{"id":1870274,"date":"2026-04-07T11:09:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T08:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1870274"},"modified":"2026-04-07T11:09:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T08:09:50","slug":"ben-hodges-europe-has-the-power-but-not-the-political-will-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1870274","title":{"rendered":"Ben Hodges: Europe has the power but not the political will"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/static.dw.com\/image\/74467543_6.jpg”]<\/p>\n

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https:\/\/p.dw.com\/p\/5Bkcs<\/span><\/div>\n<\/section>\n
Trump hosts the NATO chief Wednesday at the White House.Image: Kevin Lamarque\/REUTERS<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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“NATO is broken,”\u00a0said Ivo Daalder, not mincing his words. The former US ambassador to the trans-Atlantic alliance believes tensions between Donald Trump<\/a> and European allies over the Iran war have thrust NATO<\/a>, which turned 77 years old this month, into the “worst crisis”\u00a0in its history.<\/p>\n

But alarm bells have been ringing for some time now. Already a year ago, Daalder published an article<\/a> outlining how European member states might reconstruct NATO<\/a> to function without the US, around whose leadership the organization was built.<\/p>\n

How did we get here?<\/h2>\n

Daalder, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, told DW that several factors have brought NATO to this low point. It’s not just the insults Trump flings at the alliance and its European members, to which they’ve become quite accustomed. Trump repeated his view on Monday that NATO is a “paper tiger”\u00a0that won’t support<\/a> the US in its war against Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nor, the former ambassador said, is it even Trump’s repeated threats to withdraw from NATO, which is accompanied by the more practical concern that he would be unwilling to participate in collective defense if another ally were attacked, the guarantee pledged by NATO’s Article 5<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Daalder said it is the combination of Trump’s vitriol along with the fact that many\u00a0European governments have now gone beyond just refusing to help fight Washington’s\u00a0war on Iran, with instances of\u00a0\u00a0denying Trump the right to use bases<\/a> or refusing to grant airspace rights for offensive action.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Former
Former US ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder said the alliance has never seen a worse crisis than today over IranImage: Cherie Cullen\/U.S. Defense Department<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“The European action is a reflection of the fact that NATO is deeply damaged,” he added, “and it reinforces the fundamental reality that Europe no longer trusts the United States, believes the United States is an unreliable ally, and therefore is no longer willing to participate in these kind of operations. That is why this is the worst crisis of NATO.”<\/p>\n

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has supported the US-Israeli action and played\u00a0down the rift. “In the alliance, you will always have different views,”\u00a0he said on March 26. “But when it comes to not accepting Iran having a nuclear and missile capability, we all agree … What the United States is doing now is degrading that capability. And yes, I applaud that.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Can Trump just leave?<\/h2>\n

Trump himself often publicly muses on an exit, saying recently that the prospect is “beyond reconsideration.”\u00a0But no one knows for sure whether he’ll one day attempt to withdraw from the alliance.<\/p>\n

What is known is that it wouldn’t be easy, thanks in part to his now secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who as a senator introduced legislation passed in 2023 that requires support from two-thirds of the Senate to leave.<\/p>\n

Three years later, Trump insists he’d be able to do it anyway \u2014 and Daalder agrees with him, saying the constitutional challenge this could spark would likely favor the power of a president. Meanwhile, Rubio appears to have transitioned into a NATO skeptic.<\/p>\n

From NATO’s side, there is an article in the 1949 Washington Treaty outlining the process for quitting, but it’s never before been used. Article 13 states that: “After the Treaty has been in force for twenty years, any Party may cease to be a Party one year after its notice of denunciation has been given to the Government of the United States of America, which will inform the Governments of the other Parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation.”<\/p>\n

Of course, there are plenty of ways Trump could kneecap NATO without leaving and without obtaining congressional approval. He could simply decide to bring troops home, cease supplying NATO commands and institutions with personnel \u2014 some of which is already happening \u2014 and even, to be very dramatic, decide not to staff the position of Supreme Allied Commander Europe, a military post that always goes to an American.<\/p>\n

How would NATO react?<\/h2>\n

NATO would be hard-pressed to project credible power without the US, which has the largest and most advanced arsenal of weapons and the obvious advantage of a comparatively massive military force. But experts say the alliance wouldn’t necessarily collapse. It could continue a transition that’s already underway toward\u00a0more European leadership and further reliance on European capabilities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Ben Hodges: Europe has the power but not the political will<\/h2>\n

The International Institute for Security Studies (IISS) has researched what this could look like, urging “European decision-makers to consider the military, financial and defence industrial investments needed to reduce dependencies on the US and, in extremis, to prepare for a NATO without any US\u00a0role.”<\/p>\n

The picture isn’t rosy. Undertaken almost a year ago, the IISS assessment<\/a> found that there would be serious shortfalls not just in replacing “major US\u00a0military platforms and manpower<\/a>\u00a0”\u00a0but also in space and in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets. “They would also need to replace the significant US\u00a0contribution to NATO’s command and control arrangements and fill many senior military positions in NATO organizations currently occupied by US\u00a0personnel,”\u00a0it found.<\/p>\n

This would, the study estimated, require additional financing by European NATO members of an estimated trillion dollars on top of already increasing\u00a0defense budgets.<\/p>\n

Nick Witney, a former UK defense ministry staffer now working with the European Council on Foreign Relations, told DW that his “strong view is we just don’t bloody well need America now.”\u00a0While Witney added\u00a0that the “more American troops are around in Europe for the longest possible time, the happier I should be and happier all Europeans would be,”\u00a0he doesn’t believe that “if Trump did turn around tomorrow and say, ‘All right, we’re all coming home, we’re through with you lot and you can forget about my nuclear guarantee,’\u00a0I really don’t feel that all will be lost.”<\/p>\n

Part of this, he explained, is because of recent overtures made by French President Emmanuel Macron<\/a> to several other allies about increasing nuclear cooperation outside NATO, as France does not currently make its own capabilities available to the alliance.<\/p>\n

Rattled nerves, resolute stance<\/h2>\n

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna is perhaps the only European leader to have announced that his country is willing to help the Trump administration in Iran even before the war is over. But despite all the US\u00a0accusations about a lack of support, he said there has been no actual request.<\/p>\n

Tsahkna said his reason for offering is all about paying it forward. “Of course, this [anti-NATO] narrative is not good,”\u00a0he told DW. “Estonian people are asking me and many other politicians every day whether NATO’s Article 5 is working or not.”\u00a0Tsahkna advises all of Europe to “remain cool, let’s focus on what we can do and of course constantly we need to talk to the US administration,”\u00a0reminding them that the US needs Europe too.<\/p>\n

\n

Trump ‘disappointed’ with NATO over refusal to join Iran war<\/h2>\n

That is sure to be a key talking point for Rutte as he visits the White House on Wednesday, hoping to, as he has done before, elicit a positive response\u00a0on NATO from Trump. In his remarks Monday, Trump called Rutte himself a “great person”\u00a0but once again lambasted Europeans and other countries for failing to join the Iran war.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0ended his press conference with a\u00a0cryptic, perhaps ominous, statement:\u00a0“We want Greenland. They don’t want to give it to us. And I said, ‘bye-bye.'”<\/p>\n

Edited by: R. Casey<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

\n

“NATO is broken,”\u00a0said Ivo Daalder, not mincing his words. The former US ambassador to the trans-Atlantic alliance believes tensions between Donald Trump<\/a> and European allies over the Iran war have thrust NATO<\/a>, which turned 77 years old this month, into the “worst crisis”\u00a0in its history.<\/p>\n

But alarm bells have been ringing for some time now. Already a year ago, Daalder published an article<\/a> outlining how European member states might reconstruct NATO<\/a> to function without the US, around whose leadership the organization was built.<\/p>\n

