Just as he did in 2017, Trump is clear in 2023 that the United States should withdraw from NATO.
Trump has a reasonable shot at winning the United States Presidential elections in November, and with a likely stronger Republican hold on the Senate he really can make good on it.
So what would actually happen? We now know what the world looks like when the United States withdraws or chooses not to put troops on the ground: first it looks like Ukraine, and then at the end it looks like Afghanistan. So this is a threat affecting tens of millions of lives that is real already.
Let’s start with the European ability to defend itself without the United States.
Some member countries will adopt a “wait and see” approach focused on persuading the United States to return to NATO. They would offer concessions that were previously unthinkable before, from trade to banking to i.p. protection to tax to energy. That is the bargaining approach to crisis, with the unfortunate message for transatlantic relations that a threat to abandon NATO might actually yield some results. I would expect countries that would take this position would include the United Kingdom, Ireland, and frontline countries Poland, Germany, and Moldova.
A scenario in which Russia foments civil unrest in Kaliningrad which then spills over into Estonia would be a quandary because many NATO members would struggle to agree to invoke the principle of collective defence under Article 5 in this grey-zone scenario (although it close-to replicates how it went in Ukraine). Instead one would expect Article 4 to be invoked which requires only consultations in case the security or independence of a NATO member state is threatened – paired with doubling down on the sanctions against Russia already in place.
Without U.S. security guarantees, the credibility of Article 5 and the mutual defence commitment gets more questionable.
Now let’s push it a bit harder, into a post-Trump re-election scenario: Russia decides that Poland needs to be directly punished for supplying Ukraine with arms and all other kinds of support. Poland is targeted with missiles, but not shot at. Very similar to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Once US missile and nuclear assets are withdrawn, Europe is exposed. Europe would likely remain vulnerable for years to come in such a scenario.
The question then is who would fill the deterrent defence gap in Europe, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown clearly that the whole of Europe has relied on the United States military for decades and has not prepared to be independent of the United States at all. Germany will not be able to develop nuclear weapons due to domestic opposition to nuclear anything. The United Kingdom and France could expand their nuclear arsenal and reach, but that takes time and success with the French to do this is by no means assured even after the Franco-German Aachen Treaty of 2019. Nuclear weapons are not likely to proliferate in Europe for some time if at all, and only if the whole of Europe is prepared to pay for them. That would be great if Russia and China were prepared to agree to a whole new non-proliferation treaty and yet have no motivation to do so.
The French would prefer a new E.U.-centred collective defence structure, heading towards a stronger E.U. The U.K. even now outside the EU would likely presume it would have far stronger post-NATO influence given its significant military manufacturing and servicing capabilities and won’t just sign up to any old post-US NATO. Many NATO countries would oppose strong UK redesign but particularly Turkey, Serbia, Hungary, and the Scandinavian bloc. Like other major international agreements Trump pulled out of, it’s more likely that the command structure of NATO would stay in place, with an opt-in clause for the US to return. NATO is unlikely to ever be reinvented.
European nations have had plenty of time to sustain their public about the security and defence of Europe. They have been warned both by the US and by Russia about what threats to their security are growing. Even now, military production in France and Germany is woefully short of being able to supply Ukraine with what it needs despite nearly two years of war and material commitments.
As we all must do, Europe needs to think the unthinkable. If the NATO command structure were to be dismantled, troops withdrawn, and missiles shipped back homeside, remaining NATO members would immediately have to provide alternatives. Some like Scandinavian countries are prepared. Most others aren’t.
European countries should also make a concerted effort to establish stronger diplomatic ties with Belarus. This would go a long way to reassuring Eastern European member states. Others like Spain and Portugal will not feel the threat of invasion nor the reason to collectively support a NATO replacement. Diverging threat perceptions – even after the Russian invasion – are still clear across Europe as it is. Serbia, Hungary and Turkey will likely find reasons to establish good workarounds with Russia even now.
There would need to be a new, smaller version of NATO that has a bilaterial defence pact with Europe and the United States. The United States may find, for example, that it still needs the EU to contain China and Russia with trade sanctions. It may also find that it still needs Canada and Denmark to shore up the Arctic as a front of potential defence. It may have to figure out for itself whether it is as independent from the rest of the world as it thinks it is. It would also freshen the air for new thinking about the real necessity of strong military alignments across the entire northern hemisphere. It would also provide a massive opening for a reassessment about the likelihood of further invasions by countries other than Russia, and the real impact of military invasion without near-automatic US protection.
We haven’t even got started on whether the US would break out of AUKUS as well, but we need to prepare for that as well here.
A world without the default US military protection is the very hard thinking that must be prepared for in a Trump-re-elected United States of America.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress