As the Trump administration presses NATO to rethink its doctrine and assume greater European responsibility, unease is spreading across the continent about both Ukraine’s future and the alliance’s internal cohesion.
On February 17, Senior Visiting Fellow Paul Taylor of the European Policy Centre argued that Europeans should begin considering security arrangements beyond the existing EU-NATO framework. He suggested that a “de facto European security council” may be the most realistic fallback given current strains within NATO.
Signals from Washington have reinforced European Union anxiety regarding NATO.
On February 12, the US Under Secretary of War for Policy, Elbridge Colby, announced that his country would shift focus.
“Under President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, we are reprioritising the defence of our homeland and the protection of our interests in our hemisphere,” he said.
Although Colby insisted this was “not a retreat from Europe”, his emphasis on homeland defence and the western hemisphere under Trump marks a clear shift.
This comes as Washington also cut about 200 NATO staff positions in Europe earlier this year.
According to NATO analyst and journalist Javier Villamor, Europe is being asked to stop behaving as a protected actor and instead act as a co-guarantor of its own security.
“For years, ‘strategic autonomy’ was discussed almost as a theoretical concept, but now the pressure is real,” he told Brussels Signal yesterday.
“The new US security strategies make that shift in tone clear. Europe is no longer the main focus; domestic priorities and the western hemisphere now carry more weight, with an eye on Asia in the medium term,” he added.
According to Villamor, the EU should understand that the US security guarantee is still there but it is no longer automatic or unconditional.
“Washington is renegotiating the price of its protection,” he said.
The result might be a perception of weakening deterrence.
Military deterrence depends not only on military assets but on whether adversaries believe they will be used.
Political will, particularly in the US, may be less automatic. The credibility of Article 5 rests not simply on capabilities but on demonstrations of unity and readiness to act against any threats.
Article 5 is the NATO Collective Defence clause – an attack on one is an attack on all.
Recent analyses suggest that if Moscow perceives hesitation, division, or domestic constraints in Washington, even a numerically superior NATO could appear vulnerable.