How did we get here?<\/h2>\n

Daalder, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, told DW that several factors have brought NATO to this low point. It’s not just the insults Trump flings at the alliance and its European members, to which they’ve become quite accustomed. Trump repeated his view on Monday that NATO is a “paper tiger”\u00a0that won’t support<\/a> the US in its war against Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nor, the former ambassador said, is it even Trump’s repeated threats to withdraw from NATO, which is accompanied by the more practical concern that he would be unwilling to participate in collective defense if another ally were attacked, the guarantee pledged by NATO’s Article 5<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Daalder said it is the combination of Trump’s vitriol along with the fact that many\u00a0European governments have now gone beyond just refusing to help fight Washington’s\u00a0war on Iran, with instances of\u00a0\u00a0denying Trump the right to use bases<\/a> or refusing to grant airspace rights for offensive action.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Former
Former US ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder said the alliance has never seen a worse crisis than today over IranImage: Cherie Cullen\/U.S. Defense Department<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“The European action is a reflection of the fact that NATO is deeply damaged,” he added, “and it reinforces the fundamental reality that Europe no longer trusts the United States, believes the United States is an unreliable ally, and therefore is no longer willing to participate in these kind of operations. That is why this is the worst crisis of NATO.”<\/p>\n

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has supported the US-Israeli action and played\u00a0down the rift. “In the alliance, you will always have different views,”\u00a0he said on March 26. “But when it comes to not accepting Iran having a nuclear and missile capability, we all agree … What the United States is doing now is degrading that capability. And yes, I applaud that.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Can Trump just leave?<\/h2>\n

Trump himself often publicly muses on an exit, saying recently that the prospect is “beyond reconsideration.”\u00a0But no one knows for sure whether he’ll one day attempt to withdraw from the alliance.<\/p>\n

What is known is that it wouldn’t be easy, thanks in part to his now secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who as a senator introduced legislation passed in 2023 that requires support from two-thirds of the Senate to leave.<\/p>\n

Three years later, Trump insists he’d be able to do it anyway \u2014 and Daalder agrees with him, saying the constitutional challenge this could spark would likely favor the power of a president. Meanwhile, Rubio appears to have transitioned into a NATO skeptic.<\/p>\n

From NATO’s side, there is an article in the 1949 Washington Treaty outlining the process for quitting, but it’s never before been used. Article 13 states that: “After the Treaty has been in force for twenty years, any Party may cease to be a Party one year after its notice of denunciation has been given to the Government of the United States of America, which will inform the Governments of the other Parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation.”<\/p>\n

Of course, there are plenty of ways Trump could kneecap NATO without leaving and without obtaining congressional approval. He could simply decide to bring troops home, cease supplying NATO commands and institutions with personnel \u2014 some of which is already happening \u2014 and even, to be very dramatic, decide not to staff the position of Supreme Allied Commander Europe, a military post that always goes to an American.<\/p>\n

How would NATO react?<\/h2>\n

NATO would be hard-pressed to project credible power without the US, which has the largest and most advanced arsenal of weapons and the obvious advantage of a comparatively massive military force. But experts say the alliance wouldn’t necessarily collapse. It could continue a transition that’s already underway toward\u00a0more European leadership and further reliance on European capabilities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Ben Hodges: Europe has the power but not the political will<\/h2>\n

The International Institute for Security Studies (IISS) has researched what this could look like, urging “European decision-makers to consider the military, financial and defence industrial investments needed to reduce dependencies on the US and, in extremis, to prepare for a NATO without any US\u00a0role.”<\/p>\n

The picture isn’t rosy. Undertaken almost a year ago, the IISS assessment<\/a> found that there would be serious shortfalls not just in replacing “major US\u00a0military platforms and manpower<\/a>\u00a0”\u00a0but also in space and in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets. “They would also need to replace the significant US\u00a0contribution to NATO’s command and control arrangements and fill many senior military positions in NATO organizations currently occupied by US\u00a0personnel,”\u00a0it found.<\/p>\n

This would, the study estimated, require additional financing by European NATO members of an estimated trillion dollars on top of already increasing\u00a0defense budgets.<\/p>\n

Nick Witney, a former UK defense ministry staffer now working with the European Council on Foreign Relations, told DW that his “strong view is we just don’t bloody well need America now.”\u00a0While Witney added\u00a0that the “more American troops are around in Europe for the longest possible time, the happier I should be and happier all Europeans would be,”\u00a0he doesn’t believe that “if Trump did turn around tomorrow and say, ‘All right, we’re all coming home, we’re through with you lot and you can forget about my nuclear guarantee,’\u00a0I really don’t feel that all will be lost.”<\/p>\n

