What is Europe's alternative to NATO?

Hello,

Donald Trump's insistence on gaining ownership of Greenland, Canada, and Panama has led to much discussion about whether Europe needs an alternative security framework to NATO. In this video I discuss why Europe will most likely continue to see NATO as the best framework for security cooperation even if Trump pulls the U.S. from the alliance.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

Hi. Well, what a week. This was the week that Donald Trump doubled down on his claims about Canada, Greenland, and Panama to become part of the United States. I think it's quite clear that this is not sustainable if he continues like that. I think it's so far still unknown if this is something that he's doing because he wants a lot of attention before actually becoming president. It was also the week of the funeral of Jimmy Carter and also the sentencing in his criminal case. So, I mean, it's not totally impossible that he was trying to divert attention from that.

But I think it's also clear that if this continues once he's actually president and he tries to push this through, then that is absolutely unsustainable for a defense alliance such as NATO. So, what I wanted to do today in this short video was just to address the question of what are the Europeans going to do without NATO? Because I've seen quite a lot of criticism that what have the Europeans been doing for these last four years? Why have they not built an alternative to NATO already that is already when Donald Trump comes in and so forth?

I think the important thing to understand is that the alternative for the European countries without the United States in NATO is probably going to be NATO without the United States. It's not some alternative organization that is the most important or likely alternative. And what I mean by that is, of course, there will be different kinds of coalitions and we will see different frameworks like the JEF, for example, the Joint Expeditionary Force. These sorts of things will also play a role, but the most important framework will still be NATO, even if the United States does not play the pivotal role that they play right now.

And there are a couple of reasons for that. The first one I will mention is that NATO is actually the only organization that right out of the box includes all the NATO countries. So, even if the United States is no longer a part of NATO, it will still include all the other countries in the alliance. You don't have to go out and invent something new. And just because the United States withdraws from NATO, that doesn't mean that the NATO pact doesn't still exist. So, you can build on that existing framework. So, that's the first one.

The second reason is that if you keep NATO as the broader framework for what's going on, then there is still a chance that the United States can come back and re-enter the alliance and return to the role that they've had so far. So, this is something the European countries really want, right? Keep the door open for the United States to return if they want to.

Over the last four years, there's been passed a law in the United States that means that Donald Trump can't actually withdraw the United States from NATO. It takes a Senate decision to do that. And that means that officially, the United States can't leave, that Donald Trump can't just decide that the United States will leave NATO. What he can do is that he can decide that the United States will not be active in NATO anymore, or he can make statements that they're not going to fulfill their NATO commitments, or that they will not participate militarily in the alliance anymore. That is absolutely possible, and that will require dramatic changes in the structure of how NATO works. There are a couple of headquarters in the United States that will need to be moved. There's some generals currently, for example, we have the Supreme Allied Commander Europe who is an American officer. That would not be an American officer anymore. So, those things would have to change. And the remaining NATO countries would have to find, of course, solutions to things like what are we going to do about all the capabilities that the Americans provide today.

But officially, the United States would still be a member of NATO. And if there is a war, and there is a possibility that the United States wants to return and join the alliance again, then NATO would be good frame for that. That's absolutely one possibility.

And then the last reason I will say why we should still expect NATO to be the primary framework for the military cooperation in Europe also going forward, is that NATO is basically two things. On the one hand, NATO is a political framework where the countries meet at a political level, they make joint decisions about different kinds of things.

But it's also a tool for military cooperation. And we should not underestimate the significance that NATO has as this tool for just working together. Basically, it's a standardization agency, where I don't know the number of NATO publications that is out there, but it's absolutely huge. The number of different books that contain procedures for doing this or that. How do we actually communicate about this, or how we do basically all aspects of working together? How do we find out what frequencies we're going to talk on on the radio, how do we call in air support, how do we do this or that logistically? All these things exist because of NATO and because there is this whole bureaucracy of NATO publications. And if this disappears, then basically all the European countries would not be able to work together militarily anymore.

So that's why it's so important to keep together this organization to just make it possible for all these different countries to do anything at all. And that's why I think, when we are wondering what the European countries are doing to prepare for this future where the United States will play less of a role in NATO, well, basically the answer is they are working to strengthen NATO. They are trying to build up the European leg of NATO. And we are seeing that almost all NATO countries are expanding their militaries these years.

But unfortunately, it's a very slow process to do that, especially because everyone now wants to do it at the same time. Everyone is going out to the weapons factories and saying we want to order new equipment. And, you know, there just isn't enough right now. That's also what the war in Ukraine shows, right, that we're not able to produce all the stuff we really want to produce at the moment. But that is basically the answer to how it is that Europe is preparing for this eventuality that the United States is not going to be there in the future, and we're going to see increasing isolationism.

And then, well, we'll just have to wait and see how serious this actually is, and if Donald Trump is going to change his rhetoric or when he actually gets into office. But, well, it's a little unpredictable right now. Okay, thanks for watching.