How Ukraine could break the Western alliance

Source: The Financial Times
Translation: Telegrafi.com

Fear of Russia united the Western alliance. Now, fear of Russia risks tearing it apart.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and European allies to deter Moscow. But if the Trump administration now tries to force Ukraine to accept a partial defeat in its war with Russia, America will be widely seen in Europe as a country that rewards Russian aggression. If NATO allies no longer agree on the threat they face — and how to deal with it — the entire alliance is at risk.

Over the decades, the Atlantic alliance has survived many deep disagreements – from the Suez Crisis in 1956, to the wars in Vietnam and Iraq – because there has always been an understanding that, ultimately, the US and its European allies were on the same side.

The US-Europe partnership was based on shared interests and values. Throughout the Cold War, the shared interest was to contain the Soviet threat. The shared value was to defend democracy. Even after that war ended, the fight against terrorism and the defense of Europe’s new democracies gave NATO a common purpose.

But this common understanding is strained. A disastrous end to the war in Ukraine could shatter it completely.

Over the past week, the US and Europe have pushed forward different peace plans for Ukraine. The Europeans reject key elements of Trump's plan - most notably, legal recognition of Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Donald Trump appeared to have a friendly chat with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Rome over the weekend - while the US leader also made a rare criticism of Vladimir Putin. But America has not dropped any of the elements of its peace plan that Europeans and Ukrainians find unacceptable.

At the heart of this dispute lie deeply different visions of international security – and where the threat of future war comes from. Europeans believe that rewarding Russian aggression in Ukraine would make it much more likely that Putin will attack the rest of Europe – starting with the Baltic states.

The Trump administration sees the situation quite differently. It worries that the US could eventually be drawn into a direct conflict with Russia. Trump himself has repeatedly warned of the risk of a Third World War. The Biden administration was also concerned about the risk of escalation with Russia. But, unlike Trump, it shared with Europe a deep suspicion of Putin and a determination that Russian aggression would not be rewarded.

The divergence in visions for security now goes far beyond the question of how to end the war in Ukraine. America's allies must confront the reality that Trump is directly threatening the territory of two NATO members.

Trump has repeatedly promised to incorporate Greenland — which is an autonomous part of Denmark — into the U.S. In a recent interview with the magazine Team, he also reiterated his desire to make Canada America's 51st state. Trump has not made overt military threats against Canada, but he has clearly expressed a desire to eradicate its existence as an independent country.

Combine these authoritarian instincts, his threats to NATO allies, and his apparent sympathy for Putin – and it is difficult to argue that NATO continues to be an alliance based on shared values.

In fact, the conflict of values ​​has already become open. Both the US and its major European allies continue to claim to be defending democracy. But both sides believe (or pretend to believe) that democracy is in danger on the other side of the Atlantic.

In a now-famous speech at the Munich Security Conference, JD Vance accused America’s European allies of suppressing free speech and fearing their own people. The vice president’s accusations were met with cold indignation in much of Europe – where Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 US presidential election and his attacks on the judiciary, media and universities in the US have not gone unnoticed.

The Trump administration and its European allies now preach two opposing visions of Western values. The Vance-Trump vision is ethno-nationalist, culturally conservative, and illiberal. The European one is internationalist and based on law and liberal institutions.

The divide is all the more bitter because both sides see this as an existential battle for political survival – and are looking for allies on the other side of the Atlantic. The Trump administration is seeking to cooperate with nationalist populists like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Slovakia’s Robert Fico, and Britain’s Nigel Farage. Meanwhile, major European governments had hoped that Kamala Harris would win the US presidency and are now anxiously counting the days until the US midterm elections.

The transatlantic alliance was once a bipartisan commitment that could easily survive changes of government. Now it can only work if liberals – or illiberals – are in power on both sides of the Atlantic simultaneously.

Even then, there are reasons for doubt. In addition to shared values ​​and interests, the Western alliance also depends on trust. All parties need to know that it will hold up, whatever happens in the next elections. But Europeans and Canadians now know that the US is capable of electing Trump for a second term. They can no longer take American resilience for granted. /Telegraph/