The clown in the oval office claimed we wouldn't help them. More Danish men died per capita in middle east because of article 5 than men from the US...
If that’s the case that “NATO as has existed is already over” then maybe it is wise for the USA to pull out. Maybe that’s the endgame for Europe? Europe defends Europe (or gets taken over by Russia I guess), and USA isn’t on the hook for its defense anymore.
Americans all have this attitude that theyre "on the hook" for everyone elses defence as if theyre the white knight defending the world against evil. Its more like the local mob tough guys who have been taking protection money for the last 40 years backed down when a rival gang finally decided to make a move
NATO is there to make sure that the dollar is the dominant trading currency.
NATO is the reason why saudis are trading in dollars.
NATO is the reason that the US has credible nuclear deterrents
NATO is why america doesn't need to have a physical colonial empire in europe (otherwise it'd need to subjugate cyprus, and somewhere like saaremaa, and that costs a shit tonne of money)
NATO isn't about playing for defence of europe, its about keeping the USSR and russia far enough away to keep trading routes open.
If Russia wants the international version of suicide by cop. Invading US soil is the next tier up from invading Russia in winter in military blunders. No one has been stupid enough to try since 1812 when the British navy ruled. And they couldn't achieve any meaningful goals.
In 4 years another administration could come in but there's still damaged trust. If something happens in 5, 6 years from now and article 5 kicks in then even if the US comes to help what is there to say they won't suddenly pull out again 2 years into a war when Vance takes charge? The reliability is gone.
I guess you've got to be flexible depending on circumstances. I mean NATO only really got going after Europe elected Hitler and now we have another iffy electoral result to work with.
I think they might have been helped along a little by things like being occupied, becoming economically and militarily reliant on their occupiers and watching all of their leaders face judgement at the Nuremberg Trials.
Things haven't gotten quite so extreme in the US yet but it feels reductive to suggest that they can just have a flip flop election and that will show they "realised the error of their ways" like Germany did post WW2.
The US has burned trust well past 4 years. This has shown how the US political system enables this. Every 4 years they elect someone who has the power to just toss out everything the previous administration did or committed to. Every 4 years... and the US is so politically divided that it only takes a few percent of opinion change at each election to swing to the other party with polar opposite views. As a result, why would any other country now trust the US in any agreement? (not to mention the large number of agreements they have signed then just abandoned later) Four years is nothing time wise.. barely enough time to get an agreement fully implimented before the US can just say "Nah..." There will be significantly less trust for the US even beyond the Trump era.
It would be delusional to think that this can be patched up with a new president, or that any of America's former allies will be willing to wait around twirling their thumbs, hoping that the next time America flips a coin, it turns out better.
The relationship is over. Maybe in 4 years America can start making some initial steps towards patching things up, but even that seems increasingly unlikely at this point.
Why would another Republican President act any differently than Trump after they see how well that works? A majority of the US either doesn’t care about international affairs or they are actively isolationist.
Does anyone think a country not already involved in a nuclear war would willingly expose itself to being annihilated? NATO works best when all member states are stable, ideologically aligned, and its Article 5 resolve is untested. Here the uncertainty works in its favor. But when NATO expands past deep ideological alignment towards a maximal expansionist strategy, and openly courts states its rival signals as core security interests, NATO becomes something else entirely. When it became a tool for maximally isolating Russia, it undermined its own credibility as a unified security entity. There is a genuine question whether the US would go "all in" to defend eastern european states. The fact that we can credibly ask this question about a NATO member just shows how far it's gone from its initial ideals.
We need to remember the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurance and not forget that Ukraine was coaxed to give up its nuclear weapons in 1993 by a guarantee of territorial integrity.
Why do we need to remember this agreement that provided zero security guarantees? At most it ensures denuclearization is dead, but frankly speaking, it already was.
Maybe instead we should remember the 2014 Wales Summit that was intended to deter Russian invasion?
Or maybe instead we should consider that right before Russia's invasion in February 2022, Europe collectively dropped their military spending as % of GDP? Possibly since Trump had left office in 2021? Its unfortunate deterrents don't function when you do this...
Actually, maybe what we need to remember is that most of Europes money has been going to Russia even after the invasion? What a strange thing for allies to do right?
It's weird how the United States justified its support in Ukraine as securing the region for its allies while its allies undermined this at every step of the way, do allies usually do that? When I listen to them on TV they seem to care a lot about Ukraine so it's strange...