to be a betrayal and worse, a grave strategic error.
The U.S. also escalated its trade war that largely targets and will heavily penalize the members of the alliance. In response, Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, gravely announced that Canada could no longer look upon the U.S., its neighbor, as a dependable friend any longer.
Meanwhile, the U.S. also raised tensions with another NATO member, Denmark, by continuing its threats to seize Greenland. These threats were followed by a visit to that island by the U.S. vice president and his wife.
In a somewhat smaller but equally chilling action, the U.S. detained a Russian scientist working at Harvard Medical School and it appears is preparing to send her, a critic of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, to Russia, where her fate is likely to be a very unhappy one.
These actions are consistent with what has to be seen as a clear and multifaceted policy shift away from the allies and principles that have guided the U.S. since World War II, and toward a rapid realignment that will alter geopolitics to a degree that would have been unimaginable just months ago.
The U.S. has turned on Ukraine and sought to force it to end the conflict that Russia started. It has made demands of Ukraine but virtually none of Russia. It has picked fights with Ukraine while sending emissaries to fawn over Putin.
The United States is not only no longer a dependable ally of the other countries in the alliance it played a central role in building.
One by one, U.S. agencies and initiatives that were created to defend against Russia or to enable the U.S. to deter or be prepared for future conflict with Russia have been shut down or gutted. This includes standing down cyberdefenses and operations against Russia, shutting down the program that defended the U.S. from Russian election interference, shutting down the program that tracked and prosecuted wrongdoing by Russian oligarchs, firing from the government lawyers and others who investigated Russia’s efforts to influence Trump in the past. High-level national security posts were given to Russia apologists and individuals who spread Russian propaganda. Incompetents were placed in other critical national security jobs, and the entire tenor of the administration’s framing of the U.S.-Russia relationship was drastically different from any U.S. government since 1945.
Allies have seen threats, hostility, trade wars, assertions the U.S. won’t defend them if they don’t contribute more to defense, general lack of solidarity with the U.S. and even, this week, as part of the Signal messaging scandal revelations, contempt from the U.S. vice president and secretary of defense about what they perceive as European free-riding.
At this point, given the scope, range and consistency of the shifts in tone, policy and action, U.S. allies will increasingly have to reconcile themselves to accepting that a profound shift has occurred, as Canada’s Carney recently articulated. This will and should produce major changes in doctrine and strategy.
Already there is talk of Europe having to defend itself and having to formulate its own independent policies with regard to Ukraine. And such a shift, if serious, will inevitably produce unintended consequences for the United States.
The first rumblings of one such shift can be felt as nations begin to question whether they should continue to buy U.S. weapons systems. There is a reasonable fear that an unreliable or even hostile U.S. could fail to honor contracts or supply necessary parts or critical system upgrades. Some countries in Europe and elsewhere that felt they benefited from protection under the shield of U.S. nuclear weapons are now beginning to ask whether they should develop their own such capabilities. An increase in the number of nuclear-armed states is seemingly inevitable, as are the concurrent dangers such an expansion of the nuclear club would bring.
Further, one big geopolitical consequence of Trump’s policies is that Europeans are increasing their outreach to China, seeking to deepen their relations with the 21st century’s other megapower.
Aggressive foreign powers like Russia and China will calculate how much time they have left with a Trump government that is likely to be more tolerant of their efforts to fulfill regional expansionist ambitions. With the approach of 2028, China might well think more seriously about a move against Taiwan, while Russia could consider further moves against Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia — or perhaps the Baltics.
One big consequence of Trump’s policies is that Europeans are increasing their outreach to China.
In the past, such actions would be expected to produce a unified front from NATO or something close to it. But now, NATO’s largest and most powerful nation is increasingly a member in name only, led by a president who has always been skeptical of the alliance and is warmly predisposed toward its adversaries.
In other words, all bets are off. All old war-game scenarios need to be scrapped. The world is a more dangerous place as a result, and with the clock ticking on the Trump years, it could become much more perilous still.
The question is: Will the nations of Europe rise to the challenge of defending democracy and open societies? Or will they too fall to Putin-orchestrated campaigns from the right and succumb to the new corrupt authoritarianism that has altered the role of the United States so dramatically?
Those nations will have to confront these questions soon, because they can’t look to the U.S. for guarantees. The shining city on the hill has morphed into the land of the not-so-free and the home of the not-so-brave.
