It seems that Trump’s idea for ‘less NATO’ is maturing inside Washington’s corridors and becomes mainstream. A yesterday’s article in Foreign Affairs, one of the top US think tanks, proves that this is an undeniable fact.
The main idea, involves a more “flexible” - and independent from US military presence - structure, meaning a NATO that will depend less and less on US military power. Meaning, in simple words, that the US imperialists are thinking to abandon their European allies in the long term!
Key excerpts are particularly revealing:
The Nordic countries have expanded regional collaboration significantly in the past four years. Between them, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden now boast a new long-term defense strategy, a cross-border transit area, frequent joint exercises, and unprecedented levels of command integration. In effect, these governments are forming their own regional deterrence cluster: a like-minded group of states deepening military cooperation to strengthen deterrence and, if required, ensure NATO’s broader collective defense.
… the Trump administration is pushing its European allies to take primary responsibility for the continent’s defense. Europeans must therefore deter a more dangerous Russia with less help.
To strengthen their deterrence and defense capabilities, member states along NATO’s extended frontline—and in the Baltic and Black Sea regions, in particular—should build their own regional clusters and foster a strong latticework of bilateral and “minilateral” partnerships with their neighbors. Regionalization remains a taboo subject among most of the alliance’s political leadership; NATO is, after all, a collective defense alliance founded on indivisible security. But regional efforts at the military level will both make NATO more effective and advance the United States’ vision of a more European NATO.
Nordic-style deterrence clusters are thus a win-win. [...] The United States should use the recently signed Greenland deal as a reset to embrace Nordic defense efforts and create incentives for other allies to follow suit.
Only after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine did some Nordic countries begin to see cooperation as a security imperative, not just a way to save money. Finland and Sweden launched a no-limits military partnership that included joint wartime planning. And Norway, despite maintaining its NATO-first approach, gradually embraced operational cooperation with its two non-NATO neighbors in times of crisis.
Any remaining limits on Nordic military cooperation evaporated once Finland and Sweden joined NATO following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in 2022.
The Nordic deterrence cluster also functions smoothly within NATO’s collective defense framework.
Deterrence clusters could well be the future of NATO’s frontline posture. In addition to NATO’s Joint Operations Area Northwest, NATO has two more regional plans—Center, covering the Baltic states and central Europe, and Southeast, covering Turkey and the Balkans—each with its own operations area and command center network. Governments in these two regions should follow the Nordic example and take the initiative to strengthen their own minilateral ties within the NATO framework.
An obvious starting point is the southeastern Baltic Sea, which sits at the heart of NATO’s Joint Operations Area Center. Although the Baltic states have a shared vulnerability to Russian encroachment, defense cooperation has been modest since they joined NATO, with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania preferring to rely on extraregional patrons such as the United States. Recent moves, however, suggest that regional collaboration is gathering pace: Estonia and Latvia have jointly procured the IRIS-T air defense system, and all three countries are coordinating their HIMARS rocket systems and building the Baltic Defense Line, a fortification project designed to channel, delay, and block a Russian ground invasion.
The fundamental aim should be to strengthen Poland’s role as a leading security provider in the Baltic region alongside Germany, which is permanently stationing a brigade in Lithuania.
… in a more European NATO, the rest of the alliance would expect Black Sea allies to contribute more to collective defense, and the conditions for doing so are improving.
… by strengthening the minilateral latticework, countries close to Russia would enhance their capacity to act together before NATO acted collectively. In extreme circumstances, if the alliance was paralyzed, subregional clusters would offer a hedge, enabling frontline allies to respond together.
If the Europeans are to assume primary responsibility for their conventional defense, subregional cooperation arrangements—with high interoperability, joint procurement, planning and command capacity, cross-border mobility, and even certain divisions of labor—will be paramount.
... a European-led alliance also needs allies that can use their growing capabilities as efficiently and seamlessly as possible.
It is quite impressive that the US itself is described as “extraregional patron” for the Baltic states!
The article also explains why the US imperialists wanted both Sweden and Finland to join NATO, using the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a pretext. Because such a development would enhance dramatically the Nordic cluster of NATO, in order to be used as a model for the development of other clusters across Europe.
The long-term goal is obvious: the creation of a European NATO where the US will not participate with conventional military, but will function only as a factor of nuclear deterrence at best.
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