Since 1949, following the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Europe’s political leadership, with striking exceptions, have assumed that the American commitment to its defence was unequivocal. Admittedly, Charles de Gaulle, the French president, did not wholly share this view and even withdrew French military personnel from its integrated military command in 1966. Nevertheless, he worked out secret arrangements to maintain ties with NATO in the event of a war. Briefly stated, he had argued that France needed to maintain its independence and not remain overly reliant on the United States.
Over the past several decades, on various occasions, American presidents, regardless of their political orientation, have had, to varying degrees, nudged their NATO allies to boost defence spending to 2 per cent of their GDP. In 2014, following the Russian annexation of Crimea, the European NATO allies agreed to meet that goal.
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President Trump, during his first term in office, had expressed misgivings about NATO’s utility for America’s security. More to the point, he had accused NATO of free-riding and not fully sharing the burdens of defence spending. His exhortations had some effect, with most of the NATO countries agreeing to enhance defence spending. In his second term in office, he is now not only questioning America’s continuing commitment to NATO but seems willing to work out a separate peace with Russia in his quest to end the war in Ukraine.
This is more than evident from a set of crucial remarks that his Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, made at the annual Munich Security Conference. At the conference, he argued that it was not realistic for Ukraine to believe that it could regain the territory that it had lost to Russia during the war. Nor, for that matter, did he see a pathway for Ukraine to join NATO. These remarks, in particular, have drawn criticism from more than one influential Republican Senator. Faced with backlash from multiple quarters, he tried to walk back on his stance. However, he also made it clear that he expected President Trump, whom he referred to as the best negotiator “on the planet”, to set the terms for settling the dispute.
Quite unsurprisingly, President Zelenskyy of Ukraine spoke out with much vigour about any plan for conflict resolution that kept his country away from the negotiating table. Nevertheless, President Trump now seems more than willing to proceed with a resolution of the conflict that, for the most part, does not involve Ukraine or America’s NATO allies. This can be inferred from his decision to dispatch Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as National Security Adviser Mike Waltz to meet Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
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Apart from the exclusion of Ukraine, no representatives from NATO will be present at these talks. According to initial press reports, the conference has two clear-cut goals. First, to try and reach a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine. Second, to reset US-Russia relations, which have been in the doldrums since Trump left office in 2020. Trump, it needs to be recalled, unlike Biden, had few qualms about Russia during his initial term in office.
The decision not to include representatives from either Ukraine or NATO has caused understandable and widespread alarm in European capitals. Accordingly, President Emmanuel Macron of France convened an emergency meeting in Paris on February 17 to discuss the question of Ukraine’s future as well as European security, given the ongoing threat from Russia and Trump’s unilateral actions. Attending this meeting were representatives from Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark. The Secretary-General of NATO, former Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, was also present at this meeting.
In its wake, the British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer suggested that the United Kingdom may be willing to deploy British troops to protect Ukraine, though he did not specify either a timeline or the scope of such a deployment. Furthermore, he insisted that an American security guarantee would also be necessary to ensure Ukraine’s security. In the meanwhile, perhaps in an effort to assuage the concerns of America’s NATO allies as well as Ukraine, Rubio stated on a US national television show on February 16 that both Ukraine and European allies would be included in any eventual settlement of the war.
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America’s NATO allies and Ukraine will obviously be watching the outcome of the US-Russia negotiations with both concern and interest. The immediate question on their minds, no doubt, will be the fraught matter of Ukraine’s territorial integrity in any postwar settlement. Beyond that issue, they will also be keen on getting a better appreciation of Trump’s commitment or the lack thereof, to Europe’s security, especially as he seeks to arrive at a rapprochement with Russia.
More than seven decades since its creation, NATO has weathered various vicissitudes, including the end of the Cold War. Now, however, the military alliance finds itself at a turning point. The Trump administration, unlike any other, appears to be departing from the bipartisan consensus that has long characterised American policy toward the transatlantic alliance. And its apparent willingness to reduce its commitment to the organisation comes at a time when significant parts of the continent feel particularly vulnerable to a compelling security threat from Russia. It is, of course, possible that Trump’s successor in office, whether a Democrat or a Republican, may well decide to change course and re-affirm America’s long-standing commitment to NATO. However, that prospect, at the present moment, is of cold comfort to Ukraine and America’s European allies.
Sumit Ganguly is a Senior Fellow and directs the Huntington Program on US-India Relations at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