Part of this, he explained, is because of recent overtures made by French President Emmanuel Macron<\/a> to several other allies about increasing nuclear cooperation outside NATO, as France does not currently make its own capabilities available to the alliance.<\/p>\n

Rattled nerves, resolute stance<\/h2>\n

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna is perhaps the only European leader to have announced that his country is willing to help the Trump administration in Iran even before the war is over. But despite all the US\u00a0accusations about a lack of support, he said there has been no actual request.<\/p>\n

Tsahkna said his reason for offering is all about paying it forward. “Of course, this [anti-NATO] narrative is not good,”\u00a0he told DW. “Estonian people are asking me and many other politicians every day whether NATO’s Article 5 is working or not.”\u00a0Tsahkna advises all of Europe to “remain cool, let’s focus on what we can do and of course constantly we need to talk to the US administration,”\u00a0reminding them that the US needs Europe too.<\/p>\n

\n

Trump ‘disappointed’ with NATO over refusal to join Iran war<\/h2>\n

That is sure to be a key talking point for Rutte as he visits the White House on Wednesday, hoping to, as he has done before, elicit a positive response\u00a0on NATO from Trump. In his remarks Monday, Trump called Rutte himself a “great person”\u00a0but once again lambasted Europeans and other countries for failing to join the Iran war.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0ended his press conference with a\u00a0cryptic, perhaps ominous, statement:\u00a0“We want Greenland. They don’t want to give it to us. And I said, ‘bye-bye.'”<\/p>\n

Edited by: R. Casey<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

“NATO is broken,”\u00a0said Ivo Daalder, not mincing his words. The former US ambassador to the trans-Atlantic alliance believes tensions between Donald Trump<\/a> and European allies over the Iran war have thrust NATO<\/a>, which turned 77 years old this month, into the “worst crisis”\u00a0in its history.<\/p>\n

But alarm bells have been ringing for some time now. Already a year ago, Daalder published an article<\/a> outlining how European member states might reconstruct NATO<\/a> to function without the US, around whose leadership the organization was built.<\/p>\n

Daalder, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, told DW that several factors have brought NATO to this low point. It’s not just the insults Trump flings at the alliance and its European members, to which they’ve become quite accustomed. Trump repeated his view on Monday that NATO is a “paper tiger”\u00a0that won’t support<\/a> the US in its war against Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nor, the former ambassador said, is it even Trump’s repeated threats to withdraw from NATO, which is accompanied by the more practical concern that he would be unwilling to participate in collective defense if another ally were attacked, the guarantee pledged by NATO’s Article 5<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Daalder said it is the combination of Trump’s vitriol along with the fact that many\u00a0European governments have now gone beyond just refusing to help fight Washington’s\u00a0war on Iran, with instances of\u00a0\u00a0denying Trump the right to use bases<\/a> or refusing to grant airspace rights for offensive action.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The European action is a reflection of the fact that NATO is deeply damaged,” he added, “and it reinforces the fundamental reality that Europe no longer trusts the United States, believes the United States is an unreliable ally, and therefore is no longer willing to participate in these kind of operations. That is why this is the worst crisis of NATO.”<\/p>\n

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has supported the US-Israeli action and played\u00a0down the rift. “In the alliance, you will always have different views,”\u00a0he said on March 26. “But when it comes to not accepting Iran having a nuclear and missile capability, we all agree … What the United States is doing now is degrading that capability. And yes, I applaud that.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump himself often publicly muses on an exit, saying recently that the prospect is “beyond reconsideration.”\u00a0But no one knows for sure whether he’ll one day attempt to withdraw from the alliance.<\/p>\n

What is known is that it wouldn’t be easy, thanks in part to his now secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who as a senator introduced legislation passed in 2023 that requires support from two-thirds of the Senate to leave.<\/p>\n

Three years later, Trump insists he’d be able to do it anyway \u2014 and Daalder agrees with him, saying the constitutional challenge this could spark would likely favor the power of a president. Meanwhile, Rubio appears to have transitioned into a NATO skeptic.<\/p>\n

