A few of the more perceptive Europeans understand that the U.S., deriving little from NATO but the financial tab and some weapons sales, has every reason to leave. If the U.S. does leave, NATO will be dead, for Europe can’t at all make up for the loss. From Kit Klarenberg at kitklarenberg.com:
On March 3rd, Timothy Ash of elite British state-connected ‘defence’ think tank Chatham House made a series of startling proclamations in an interview with Bloomberg. His topline message was stark – “NATO is dead.” He spoke following the very public February 28th Oval Office fallout between Volodomyr Zelensky and Donald Trump. The impact of that debacle reverberates today, with questions abounding over continued US aid and intelligence sharing with Kiev, pending the Ukrainian leader’s signoff on a White House-endorsed minerals for security agreements deal.
Branding the catastrophic summit an “ambush”, Ash declared that Trump and his deputy J.D. Vance had “laid out very clearly” that the military alliance was to all intents and purposes moribund, with no hope of recovery. He noted other comments made by the US President at the Oval Office meeting indicated a clearly reticence by Washington to intervene military to protect the Baltic states should they end up at war with Russia, in seeming breach of NATO’s Article 5:
“It should be crystal clear now to European leaders that NATO is dead, we can’t rely on US security guarantees, they’ve come and spelled it out to us…NATO is more or less dead already…Even raising doubts about whether America would stand behind some NATO states says it all…We cannot rely on the Americans any more. We have to move on, we have to think about our own national interests, our own security, we have a very difficult transition period.”
