High Decibels and Flurried Decisions

The flurry of decisions and high decibels from President Donald Trump that is affecting NATO, Ukraine, and Russia, along with statements by Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has helped produce what is becoming the most serious crisis in NATO’s history. Certainly, the intensity of European questioning about the credibility of US commitments to European security is unprecedented.

With all the cacophony, uncertainty, and rapidly changing US policies, promises, and prose, some basic truths need to be spelled out.

At heart, it is necessary to recall what NATO is all about: first and foremost, it’s the US strategic commitment, however demonstrated. US troops on the ground or nuclear weapons deployed in Europe can be secondary, provided the US president is clear and unambiguous about the US commitment to invoke Article 5 of the Treaty of Washington in the event of aggression against any of the other 31 NATO allies. There was questioning whether Trump was so committed during his first term as president, although he was probably just putting pressure on allies to spend more on defense, implementing the 2014 NATO Wales summit benchmark of 2% of GDP by each ally. (When, by the end of Joe Biden’s term, the number of allies meeting this standard had risen from 8 to 23 of the thirty-two members of NATO, Trump took the credit. But so what?)

As perceived by many if not all the European allies, problems have also stemmed from precise and considered statements that Secretary Hegseth made in Brussels.

First, he argued that, with any settlement that stops the Russia-Ukraine war, the latter would not get back all its lost territories: an “unrealistic objective.” This is an accurate judgment. In any event, Crimea is only part of Ukraine by accident: a 1952 administrative change in the USSR. Of the rest of Russian-occupied Ukraine, it is almost inconceivable that Russian President Vladimir Putin will relinquish control over all territories seized first in 2014 and then since 2022.

The only way that Ukraine could reclaim all the territories is through military conquest, and nobody realistically believes that this would be possible, and no Western power would help make it happen.

It is theoretically possible that, in negotiations, Ukraine could gain formal “sovereignty” over at least some of its lost lands, but with some form of self-determination and Russian forces remaining in much if not all these territories.

Second, Hegseth ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine. Different US officials have at times recently been ambiguous on this point, but strategic reality is the following: no great power tolerates the presence of a major power competitor on its borders. Thus the US couldn’t tolerate the USSR-Cuban alliance (Bay of Pigs), communist control of Grenada, Sandinistas in Nicaragua (although US opposition was undercut by the Iran-contra scandal), and now with Trump’s threat to seize the Panama Canal to counter China’s influence.

At the same time, as late as the end of the last century, Ukraine’s being a truly independent country worked for all parties, with major agreements in 1997. The NATO-Russia Founding Act (with nineteen areas of practical cooperation) was balanced by the NATO-Ukraine Charter (which, as US ambassador to NATO, I completed negotiations with Ukraine on behalf of the Alliance.) Ukraine was confirmed in its independence and was not in a sphere of influence. It would continue to be deeply engaged as a Western, democratic country (and potentially an EU member.) But it would not be in NATO; nor would Ukraine in any way become a Russian satellite, which -- at the time – was not a professed goal of Russian leaders.

For several years, there were serious US and NATO efforts, at times with reluctant Russian acquiesce if not outright acceptance, to fulfill George H. W. Bush’s goal of a “Europe whole and free” and at peace (Mainz, 1989), until those US top officials who had been seeking to forestall a new cold war with Russia left government late in the Clinton administration. They were succeeded by people who believed that Russia was finished as a great power and thus could be ignored. Among other steps, the US unilaterally abrogated the 1972 ABM Treaty with Moscow and deployed ballistic missile defenses in Central Europe, which Russia saw as a slap in its face, while they were useless for Western security.

Then in 2008, under pressure from US neocons, NATO declared at its Bucharest Summit that Ukraine and Georgia “will become NATO members.” For most allies, this was a compromise with the Americans that meant “never,” but that is not what the words said: it was the effective moment of committing to make Ukraine (with Georgia) an ally. Yet the US (and NATO under US pressure) continued to repeat that point right up until the week before the 2022 Russian invasion and indeed until Hegseth ruled it out!

But even more to the point is a feature of NATO’s decision-making: everything it does requires consensus; and it is inconceivable that all thirty-two allies would be prepared to give Ukraine the aggression-against-one-is-aggression-against-all commitment of Article 5. Several allies which say publicly that they would have Ukraine (or Georgia) in NATO are being “economical with the truth.” Indeed, if all would agree, at least some would have troops on the ground in Ukraine now. No ally is willing to do so. Thus the idea that saying now that Ukraine will not be admitted to NATO is not “conceding a point before negotiations start.”

