LONDON — Donald Trump’s anger at NATO allies for refusing to join the war against Iran has so far achieved one thing: uniting them against him.
In private, over intimate dinners, and on the sidelines of meetings in Brussels and elsewhere, European leaders and officials are discussing how to handle the U.S. president’s threats to quit NATO and what they would do if he followed through.
They now share the grim view that Trump's increasingly angry attacks on Britain, Spain, France and others confirm a fundamental breach in the transatlantic alliance. And while they aren't yet sure what the final answer should be, some countries are already looking to expand their defense and security arrangements to work around a broken NATO.
“NATO is paralyzed — they can’t even have meetings,” said one European diplomat, like others granted anonymity to speak freely. “It's pretty clear NATO is already falling apart,” an EU official said, adding that Europe must urgently bolster its own defenses: “We can’t wait for it to be completely dead.”
The blunt assessment, drawn from POLITICO's interviews with 24 ministers, officials and diplomats, vividly depicts the shift in the postwar world order that Trump has done so much to bring about.
In recent days the Trump administration has plunged the military alliance into perhaps the deepest crisis of its 77-year history. The president and his team have vowed to reassess U.S. membership in NATO once the Iran war is over, in retaliation for the failure of European allies to join the conflict against Iran.
Trump himself has been happy to stoke the flames, calling NATO a "paper tiger" in an interview with The Telegraph.
America’s biggest gripe is the refusal of European powers such as Spain, the U.K. and France to let U.S. forces use their military bases or air space to conduct operations against Iran. In the month since the war began, Trump’s ire has only intensified in a stream of increasingly embittered posts flowing from his Truth Social media account.
For the Europeans, the question, as always, is how to protect themselves from the worst of it — and save what matters most.
Nordic table talk
In Helsinki last week, 10 European leaders met for a private dinner without their officials and aides in the intimate surroundings of the Mannerheim Museum, the home of Finland’s World War II leader Gustaf Mannerheim.
Amid the 1940s interiors, decorated with the former president’s hunting trophies, the leaders of countries including the U.K, Sweden, Finland and Norway held a frank discussion about the dire state of the transatlantic alliance. Trump’s stream of invective via social media is bad and getting worse, they all agreed.
But they resolved they couldn't consent to the U.S. president’s demands to join the fighting against Iran.
“We all want the war to end but we are not on the same page as the U.S.,” said one official briefed on the discussions. Trump wants NATO to help, but the leaders remain resistant because “most Europeans were not informed beforehand and the Gulf has nothing to do with NATO.” In Europe, conversely, the crisis is having a unifying effect: “These 10 countries have always been really close to each other but I would say they’re even closer now,” the official added.
The verdict of these governments, which include Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania and the Netherlands, isn't restricted to Northern Europe.
In fact, what's remarkable about the international response to the war in Iran is how united European leaders have been in their refusal to send military assets to join the American and Israeli bombing.
Trump has “destroyed” the transatlantic relationship and “unified” Europe in opposition to this war, one EU diplomat said. Another senior European government official said the Americans must now deal with their own mistake in attacking Iran.
During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.K. and Poland were among the countries that sent troops to fight with the Americans. This time, the British and Polish prime ministers have been clear they won't be part of it.
Spain closed its airspace to U.S. jets on Monday after refusing American forces permission to use its bases at the start of the war, while France banned U.S. planes from using its airspace if they’re carrying military cargo to the Gulf.
“The United States chose not to consult European allies before launching its campaign against Iran. It is not surprising that some European allies are now withholding use of their airbases — or airspace in the French case,” said Fabrice Pothier, CEO of Rasmussen Global and former director of policy planning at NATO.
“Trump is facing the consequences of his unilateralism and for taking Europe for granted,” Pothier said. “The key now for European allies is to stay united in dealing with the consequences of Trump’s ire.”
Not Churchill
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer has borne the brunt of Trump’s personal attacks, the president repeatedly dismissing him as “not Winston Churchill” for his reluctance to join offensive action against Iran. On Wednesday Starmer brushed aside the abuse, saying: “Whatever the pressure on me and others, whatever the noise, I’m going to act in the British national interest.”
