Treaty on the Rocks?

For years, even decades, the European Allies have been in a chronic breach of Article 3 of the Washington Treaty that commits all members to develop — individually and collectively — their self-defence capabilities. The consequences have been highly corrosive to transatlantic unity and have poisoned the relationship with the US almost to a breaking point. Previous American presidents had complained about the unfair burden-sharing, but Donald Trump brought it to an entirely new level — and with the right effect, even though Putin’s neo-imperial aggression has done a dose of heavy lifting, too. The trajectory is largely positive now, as the rapid growth of defence expenditures and new targets demonstrate, even if some — such as Canada, Spain, and Belgium — remain laggards. There was and perhaps is a chance that the new money pouring in would be a balm to the irritable occupant of the White House, although he has already moved the goalposts to 5% of GDP (while pondering cuts to the US defence budget).

Then, he took a wrecking ball to even more fundamental parts of the Washington Treaty. By laying a claim on Greenland and refusing to rule out the use of military force to pursue it, Trump put its very first article — the one about refraining from the threat or use of force in international disputes — on thin and rapidly melting Arctic ice. Next, his Rose Garden speech on US tariffs, justified as reciprocation to mostly imaginary and moronically calculated trade barriers, blew a hole in Article 2, which committed all Allies to “seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any or all of them.” The fathers of the Treaty realised fully well that economic harmony between the Allies and their tight economic integration, along with the alignment of their values and interests, was a source of strength. It was meant to generate wealth to support the Alliance’s military power and sustain its technological edge over the enemies. This premise now lies in ruins.

The question now is how serious Trump is about other articles, especially the most fundamental clause of collective defence, that is, Article 5. On the one hand, a raft of politicians and experts, including most recently the Finnish president, insist that nobody of importance in Washington, DC, speaks about withdrawing from NATO. This has just been reiterated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio during his visit to Brussels and will be taken as great reassurance in Europe that all is still good and proper. On the other hand, there is a profound disregard for the international treaties and commitments by Trump and some senior members of his administration, like Vice President JD Vance. Furthermore, in light of their evident dismissal of the US allies as parasitic and as someone who should be beaten into submission, this logic seems to be putting too much faith into reading the DC vibe. It might bear little relation to the mood and frame of mind of the man behind the Resolute Desk.

One may still remember how, in 2021, a plethora of western experts and policymakers — with trusted connections in Moscow’s circles and deep knowledge of Russian foreign policy — outright rejected the idea that Vladimir Putin might want to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, despite the accumulating intelligence evidence to the contrary. It was not surprising, given that even Russia’s foreign minister was not aware of such plans. This is just to say that, in an autocratic regime, even those deemed close to the top might not have a clue about what will happen next. They will, therefore, insist the opposite to what everyone fears and sees as a possibility is true. In 2025, Secretary Rubio could be as detached from the central decision-making in Washington as Lavrov was in Moscow in 2021. Rubio’s desperate effort to sink deep into the sofa in the Oval Office during the infamous ambush of Volodymyr Zelenskyy by Donald Trump and JD Vance just shows how uninformed he was about the deliberate intent to denigrate Ukraine’s leader.

If, at some pivotal juncture, Elon Musk’s mis-cued Grok AI algorithm or some pro-Moscow conspiracies-peddler with access to the Oval Office tell the US President that Europe remains “delinquent” in NATO (regardless of what it means and the facts), who will be there to hold him back from burning the entire house down? After all, he has already set the global trade system that was constructed essentially by and for the sake of America on fire. What is more, his administration was evidently using some crude AI tool to compute the “unfair trade barriers” that somehow landed penguins in trouble. Why would the collective defence of distant and unloved Allies be sacrosanct to the man whose very definition of American interests necessitates dismantling the world order that America has created and led until now, and even partnering with genocidal Russia?

It is utterly naïve to think that what is happening in the trade dimension will not affect defence relations. For both, the connecting tissue is political, not just material, and the key building block of that tissue is trust. Trust has been draining away from the transatlantic relationship at an accelerating pace under this administration, with the attack on the global trade system that threatens a new Great Depression being a milestone of this process. Having a plan B for defence does not mean talking ourselves into undermining NATO — even during the Cold War, there was the Brussels Treaty of Western European Union, Article 4 of which was tighter in language than NATO’s Article 5. It is a fundamental duty and responsibility of every sensible security and defence planner who does not live in a la-la-land and does not play an ostrich until the very moment the flames of war start burning their own feathers.