En a few weeks, Donald Trump torpedoed the Atlantic Alliance. He has politically demolished the collective defense pact which has united American and European since 1949. The United States has not intended to support its allies in the defense of Ukraine. Faced with the assault, they sound withdrawal, peace to Moscow’s conditions. If we understand the strategic reasoning underlying this decision, Washington believes that transatlantic solidarity no longer serves its interests: priority is not the fate of Ukraine, but normalization with Russia by Vladimir Putin.
The treasures of friendship accumulated seventy-five years during, the density of economic exchanges on both sides of the ocean, the common belonging-so far-at the camp of liberal democracies, the gratitude of Europeans for the victory of 1945, glowed all this. No feeling, no common memory and especially no morality when it comes to concluding a deal with the Kremlin. It will go the same when Trump spends another, of deal, with Xi Jinping China. States are cold monsters. The general was right: one day, the Americans will leave, said de Gaulle. One day, the world order will change. We are there.
The United States does not need to formally denounce NATO. They do not speak, or not yet, to close the American bases in Europe: they rightly ask – that the old continent contributes more to their funding. In the coming years, they will undoubtedly decrease their forces on the spot-spent from 30,000 soldiers in 2014 to more than 80,000 today. But Trump politically disarmed NATO, he emptied it from what makes the strength of a collective defense alliance: reliability.
The allies of the Americans believe that their security is played in part in Ukraine, a non-member country of NATO. This is particularly true of the balls, states of the center and the east of the old continent, of Scandinavians too. They know that Putin has violated all the treaties signed by Russia and guaranteeing the integrity of borders in Europe. They take the Russian president seriously when he writes that Ukraine does not exist, when he sabotes the Europhile ambitions of Georgia or when Moscow threatens Moldova. They rightly believe that Putinian expansionism will not be satisfied with Donbass and Crimea, but aims for kyiv: a Ukrainian government with the Kremlin boot.
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