Starmer added that NATO was “the single most effective military alliance the world has ever seen” and the U.K. remained “fully committed” to it. British finance minister Rachel Reeves, however, lifted the lid on the real frustrations in London. “I’m angry that Donald Trump has chosen to go to war in the Middle East — a war that there’s not a clear plan of how to get out of,” she told the BBC.
Even so, Starmer is working hard to show that Britain and other countries really do want to help — not least because their economies depend on restoring trade through the Strait of Hormuz and bringing down oil prices.
On Thursday, the U.K. is set to host a virtual summit of 35 nations to discuss “all viable diplomatic and political measures” to restore freedom of navigation and trade in the region — with every member of the G7 except for the U.S. expected to be in attendance, as well as many smaller states including the tiny Marshall Islands.
The U.K. and other allies will also explore how potentially to help in peacekeeping or policing efforts in the Gulf — but only once the fighting has ended.
There are even hopes in Britain and elsewhere in Europe that King Charles III’s state visit to the U.S. this month will help soothe the troubled relationship with the U.S. The president is a fan of royalty and enjoyed his own state visit to Britain last year.
So far, however, none of these efforts has sufficed to move Trump.
Don’t mention the war
Among NATO officials there is private concern at the rupture in the alliance, along with some bafflement because the U.S. hasn't yet formally requested assistance from NATO in the Gulf. It’s not clear exactly what Washington wants, officials said.
Secretary General Mark Rutte has “irritated” some allies by resolutely sticking to his policy of refusing to criticize America and maintaining there’s no problem with NATO, according to one European diplomat.
“Any turmoil within the alliance with the U.S. in the epicenter is a cause of embarrassment and concern,” a senior NATO diplomat added. Rutte is making “a strategic choice” to keep a “low tone to avoid escalating” the dispute between Europe and Washington, the NATO diplomat said.
In private, officials concede the relentless criticism from the U.S. inevitably weakens NATO because at its heart, the alliance is an idea. Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty states that members will be ready to defend any member who is attacked.
The moment that promise is questioned, NATO loses its potency as a deterrent against Russian aggression. Trump has questioned the idea so often he has turned doubting NATO into official policy.
Yet for Europeans there is still no single answer to how to restore NATO's credibility, or what to replace it with if the worst happens.
Increasingly, European officials are looking to build or strengthen alternative structures to hedge against NATO’s collapse.
The Helsinki dinner took place at the end of a summit of the Joint Expeditionary Force, a British-led defense cooperation group for Northern European countries. As a body, the JEF is designed to muster rapidly deployable forces for situations where NATO’s Article 5 is not invoked, according to Antti Häkkänen, Finland’s defense minister. “I’m not speculating that Article 5 is not working,” he said. “It’s working.”
Even so, if Article 5 doesn't hold up, the JEF still might. Ukraine has already joined an enhanced partnership agreement with the JEF, and at some point Canada could also forge closer links to the group, one official said.
Another network that’s assuming greater importance is the Nordic Defence Cooperation partnership (Nordefco) consisting of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
Back to Brussels
And then there’s the EU.
For years, NATO’s supporters have argued that Brussels must stay away from defense policy to avoid competing with or undermining NATO, which has been the cornerstone of European security since 1949.
But one EU official said the bloc was now “extremely active” on defense given Trump’s verbal battering of NATO.
Trump’s upending of the alliance prompted the EU to designate €150 billion in loans for countries to invest in their defenses, while Brussels is also “exploring” Article 42.7 of the EU treaty, a mutual defense clause, another EU official said. A new economic security plan is due this summer. “We need to do things to make sure we're ready,” the official added.
But it’s one thing for Europe to prepare for America to pull out. It’s another to confront the military aggressor on its doorstep.
For the Baltic states in particular, the existential threat from Moscow is why unity matters.
“For all the allies, at this very moment, it is important to build bridges, not to destroy the bridges,” Estonia’s Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told POLITICO. Anguishing over whether the U.S. is wrecking NATO shows that the West is “divided,” he said. “This is exactly what Putin wants to see.”
Zoya Sheftalovich, Nicholas Vinocur, Victor Jack, Eli Stokols, Felicia Schwartz, Noah Keate, Dan Bloom, Annabelle Dickson, Seb Starcevic, Veronika Melkozerova, Nette Nöstlinger and Jacopo Barigazzi contributed to this report.