Longtime U.S. allies are sketching up a backup plan in case President Donald Trump follows through on his threats to abandon America’s most important alliance.
The U.S.’s western allies are preparing contingency plans to preserve Europe’s ability to defend itself using the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s existing military structures should Trump withdraw the United States from the coalition, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The undertaking, dubbed by some officials as “European NATO,” has gained new momentum after Germany signed on, marking a shift from its long-standing opposition to a Europe-only defense framework, the Journal reports.
Berlin had resisted French-led calls for more European independence from the U.S. for years, but German Chancellor Friedrich Merz bought into the plan amid concerns that Trump would not be a dependable ally, people familiar with his thinking told the Journal.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
The president, who has long loathed NATO, threatened to withdraw forces from Europe and suggested he could refuse to come to NATO members’ defense last month, having grown bitter over NATO members’ resistance to joining in on his war on Iran.
“The U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us,” Trump declared in a petty March 31 Truth Social post.
Earlier this month, Trump told The Telegraph, “I always knew they were a paper tiger, and [Vladimir] Putin knows that too, by the way,” and said U.S. membership will not just be “reconsidered” but is “beyond reconsideration.”
A law passed by Congress in 2023 and co-authored by now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio prevents Trump, or any future president, from withdrawing from NATO without congressional approval.
The then-Florida senator said at the time that NATO was one of the country’s “strategic strengths.”
His tone has since changed. “We are going to have to re-examine whether or not this alliance, that has served this country well for a while, is still serving that purpose,” Rubio said on Fox News last month.
Officials are working to deepen European involvement in NATO’s leadership structure and back up U.S. military capabilities with their own, as they seek to safeguard deterrence against Vladimir Putin’s Russia and prop up Europe’s nuclear credibility, in the case that U.S. fails to stay true to the decades-old alliance.
“A burden shifting from the U.S. toward Europe is ongoing and it will continue…as part of U.S. defense and national security strategy,” said Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, who has maintained a warm relationship with Trump, according to the Journal.
“The most important thing is to understand that it’s taking place and also to do it in a very managed and controllable way, instead of [the U.S.] just quickly pulling out,” said Stubb, who is one of the leaders involved in the plans.
