Signals #1: NATO is broken, but has anyone told Britain?
A post-American Europe is here, whether we're ready for it or not
NATO is functionally broken. If its core rationale and value is to bind the United States to European security, that purpose has now unravelled. Trump has said US withdrawal is ‘beyond reconsideration’, after European countries declined his exhortations to step into the firing line in the Strait of Hormuz. On Wednesday, the White House said NATO has been ‘tested and they failed’.
On paper, NATO will likely limp on. Trump cannot formally withdraw without congressional approval, which he won’t get. But he does not need to. As commander-in-chief, he will decide whether or not to come to Europe’s aid if Article 5 is invoked.
The message is clear: if you’re not here for us, we won’t be there for you.
That message will have been received in Moscow, where Putin will now be eyeing opportunities to take advantage before the end of Trump’s term. Has it also been received in European capitals?
Andrew Noakes – Future Statecraft
If NATO is no longer a reliable guarantee of security, Britain cannot escape its predicament with technocratic tweaking. In De Gaulle or Nothing, Ben Judah invites us to imagine a path that matches the historical moment – one rooted in a new Anglo-Gaullism:
“The magic of Gaullism was that it masked retreat with a determined effort to boost national morale. France might no longer be an empire, but she was entering a promising new future. And the genius of de Gaulle was to re-enchant through storytelling a nation that had utterly lost confidence in itself.”
A crucial pillar of strategic autonomy will be greater alignment with Europe on security. Writing in LabourList, Philippe Lefevre argues that Britain could go much further in forging a stronger security relationship with Europe:
“Our boldness on Ukraine is to be commended and continued, but it must be matched with equal boldness with our other European Allies, with clear areas of engagement. Whether this be by following the example of French Nuclear confidence or by finally joining the EU’s Defence SAFE programme (it having been an embarrassing mistake to have missed our previous chance), there are a myriad of ways in which Europe is rising to the challenge which we should also be meeting.”
Europe’s economic dependence on the US is no longer a convenience but a strategic vulnerability. In Europe’s escape plan from Trump’s chaos machine, Paul Mason addresses one of the linchpins of US economic hegemony – the US dollar – and presents an opportunity for Europe to build its own financial power.
“It is one thing for the European financial system to rely on US bonds as their safest asset in peacetime. It is another altogether when the US is slapping tariffs on our goods, undermining our democracies and recklessly destabilising the global energy market.
So the time has come for European countries – ourselves included – to consider creating a massive, common debt instrument.”
Control over compute is becoming a question of state power. In Data Centres and the Politics of Scarcity, Martha Dacombe argues that left-populist critiques of data centres miss their growing importance as sovereignty enablers:
“As the alternative to building sovereign compute infrastructure is not some pastoral Britain untouched by AI. It is a Britain that runs its public services, its health system, its defence systems, and its economy on infrastructure hosted elsewhere, owned by others, and subject to decisions made in boardrooms and capitals over which we have no democratic say whatsoever.”
There is a gulf between the public perception of Britain’s military power and the reality. In Britain can no longer fight a major War in Europe, The Atlantic Passage reminds us how much of a climb it will be to catch back up:
“The British Army has its work cut out for it. If it aims to restore its capabilities from the late Cold War, the force would have to grow considerably, a large pool of reservists would have to be established, and a sufficient military industrial base would have to be rebuilt to enable a highly intense war alongside NATO allies.”
Military capability is only one side of deterrence; the other is political will. In Who would fight for Britain?, James Bloodworth shows us how this is being undermined both on the right and the left:
“There is a certain irony in the fact that those on right and left who draw, respectively, on Churchillian ‘finest hour’ rhetoric or anti-fascist cliché for propaganda purposes, are much less interested in facing down a despotic ruler in the here and now.”
The question is no longer whether the transatlantic system as we know it can be preserved, but whether we can build a credible strategy for what comes next. The direction is becoming clearer, but Britain is only beginning to grasp the scale of the adjustment required.