NATO’s ability to deter Russia has taken a hit with trans-Atlantic infighting

BRUSSELS (AP) — European allies and Canada are pouring billions of dollars into helping Ukraine and have pledged to do so. greatly increase their budget to defend their territory.

But despite these efforts, NATO’s credibility as a unified force under US leadership took a major blow last year as confidence in the 32-nation military organization eroded.

The dispute arose mostly when US President Donald Trump made repeated threats. capture greenlandSemi-autonomous region of NATO ally Denmark. More recently, Trump’s disparaging remarks about NATO allies’ troops in Afghanistan He let out another shout..

While it’s hot in Greenland decreased For now, the infighting has seriously undermined the world’s largest security alliance’s ability to deter its enemies, analysts say.

“This incident is significant because it crossed a line that cannot be crossed,” Sophia Besch of the Carnegie Europe think tank said in a report on the Greenland crisis. “Even without force or sanctions, this violation would permanently weaken the alliance.”

Tensions in Russia, NATO’s biggest threat, have not gone unnoticed.

Deterring Russia depends on President Vladimir Putin being convinced that NATO will retaliate if it expands its war further. Ukrainian. That doesn’t seem to be the case right now.

“This is a big upheaval for Europe and we are watching it,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week.

Filling the bucket

Criticized for decades by U.S. leaders for low defense spending and brutally criticized under Trump, European allies and Canada agreed in July to significantly up their game and start investing 5% of their gross domestic product on defense.

The pledge was intended to take the whip out of Trump’s hands. By 2035, Allies will spend as much of their economic output as the United States on basic defense (about 3.5% of GDP) and an additional 1.5% on security-related projects such as improving bridges, air and ports.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte praised these remarks as a sign of NATO’s solid health and military strength. “In fact, thanks to Donald J. Trump, NATO is stronger than ever,” he said recently.

Even though a big part of his job is to make sure Trump doesn’t pull the United States out of NATO, as Trump has occasionally threatened to do. Flattery of the American leader sometimes raised concerns. Rutte flatly refused to talk about the dispute over Greenland.

Article 5 is in danger

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded in 1949 to counter the security threat posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and the organization’s deterrence is supported by the strong presence of American troops in Europe.

The alliance is built on the political commitment that an attack on one ally must be met with a response from all allies; The collective security guarantee is included in this agreement. Article 5 from his rule book.

This is based on the belief that the territory of all 32 allies should remain untouched. Trump’s designs for Greenland attack this very principle; although Article 5 does not apply to internal disputes as it can only be triggered by unanimity.

“Threats to Greenland and NATO undermine America’s own interests rather than strengthening our alliances,” two U.S. senators, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Lisa Murkowski, wrote in a New York Times op-ed.

“Suggestions that the United States would seize its allies or force allies to sell territory are not signs of strength. They signal unpredictability, weaken deterrence, and give our adversaries exactly what they want: evidence that democratic alliances are fragile and unreliable,” they said.

Even before Trump stepped up his threats to seize control of Greenland, his European allies were never fully convinced that he would defend them if they were attacked.

Trump has said he doesn’t believe allies will help him either, and was further angered recently when he questioned the role of European and Canadian troops fighting and dying alongside Americans in Afghanistan. The president later partially reversed his remarks.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was dismissed in his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Criticisms that Trump is undermining the alliance.

“The stronger our partners become in NATO, the more flexibility the United States will need to have to secure our interests in different parts of the world,” he said. “This is not abandoning NATO. This is a reality of the 21st century and a changing world.”

Russia cannot be easily deterred

Despite NATO’s talk of increasing spending, Moscow seems determined. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said this week that “it has become painfully clear that Russia will continue to be a major security threat in the long term.”

“We fend off cyberattacks, sabotage of critical infrastructure, foreign interference and information manipulation, military intimidation, regional threats and political interference,” he said in a statement Wednesday.

Authorities across Europe reported the following actions: sabotage and mysterious drone flights on airports and military bases. It is difficult to identify the culprits and Russia denies responsibility.

In his year-end speech, Rutte warned that Europe was at imminent risk.

“Russia brought the war back to Europe, and we must be prepared for the extent of war that our grandparents or great-grandfathers endured,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Russia, Lavrov said that the dispute over Greenland was a sign of a new development. “deep crisis” For NATO.

“It was difficult to imagine before that something like this could happen,” Lavrov told reporters, considering the possibility that “a NATO member would attack another NATO member.”

Russian state media mocked Europe’s “impotent anger” at Trump’s designs on Greenland and Putin’s presidential envoy declared “the end of the trans-Atlantic union”.

Doubt about US soldiers

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will meet with his NATO counterparts on February 12. A year ago, he surprised allies by warning about America’s security priorities. sleep somewhere else and now Europe must fend for itself.

The security of the Arctic region, including Greenland, will be at the top of the agenda. It is unclear whether Hegseth will announce a renewed withdrawal of US troops from Europe, which is central to NATO’s deterrence.

The lack of clarity on this issue has also raised doubts about the United States’ commitment to its allies. In October, NATO learned that some 1,500 American troops would be withdrawn from the region bordering Ukraine. angered ally Romania.

A report published last week by the European Union Institute for Security Studies warned that while US troops are unlikely to disappear overnight, doubts about the US’s commitment to European security mean “a further eroding of the deterrence structure”.

“Europe is forced to confront a harsher reality,” wrote authors Veronica Anghel and Giuseppe Spatafora. “Enemies are beginning to believe they can investigate, sabotage and escalate without triggering a unified response.”