From NATO’s side, there is an article in the 1949 Washington Treaty outlining the process for quitting, but it’s never before been used. Article 13 states that: “After the Treaty has been in force for twenty years, any Party may cease to be a Party one year after its notice of denunciation has been given to the Government of the United States of America, which will inform the Governments of the other Parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation.”<\/p>\n

Of course, there are plenty of ways Trump could kneecap NATO without leaving and without obtaining congressional approval. He could simply decide to bring troops home, cease supplying NATO commands and institutions with personnel \u2014 some of which is already happening \u2014 and even, to be very dramatic, decide not to staff the position of Supreme Allied Commander Europe, a military post that always goes to an American.<\/p>\n

NATO would be hard-pressed to project credible power without the US, which has the largest and most advanced arsenal of weapons and the obvious advantage of a comparatively massive military force. But experts say the alliance wouldn’t necessarily collapse. It could continue a transition that’s already underway toward\u00a0more European leadership and further reliance on European capabilities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video<\/a><\/p>\n

The International Institute for Security Studies (IISS) has researched what this could look like, urging “European decision-makers to consider the military, financial and defence industrial investments needed to reduce dependencies on the US and, in extremis, to prepare for a NATO without any US\u00a0role.”<\/p>\n

The picture isn’t rosy. Undertaken almost a year ago, the IISS assessment<\/a> found that there would be serious shortfalls not just in replacing “major US\u00a0military platforms and manpower<\/a>\u00a0”\u00a0but also in space and in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets. “They would also need to replace the significant US\u00a0contribution to NATO’s command and control arrangements and fill many senior military positions in NATO organizations currently occupied by US\u00a0personnel,”\u00a0it found.<\/p>\n

This would, the study estimated, require additional financing by European NATO members of an estimated trillion dollars on top of already increasing\u00a0defense budgets.<\/p>\n

Nick Witney, a former UK defense ministry staffer now working with the European Council on Foreign Relations, told DW that his “strong view is we just don’t bloody well need America now.”\u00a0While Witney added\u00a0that the “more American troops are around in Europe for the longest possible time, the happier I should be and happier all Europeans would be,”\u00a0he doesn’t believe that “if Trump did turn around tomorrow and say, ‘All right, we’re all coming home, we’re through with you lot and you can forget about my nuclear guarantee,’\u00a0I really don’t feel that all will be lost.”<\/p>\n

Part of this, he explained, is because of recent overtures made by French President Emmanuel Macron<\/a> to several other allies about increasing nuclear cooperation outside NATO, as France does not currently make its own capabilities available to the alliance.<\/p>\n

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna is perhaps the only European leader to have announced that his country is willing to help the Trump administration in Iran even before the war is over. But despite all the US\u00a0accusations about a lack of support, he said there has been no actual request.<\/p>\n

Tsahkna said his reason for offering is all about paying it forward. “Of course, this [anti-NATO] narrative is not good,”\u00a0he told DW. “Estonian people are asking me and many other politicians every day whether NATO’s Article 5 is working or not.”\u00a0Tsahkna advises all of Europe to “remain cool, let’s focus on what we can do and of course constantly we need to talk to the US administration,”\u00a0reminding them that the US needs Europe too.<\/p>\n

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video<\/a><\/p>\n

That is sure to be a key talking point for Rutte as he visits the White House on Wednesday, hoping to, as he has done before, elicit a positive response\u00a0on NATO from Trump. In his remarks Monday, Trump called Rutte himself a “great person”\u00a0but once again lambasted Europeans and other countries for failing to join the Iran war.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0ended his press conference with a\u00a0cryptic, perhaps ominous, statement:\u00a0“We want Greenland. They don’t want to give it to us. And I said, ‘bye-bye.'”<\/p>\n

Edited by: R. Casey<\/em><\/p>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/static.dw.com\/image\/74467543_6.jpg”] https:\/\/p.dw.com\/p\/5Bkcs Trump hosts the NATO chief Wednesday at the White House.Image: Kevin Lamarque\/REUTERS “NATO is broken,”\u00a0said Ivo Daalder, not mincing his words. The former US ambassador to the trans-Atlantic alliance believes tensions between Donald Trump and European allies over the Iran war have thrust NATO, which turned 77 years old this month, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,74],"class_list":["post-1870274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-dw-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1870274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1870274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1870274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1870274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}