The End of NATO As We Know It
The Case for a European Nuclear Deterrent
It is frighteningly easy to picture a situation in which President Trump steps off a plane and declares: “I have in my hands a paper signed by Mister Putin, there will be peace for our time.” When Neville Chamberlain declared “peace for our time” on 30 September 1938, holding up the Munich Agreement which condoned the German Annexation of the Sudetenland, the world was at war only one year later. 87 years later, about one kilometre away from the venue of the Munich Conference 1938, US Vice-President James David Vance made it abundantly clear at the Munich Security Conference 2025, that the USA expect Europe to “step up in a big way to provide for its own defence.” Should Russia, against this background, choose to test the true value of Article 5 NATO-Treaty, for example by attacking the peripheral areas of the Black Sea Region or the Baltic States, this would be the ultimate test for NATO. Would the USA still risk a military confrontation over a city like Narva? Even as a presidential candidate, Trump questioned the US-commitment by declaring that it might not protect allies who fail to meet their contributions to NATO.
The matter is urgent. A Danish intelligence report of February 2025 indicated that Russia could be ready to wage a “large-scale war” in Europe within five years. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned in December 2024 , NATO is “not ready for what is coming our way in four to five years”. What is considered politically desirable does not necessarily equate with legal feasibility. The Non-Proliferation-Treaty regime and the European legal framework for defence require significant readjustment to allow for the pursuit of an independent defence policy. Europe needs to get serious about acquiring its own nuclear deterrent, entirely independent of the USA.
New relationship between NATO and EU defence structures
In 1998 “no decoupling, no duplication and no discrimination” were Secretary of State Madeleine Albrights repeated caveats of “three Ds” on European defence structures besides NATO. This was also a steadfast declaration of US-determination to stay involved in matters of European security. For a long time, the USA to be decoupling from European security seemed like a dystopian phantasy. Yet, this time Europe must realize – it is happening for real. What could have been dismissed in the first Trump-administration as amateurish mere puffing, is not valid for its re-incarnation. The second Trump-administration means business. Within one month in office, it has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, blamed Ukraine, a state attacked in flagrant violation of international law, for the war waged against it and initiated bilateral talks with Russia on the future of Ukraine, regardless of Ukrainian sovereignty, making it an object rather than a subject of negotiations. Current US-strategy is designed around fast-moving shock-and-awe announcements.
It seems a redundant repetition of calls made over and over again that Europe must do more for its own defence. Europe has gone from being the most militarized continent on earth to being the least militarized within a period of only 20 years after the cold war. The question that arises is whether the European states can achieve sufficient independence in defence matters while fulfilling their obligations under international law. Currently, the possibilities for European States to acquire nuclear weapons are legally limited.
Dormant NATO and the Trump-administration’s understanding of Article 5
Russian reactions to the US-announcements in Munich 2025 were jubilant; Article 5 NATO-Treaty could henceforth be considered meaningless. There are evident contradictions between currently declared policy goals and US obligations under the North Atlantic Treaty. Issuing a threat to use military force to seize control of Greenland, a self-governing territory belonging to the Kingdom of Denmark, another NATO-Member, is beyond any doubt a violation of the Prohibition of the threat of force in Article 2 (4) UN-Charter. Furthermore, this threat contradicts the terms and spirit of the NATO-Treaty. Since President Trump is legally prevented from leaving NATO by the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (Sec. 1250A) which requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate for a decision to leave NATO, the aim is rather to undermine it. The non-committal nature of Article 5, in spite of a formidable standing NATO-command structure, leaves room for such an approach. Another ally might as well just send flowers instead of troops. Ideas of a “dormant NATO” with the intention to shift the security burden rapidly from the US to Europe have gained traction.
Thinking the unthinkable: possibilities for European states to go nuclear
The current NATO-Force model is based on a strategy that ensures a rapid reinforcement of forward presence forces by additional high-readiness forces and NATO’s heavier follow-on forces, including up to 200.000 additional US troops. If US troops had to be taken out of the equation, would Europe still be able to defend itself? Initial estimates suggests that Europe will need up to 300,000 additional troops and an annual defence spending increase of at least €250 billion to defend itself and deter Russian aggression. Given that Europe’s €279 billion defence spending in 2023 was a record high – marking a 10% increase from the previous year and the ninth consecutive year of growth – doubling this amount seems highly unlikely.