There are other areas in which NATO needs to get its positions straight if there are to be serious negotiations on the Russia-Ukraine War and also to preserve NATO and enhance European security. The fact, ratified over and over for 75 years in the Cold War and afterwards, is that only the United States can deal effectively with Russia. Even if it is relatively weak now, Russia will not be weak forever; and along with China and the United States, Russia will be one of the world’s principal strategic powers. Ironically, Trump seems to understand that better than his immediate predecessors, since late-Clinton. How he is expressing it is both stupid and dangerous within the West, but it is an undeniable geopolitical reality.

So, the Russian expression, “What is to be done?” First, though this is perhaps beyond his capability, is for President Trump to shut up and certainly to stop calling Ukraine’s president, Volodymir Zelensky, insulting names – not just as a courtesy, but because Zelensky’s concurrence will be indispensable to any agreement, even if it is just concluded between Trump and Putin. While accepting Russia as a great power, Trump should also stop seeing equivalence between Russia and Ukraine in responsibility for starting the 2014 and 2022 wars: they were objectively started by Russia, even though, in creating the groundwork, US hands haven’t been clean since at least 2008.

The NATO allies also have things to do. Building up NATO forces and meeting goals for defense spending are important to show seriousness of purpose (including to Putin), but they are less important than recognizing that preserving NATO and America’s deeply-committed role therein is indispensable: some “Europe only” substitute – likely based on the European Union -- cannot do the job, however useful the Common Security and Defence Policy can be as a supplement.

The Europeans need to stop talking about creating a deterrent force able to take on, or deter, Russia – whatever French President Emmanual Macron’s ambitions, which are made even less realistic because of Brexit, which took Britain out of European security except for its role in NATO. The fact is that without NATO (and hence the United States) the EU states will not have the structure, organization, or political will to substitute for US-led NATO. Even with herculean efforts, the EU (or a substitute) would take many years, if ever, to develop needed capabilities. The task – and concerns about US commitment to European security -- was compounded by Secretary Hegseth’s other qualifications in Brussels: that post-agreement European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine would not include Americans, nor would they be covered by NATO’s Article 5. Also, any bilateral guarantees to Ukraine would have to be made by the Europeans.

These comments made even worse President Trump’s doubts about NATO and US commitment to European security. And they fly in the face of an incontestable fact: that deterring Russia will continue to require the United States: European and Canadian allies’ understanding of this, however brave a face they put on, or whatever “Europe-only” alternatives they discuss, underpins much of their fears about President Trump.

Most important is for leading allies to make clear to Trump and all his team just how much damage they have already done to US credibility, overall, and thus to the credibility of the US commitment to European security. This, indeed, is the most important aspect of the current crisis: the emerging presidential assault on US credibility in Europe (also visible to others, including Russia.) For more than 75 years, this has been an invaluable asset, regardless of changing circumstances, geopolitically and politically.

Among other things, European allies must try to get Trump to understand that lessening the precious US commitment to and active engagement in European security, as perceived in Europe, can also put at risk another domain of US assets – clearly priceless to Trump: the strength and comprehensive character of vibrant and unquestioned transatlantic economic relations, without which the US economy cannot thrive, whatever Trump chooses to believe. “Transactionalism” (mercantilism) died as a viable alternative decades ago.

Further, with his assault on NATO and threats of tariffs, Trump will not be able to count on European support in his primary focus on China. Talk of security cooperation in Asia was only a European search for a way to mollify both Biden and Trump; but European economic relations with China are likely to thrive in a hostile US-European environment.

Britain, in particular, needs to stop trying to have it both ways – to be a bridge between the US and the EU and believing it can shelter, because of the “special relationship,” from the winds blowing from the White House. Prime Minister Sir Keith Starmer must finally show some mettle and stand up to Trump with a major dose of the truth.

Fortunately, there is one secret weapon against formal US separation from European security: 2023 legislation to prevent the US president from just quitting NATO with a year’s notice. The law now states that the US could only leave NATO the same way it joined: with a two-thirds vote of the US Senate – an impossibility. The key Republican co-sponsor of that legislation? The former Senator who is now Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. But even the law couldn’t stop Trump from undercutting the political and psychological authority of US commitment to honor Article 5.

Indeed, President Trump’s making a clear and unambiguous statement about his support for Article 5 is the indispensable first step – the sine qua non -- to start resolving the unprecedented crisis in NATO and in America’s credibility that Trump started.