Bankruptcy, says a character in a Hemingway novel, happened to him in two ways: gradually, and then suddenly. The same is true of the implosion of the post-1945 Western security alliance, which has been approaching since November 2024, when Donald Trump won a second term in the White House, and which now seems to have happened very suddenly indeed, in the space of a few days.
The immediate trigger has, of course, been the White House’s determination to possess Greenland, a territory belonging to another NATO member, and its threats to invade if not allowed to take it peacefully. A connected pledge to impose punitive tariffs on other allies opposing this act of aggression then further undermined the alliance.
Under pressure from these allies and the markets, the administration backed down; this has provided a respite in the crisis, but has not resolved the issue. A collective security alliance cannot survive when the principal member threatens military and other action against its treaty allies. As President Trump said when characterizing his initial demand, there’s “no going back.”
There’s a case to be made that NATO has anyway been in sharp, and arguably terminal, decline since the start of the second Trump administration. There are multiple reasons for this that extend well beyond the president’s vocal resentment of the alliance and his repeated references to NATO as if the US were not a member.
The threats to Greenland and Canada began almost as soon as Trump took office. As Vice President Vance made clear at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, and as the National Security Strategy and many other statements have underlined, the administration sees Europe as a problem, not an ally, as a region with which they do not share values or interests, including security interests. Economically, Europe is seen as a competitor; on security, it is seen as a burden.
At the same time, the administration has transformed the relationship with Russia — Europe’s main threat — from one of hostility to something that looks remarkably close to alignment. Signs of this have included the dramatic reversal of the US’s previous support for Ukraine; the rolling out of the red carpet for Putin at the Alaska Summit; and the 28 point “peace plan” for Ukraine which included commitments on economic cooperation with Russia (including in the Arctic) and which pushed to see Russia “reintegrated into the global economy” and readmitted into the G7.
Last year, policymakers and many analysts in Europe appeared reluctant to acknowledge the scale and the implications of the transformation in Washington’s view of NATO and of Europe. The Greenland crisis appears to have pushed some governments into a more public recognition of it.
At Davos, Mark Carney talked of “a rupture, not a transition” in the world order and economic integration with [unnamed] great powers becoming “the source of . . . subordination”. Beyond the conference hall, European states are moving and reconsidering their stance on nuclear weaponry, with once skeptical countries like Sweden now in early talks with France and the UK about protection from their armories.
The significant increases in defense spending commitments by other NATO states increasingly seem driven less by a desire to placate the US than to be more independent of it, though the primary driver remains the threat from Russia. Mark Rutte’s assertion that Europe cannot defend itself without the US — a diplomatically necessary claim from the NATO Secretary General — has been publicly rejected by the French government and scathingly described by a former French ambassador to NATO as a failed policy of “brandishing European weakness to tie down the US guarantee.”
Some observers still suggest that the relationship between the US and the rest of NATO is only strained not broken; that wiser and more Europe-friendly figures in and around the administration will restrain its excesses; and that Europe and Canada just need to wait for normality to return after the next election.
However tempting, these arguments don’t work. One reason is that the chaos and hostility of the Trump administration’s approach to NATO and to Europe as a political-economic-cultural space, the damage done to Ukraine, and the quasi-alignment with Russia show that the restraining effect pro-Europeans in Washington might be having on the White House is minimal. The argument that things would be much worse without them is not reassuring.
The idea that Europe and Canada just need to wait for a new administration in 2029 is unwise for several reasons. One is that the US may become bogged down in a post-electoral morass where a democratic transition is challenged. The other members of NATO must anticipate this possibility.
The second reason is that although the Trump administration is alienated from early 21st-century Europe and the North Atlantic alliance, this isn’t a new suspicion about Europe. There is an older and wider strain of American opinion that is skeptical of relations with Europe, and of the idea that the transatlantic alliance provides the US with meaningful benefits. The Trump administration is the first in living memory to embrace this tradition to this extent, but there is no reason to think that it will be the last.
Finally, the downgrading of Europe as a strategic priority long precedes Trump and will outlast him. Since the turn of the century, successive Presidents have tried to pivot to the Asia-Pacific, above all, China. The Trump administration’s recent National Defense Strategy may be an anomaly in its 19th-century-style preoccupation with a sphere of influence in the Americas, but the longer-term focus of the US is likely to be Asia. Even if later presidencies try to repair the damage done by this one, it is hard to see them refocusing on Europe as a priority.
For all these reasons, the rest of NATO cannot base its security on guarantees of support from the US. In the short-, and perhaps medium-term, there is an obvious requirement to work pragmatically with Washington, but they will need — and there are signs that they are — beginning to decouple from the US on intelligence, procurement, and defense planning. For Western Europe and Canada, this is a more profound shift in their security environment than the one brought about by the end of the Cold War. And of course, it is deeply alarming.
But the end of the security partnership with the US won’t mean the end of collective security in Europe or, indeed, the end of a transatlantic alliance. European states are too conscious of both the threats of the present and future, and the lessons of the continent’s past, to abandon it. The alternatives of faith in a badly wounded alliance, of drift, and of a growing vulnerability to outside powers are unthinkable.
Europe’s security structures and the European Union have the capacity to remain some of the most powerful global actors.
To do this, Europe needs to think about itself as an idea and a set of structures that extends beyond its current boundaries. Just as the “West” has included states not in the geographic West (think of Japan and Australia), and NATO has members nowhere near the North Atlantic, so the idea of “Europe” needs extend beyond the borders of the continent and the current membership of its institutions.
A new West, grounded in a security alliance, economic ties, and shared values, can include both non-European ally Canada and the EU and NATO’s eastern partners in Moldova and Ukraine. These two states have defended themselves against hybrid attacks on democracy and, in Ukraine’s case, against full-scale invasion; that experience is likely to be vital for the rest of Europe and Canada. Partnerships with states such as Australia and New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea are also likely to be important.
For more than 80 years, the US was the pre-eminent ally of Europe. The end of that alliance has seemed unthinkable, but it has nevertheless arrived, and wishing that things were different will not bring the alliance back to life.
A future US administration may seek to mend the relationship with Europe and Canada, but NATO, as it has existed to date, is unlikely to be recoverable. The center of gravity of the West, as a community bound by shared security and political values, has moved away from the US to a wider Europe. The end of the old US-led West has been approaching gradually for months; now, suddenly, it is here.
Dr. Ruth Deyermond joined the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London, after completing a PhD in Government and an MA in International Relations at the University of Essex. Before this, she worked in HM Treasury in areas including UK policy towards the international financial institutions and the development of the Private Finance Initiative. She is currently the program director for the MA in International Relations.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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