Forged under the pressure of the Cold War in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, is in critical condition. It has been brought to the brink of death by Donald Trump’s threat to take Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, a founding member of NATO.
Trump has called acquiring Greenland “an absolute necessity.” He insists that he “would like to make a deal the easy way but if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way,” and he has declined to rule out taking it militarily, though he appeared to do so on Wednesday at Davos. When America’s European allies presented a united front against Trump’s territorial ambitions, he announced that tariffs would be placed on “Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland… until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.” On Wednesday, Trump posted that, having reached a “framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland,” he would no longer be imposing those tariffs.”
Trump’s threat of tariffs this time was not to protect American markets. It is the weaponization of America’s powerful economy in an unprecedented attempt by the leader of NATO to violate the sovereignty of a NATO ally and annex its territory.
“Countries have to have ownership and you defend ownership, you don’t defend leases. And we’ll have to defend Greenland,” Trump said. With that statement, Trump dismissed the entire reason for being of NATO. For over three quarters of a century, the United States and its NATO allies have promised to come to each other’s defense without ownership. That is what an ally is.
If Greenland is the island rock that NATO could crash upon, NATO was already listing and in trouble. The trouble did not begin with Greenland, though Greenland could be the line crossed that exposes the critical condition of the alliance.
The cracks and divisions within the NATO alliance were already exposed by the war in Ukraine. While the U.S. approached the war from a more global grand strategy perspective, some of its NATO allies approached it from a more local perspective. The U.S. sought to enforce NATO’s right to expand anywhere it wanted—even to Russia’s doorstep—and weaken a key rival to its hegemony; some in Europe saw weakening Russia from a more personal, local defensive perspective.
While the Trump administration has made it a policy priority to end the war in Ukraine by aligning any agreement with reality, his European partners have undermined those attempts by pressing Ukraine to hold out for maximalist demands that had been long left behind by reality. Europe and the U.S. have different goals in Ukraine and different ambitions at the negotiating table. The cracks in NATO that are becoming critical in Greenland were first formed and exposed in Ukraine.
They festered again in the waters off Venezuela where the Trump administration was flexing its primacy and bombing boats. The cracks were exposed as many of America’s closest NATO allies expressed discomfort and distanced themselves from the American operation. The U.K stopped sharing intelligence with the U.S. about suspected drug trafficking boats off the coast of Venezuela because they believe the strikes “violate international law.” Canada notified the U.S. that it does not want its intelligence being used to help target boats for deadly strikes. France has expressed concern that the strikes “violate international law.” And Dutch officials had previously restricted intelligence sharing with the U.S. over concerns that the “politicization of intelligence” could be used in “human rights violations.”
The already forming personality split between the U.S. and its European NATO allies was on full public display in the section on Europe in the 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States of America released in November.
The document speaks of the “civilizational erasure” that will make Europe “unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” raising the question of “whether certain European countries will… remain reliable allies.” It says that “it is an open question” whether, with changing demographics, “certain NATO members… will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.” And it calls on Europe to “to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense.”
Trump’s 28-point peace plan for Ukraine talks about NATO as if the U.S. is already not a part. Point 4 states that “A dialogue will be held between Russia and NATO, mediated by the United States.”
The change is also seen in the U.S. decision to scale down its military presence in Europe in order to “ensure a balanced US military force posture”. Some U.S. troops that were sent to Romania to reassure America’s European allies after the Russian invasion of Ukraine have been brought back home to their base in Kentucky “without replacement.” The U.S. has also reduced the size of its participation in NATO military exercises for preventing confrontation with Russia.
The death of NATO might not serve perceived American interests, but it might serve the interests of world peace.
Though Trump often expresses his frustration with NATO in transactional terms, complaining that NATO members have not paid their way, that was never America’s purpose for NATO. The point of NATO was never economic nor transactional. The point of NATO was, in large part, to keep Europe militarily coordinated with, dependent on and subordinate to the United States. The point wasn’t to extricate the U.S. from Europe, it was, as Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of NATO explained, precisely “to keep the Americans in Europe.” By that criterion, NATO has been a massive success, as the Ukraine war has proven. The loss of NATO could hurt that short term, myopic American interest.
But the loss of NATO might not hurt long term U.S. interests or the peaceful interests of the world. NATO has long outlived its purpose. On March 31, 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved the Warsaw Pact. NATO stayed on. Russia has managed to survive in the face of an expanding NATO without its old alliance, why does the West need NATO?
NATO creates the need for its own existence by its own provocative expansion east toward Russia’s borders. NATO expansion is the major cause of conflict with Russia. NATO creates the conditions for conflict without preventing conflict. It has not felt the need to enter Ukraine militarily. And there is nothing in the historical record to suggest that Russia has ever had expansionist goals of recreating the Soviet empire or invading Europe. Russian military operations of eighteen and eleven years ago in Georgia and Crimea that are often cited by Europeans as evidence of Russian ambitions are evidence of the opposite. They were both reactions that, because they easily could have gone much further, demonstrate the limited scope of Russian military operations. And the historical record, as testified to by Russian, Ukrainian and Western sources, is clear that Russia went to war in Ukraine, not as a first step on its march through Europe in a war on NATO, but to stop NATO’s march toward Russia.
Though NATO risks being torn apart in a way that could further damage America’s relations with Europe and Canada, the death of NATO could reintroduce an opportunity that was squandered at the end of the Cold War. The world could choose to draw no lines and to transcend blocs and to create a comprehensive security structure that includes all and is against none.
Trump’s recent threats threaten America’s relations with its allies and the continued existence of NATO. The former is damaging and needs to be avoided. It might finally be time for the latter.