If one accepts the premise that Europe cannot defend itself on its own conventionally in the near future – if at all – this creates a need to address the pink elephant in the room. Namely, the limits of nuclear proliferation. France and the United Kingdom are two nuclear powers within the EU. Taken on their own, their respective nuclear arsenals is considered insufficient to deter Russia. To put it bluntly, gruesome as it may seem, there is one – and only one – reason why the rest of Europe is currently better off than Ukraine: American nukes. All EU states are signatories of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT) which entered into force in 1970. In Article 2 of the NPT non-nuclear-weapon states agreed to never acquire nuclear weapons. However, the NPT did not entirely stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons or reduce the motivation to acquire them. The much further reaching Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), aims to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of total elimination which entered into force on 22 January 2021. Yet, the TPNW has not been signed by NATO-states, as it is incompatible with the Alliance’s nuclear deterrence policy, though
there certainly are a remarkable number of supporters of the treaty in the political arena.
A European nuclear deterrent would diminish the European dependence on the US for collective defence. Several options are discussed for the formation of a European Nuclear Deterrent: A French-led deterrent, a Pan-European deterrent, a Euro-deterrent, or even an indigenous German national nuclear program. When Germany joined the NPT, opting not to develop its own nuclear forces, it issued a written declaration acknowledging the possibility of a future European Nuclear Deterrent. Another idea discussed is that of a trilateral British, French, and German nuclear umbrella under NATO-Command combined with a US umbrella under command and control of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). Without separate German nuclear weapons this arrangement would comply with the NPT.
In Germany, scenarios that were once deemed unthinkable, if not entirely absurd, are now being discussed. There is even talk of a possible Nuclear Zeitenwende. However, this debate remains fixated on the idea of doing only the bare minimum required for defence. Ultimately, if all multilateral options fail, national nuclear deterrents for individual states, such as Poland, could become a measure of last resort. Article 10 of the NPT grants the right to withdraw from the treaty with three months’ notice.
A Monnet-moment or decline as a choice
Jean Monnet (1988-1979), one of the founding fathers of the EU, wrote in his memoirs that “Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises.” (p. 488) The mutual defence clause of the TEU, which has only been invoked once after the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, is not any more binding than Article 5 of the NATO-Treaty. While Article 42(7) refers to “armed aggression” instead of an “armed attack” (a lower threshold in international law), it only imposes an obligation to provide assistance, which does not necessarily have to be military. One of its main functions today is covering the non-NATO members within the EU. Hence, inadequate mutual assistance within the EU cannot replace US military presence.
One has to look beyond the existing treaty framework for solutions to the European defence. Reinterpreting the situation after the Munich Security Conference 2025 as a necessary wake-up call for Europe seems like a desperate attempt to find something positive in a horrific situation. The term “Munich”, so far synonymous for appeasement, could might as well refer to the voluntary surrender of global hegemony. As far back as 1982 political scientist Hedley Bull (1932-1985) called a civilian power Europe “a contradiction in terms”. As long as military power was primarily a domain of the US, this did not seem to be a major issue. However, the current “bans on thinking” regarding certain types of weapons, including the NPT, particularly in the domestic German debate, must be abolished. One ought to debate all possible legal options for defence policy. The German government’s decision in 2022 to procure F-35 fighter jets might be evidence of some movement.
The influential writer Charles Krauthammer (1950-2018), who coined the “The Reagan Doctrine”, warned the US in 2009 of deliberately choosing strategic retrenchments. While European states consciously chose to allocate their resources to a vast welfare state with minimal defence expenditures, they relied on the USA for their defence. He warned that decline is a choice, not a faith. A political community that cannot defend itself against external threats and must depend on others for its defence is, sooner or later, faced with decline, much like the Roman Empire. Europe still has a choice.