Friedrich Merz was celebrating victory, but he sounded as if he was speaking at a funeral. On Sunday night, the new chancellor’s thoughts were not on his election win, but on two great losses.
The first was very real – America’s withdrawal as guarantor of Europe’s safety. The second is now a real possibility – that the intergovernmental military alliance that has watched over Europe’s peace for decades is breathing its last.
“I am very curious to see how we are heading towards the Nato summit at the end of June,” he said. “Whether we will still be talking about Nato in its current form or whether we will have to establish an independent European defence capability much more quickly.”
This week, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has never looked closer to death. To make sense of what is unfolding, we need to look back to its birth. Contrary to critics’ claims, Nato was not spawned by America in a bid to dominate the globe. Its true father was a very different figure: a man who had once created Britain’s Transport and General Workers’ Union.
Ernest Bevin’s time as a trade unionist had made him a ferocious anti-communist. As Labour foreign secretary from 1945, he watched the USSR’s colonisation of Eastern Europe and its backing of communist rebels, particularly in Greece, with mounting alarm. It was vital, he decided, to coax the Americans to stay in Europe.
Like Britain, the US was occupying defeated Germany, but the idea that it might stay in Europe jarred against America’s foundational worldview.
The way to overcome this was the new, shared fear of Soviet expansionism. With Britain’s economy exhausted, Bevin persuaded the US to take the strain in resisting communism in Greece and Turkey, in line with the emerging US doctrine of “containment”. In January 1948, he pushed for a “western union”.
Weeks later, communists seized power in Czechoslovakia. Bevin told the US ambassador a joint military strategy was vital: the next two months might be “the last chance of saving the west”. After Bevin made the same case to US secretary of state George Marshall, the president, Harry Truman, agreed to talks.
That June, the Soviets blockaded West Berlin, triggering the cold war’s first great crisis. As a huge operation got under way to feed two million people by airlift, the North Atlantic Treaty took shape.
By spring 1949, Bevin was on BBC radio reassuring listeners that the agreement he was about to sign did not seek to interfere in the Soviet bloc. But it expressed a collective determination to resist “the right of any power with aggressive intent… to bring us into bondage”. Britain was joined in founding Nato by nine western European states, Canada and, crucially, the US. That autumn, it emerged that Stalin had the Bomb.
From there Nato expanded, first gradually, then suddenly. West Germany joined in 1955, triggering the creation of the Warsaw Pact. France left in 1966, not to re-join for decades. It was only later that Nato ballooned.
During the cold war, the alliance never fired a shot in anger, but it did in the decade that followed: to maintain a no-fly zone in the Bosnian war, then in its mission to stop Serbia’s “ethnic cleansing” of Kosovar Albanians. More recently, it has even played a role outside Europe. And ever since 1990, it has grown eastward.
Russia complains that this broke western leaders’ assurances. But the claim that this was imperialist American expansionism is as much of a reversal of the truth as calling Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator.
In the early 1990s, a wary Nato viewed the idea of new Eastern European members as destabilising. It was these states themselves that clamoured to be let in. Does anyone still wonder why?
Ukraine had wanted to join for years, but had not yet succeeded when Russia invaded. In response, Finland and Sweden rushed to join. This exacerbated the very phenomenon to which Russia objects – the alliance’s presence on its border – and made the Baltic a Nato lake to boot.
Now, the largest member is turning away. This should not be a surprise; Donald Trump pronounced Nato obsolete in 2017, before walking the comment back. He has long objected, with reason, to the failure of many members to stump up the expected 2% of their GDP. Only 23 of 32 managed it last year, and that was the best ever. No wonder America tires of seeing its taxes go to protect a continent that often attacks it as imperialist.
If the US withdraws its assistance, can Europe save Ukraine alone? Some estimates give it around six months, partly because of the loss of US intelligence and satellites. As the historian Timothy Garton Ash has pointed out, it would help if the air defence systems Europe has promised Ukraine actually arrived.
Chatham House analyst Orysia Lutsevych notes that Kyiv produced 1.5m drones last year, and has dropped its recruiting age to 18. And there are steps Europeans could take swiftly, like sending Ukraine the $150bn it holds in frozen Russian assets. Defence expert Garvan Walshe suggests Norway could donate its profits from energy price spikes caused by the war.
But the bigger question is whether Nato could face down a Russian invasion of one of its members without America (the treaty’s Article 5 provides sufficient leeway that the US could stay at home).
Russia is expanding its military for “a potential conflict with Nato”, according to Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. Moscow reportedly has more troops than when it invaded Ukraine, is investing in drone production, and is looking to China for components to avoid sanctions.
Some analysts suggest the alliance, which has more troops than Russia, would manage in a short war, but that in time it would sorely miss US capability, not least in sheer scale. Perhaps, as Lutsevych suggests, one solution would simply be to buy the equipment the US once contributed.
Underneath all this, there runs the question of the American nuclear umbrella. For the moment, that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, but already Merz is mooting the idea of exploring a German-French-British collaboration to replace it.
Whether or not its current form survives, however, the principle driving Nato is not finished. Talk among western members about catching up with the Baltics and Poland and meeting their spending commitments is growing urgent.
Since JD Vance’s diatribe, Denmark has announced significant increases; the UK is getting there. The accession of Sweden and a heavily armed Finland brings much-needed additional strength.
More money will take time to feed through – and is nothing without unity and resolve. But America’s nationalistic retreat at least seems to be prompting a return to the collective determination to defend democracy that Bevin proclaimed back in 1949.
Phil Tinline is the author of The Death of Consensus: 100 Years of British Political Nightmares; his next book, Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax that Duped America and Its Sinister Legacy, is out in March
