Russian officials welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on NATO allies over Greenland, with Kremlin economic negotiator Kirill Dmitriev claiming on Jan. 17 that the move signals the “collapse” of the transatlantic alliance.
Trump earlier said that Washington would impose 10% tariffs on NATO allies — France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands, and Finland — until the U.S. reaches a deal to buy Greenland. He has threatened to acquire the island “one way or the other.”
“The transatlantic alliance is over,” Dmitriev wrote on X, mocking European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and urging European leaders not to “provoke” Trump.
While the US was the big stick of NATO, NATO sans the US is still a very potent force. With the existing spending it was more than enough to hold back Russia. With the additional military spending it is more than enough to hold back the US too.
The greatest weakness of NATO sans US is the ability to act quickly and decisively at scale. The petty bickering between countries over the economics of defense spending slows everything down way too much. The EU will have to evolve quickly to overcome this.
The problem, as I understand it, is that the NATO treaty has some stuff in it that is specifically and explicitly the responsibility of the US and having the US abruptly drop out makes the whole thing kind of broken. So a new NATO treaty will need to be quickly organized among those who remain interested.
I have proposed calling it NATWO, we’ll see if they take my advice I suppose.
North Atlantic Treaty W/O (the USA)?