Rumours have emerged in recent days suggesting the coming demise of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. But such fatalistic pronouncements on the fate of the western alliance are misplaced and premature.
Since its founding in 1949, Nato has faced a variety of challenges and crises. Weathering the rigours of the Cold War while withstanding the occasional threats from its Soviet-led counterpart, the Warsaw Pact, it has stood firm as a defensive alliance. Despite that record of resilience, however, recent rumours have indicated a new, near-fatal undermining of the institution.
According to these rumours, the existential threat this time originates not from Russia or any other traditional rival but from the most unlikely source: the US itself.
The unlikely trigger for such fatalism isn’t the war in Ukraine or American complaints over defence spending or burden sharing. Instead, the perception of a weakened and teetering Nato has been defined by Washington’s policy towards Greenland, and exacerbated by US President Donald Trump’s unusual discourse that has included the threat of “military action” to seize the island.
Such a move would challenge the territorial integrity of fellow Nato member state Denmark, which has controlled Greenland for about 300 years and manages its defence and foreign policy.
Mr Trump’s remarks have sparked condemnation from leaders of other Nato member states, rallying to Denmark’s defence, with Copenhagen robustly pushing back against any suggestion of an American takeover. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that “if the US chooses to attack another Nato country militarily, then everything stops, including Nato and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War”.
While the US President has been expressing his interest in Greenland since 2019, the current policy position is much more assertive, in part bolstered by the recent American military operation capturing Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. And in the words of White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, “acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region”.
In an attempt at de-escalation, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland travelled to Washington to meet US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday. The timing of the meeting only revealed the deepening of the crisis as it followed the latest in a series of bellicose statements from Mr Trump, this time warning that “anything less” than a US takeover would be “unacceptable”.
For Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, the Washington visit will have been daunting, especially as any appeal to reason or logic has usually not been the best strategy for dealing with this US President.
The necessity to resolve this crisis is, of course, undeniable. Otherwise, tensions between Nato member states will only strain the alliance especially as the war in Ukraine continues without an end in sight.
However, even though the US is seen by some as the source of the perception of a collapsing Nato, it’s necessary to understand the context for Mr Trump’s rather peculiar foreign policy to see why doubts about the alliance’s durability are unfounded.
Driven by Mr Trump’s “Make America Great Again” worldview, Washington has lately elevated US self-interest over the collective interests of the alliances it has been a part of, distancing itself from multilateral policies and institutions such as Nato. The tendency to exert unilateral leadership has reduced diplomacy to a transactional calculation. This shift is also seen in Mr Trump’s recent withdrawal of the US from 66 international agencies, commissions and organisations, largely affiliated with the UN, and dealing with globally significant issues like climate change.
Another decision, imbued with potentially even greater repercussions for Nato, was the recent announcement that the US would raise defence spending by about 50 per cent, to $1.5 trillion. Never mind that Washington already allocates more for defence annually than the next nine countries combined, with China being the nearest competitor, spending about $300 billion.
Aside from the bluff and bluster from the Trump administration, there is one important caveat, revealing that such US policy is more rhetorical disruption than real destruction. This caveat both demonstrates the latitudes and demarcates the limits of American self-harm to truly undermine Nato. This only shows that the one reliable prediction of Mr Trump’s policies is its unreliable unpredictability.
History also offers a lesson that should give Nato doomsayers pause.
During the Cold War, the Soviet bloc sought to mirror and mimic Nato with a military alliance of its own. Unlike Nato, however, the Warsaw Pact was not based on any voluntary treaty. Instead, its premise was rooted in Soviet pressure and coercion. Despite this fundamental difference, there was an instructive and pertinent precedent from that Soviet version of Nato.
The Warsaw Pact was, in reality, most active as an arm for Soviet intervention. While the pact never had a military confrontation with Nato, it was used as an instrument of internal repression against its own member states. This precedent of targeting dissent from within came in 1956, against reformers in Hungary and again in 1968, during the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Yet, as destabilising as this precedent for internal intervention was for the Soviet bloc, the Warsaw Pact survived until a collective decision to disband in 1991. The point of this precedent stems from neither the doomed premise of non-interference nor the demise of an alliance based on Soviet coercion. Rather, it was the misperception of a western threat that kept the pact alive.
Nato’s resilience is also driven by threat perception, except in this case the recognition of threats emanates from an increasingly assertive Russia. By undermining European security, which has escalated beyond the war in Ukraine to include provocative moves in the Baltic Sea and a threatening posture against Western Europe, Moscow has unexpectedly done more to unify Nato than any other country.
At the heart of Nato’s strength is the voluntary nature of a defensive alliance of democratic states. Repudiating any components of coercion and refusing any premise of pressure, it is an organisation of willing members and active partners united in a commitment to collective defence and security. These assets stand apart from any other as comparative and competitive advantages, although this seems to be the case despite – and not because of – the US.
