Check out the first commentary in this series here.

At its 2024 summit in Washington, NATO Allies pledged to produce “recommendations on NATO’s strategic approach to Russia” at its 2025 summit, which takes place in The Hague on 24-25 June.

Those recommendations are plainly not going to happen, let alone a new strategy – the notion of which was blocked by some Allies at last year’s summit.  For NATO in the Trump era, just surviving The Hague will be an achievement. Consensus on Russia by June is unachievable, given the stark differences between the White House and most other allies on the correct approach towards Moscow.

On language at The Hague, true, President Trump might get so frustrated with perceived Russian foot-dragging over Ukraine that he flips and allows NATO to take a harder line. More probably, we will see an extremely short summit statement in which there is no more than one sentence – if that– on Russia.

For the longer term, theoretically, we could see a hardening of language turn into a firming of US military posture towards Russia that translates into continued US support for robust NATO defence and deterrence.  It is not yet clear that Washington opposes NATO’s current stance, provided Europeans shoulder the costs and the effort. Similarly, the US Administration’s planned boost to defence spending, including for Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’, could cause long-term strain in the US-Russia relationship.

But on NATO’s ‘strategic approach’, Trump’s sustained admiration for Putin and clear courting of Russia for a geostrategically different, long-term, positive relationship strongly suggest that Washington would block a purely antagonistic NATO approach towards Russia over the remainder of President Trump’s term.

Certainly, Trump is unlikely to sign up to last year’s Biden-blessed NATO summit language prefiguring the proposed recommendations on NATO’s strategic approach. NATO leaders expressed determination “to constrain and contest Russia’s aggressive actions and to counter its ability to conduct destabilising activities”. Constrain, contest, and counter are not verbs in President Trump’s lexicon where Russia is concerned.

So, the most likely prospect is for little consensus on NATO language about Russia, let alone a strategy, before late 2029 at the earliest.

And yet, a NATO strategy towards Russia is long overdue.  The Alliance has not had an agreed strategic approach towards Russia since the vision of a “Europe whole, free, and at peace” finally died with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.  All that Allies have been able to agree since then is second-tier business concerning arrangements for deterrence and defence. Finding consensus on an actual strategy on Russia has been too divisive even to attempt.

This matters. Without an agreed set of guiding thoughts about how to relate to and manage its large, uncomfortable neighbour to the east, NATO is less coherent and effective than it needs to be in both its deterrence and its peace making. There’s no common vision to which Allies can rally for cohesion.  There’s no long-term plan for a better future that helps sustain increases in defence spending. There’s no framework for the efficient communication of deterrence, and no agreed-upon overarching objectives to condition the pursuit of risk reduction.

For the Cold War, NATO had the heavily armed strategic patience of the 1967 Harmel Report.  For 23 years after the Cold War, NATO had “Europe whole, free, and at peace”. Now, with the sands shifting under the Alliance again, what will it be?

We recommend something different: not so much a NATO ‘strategic approach’ as a NATO strategic shift.  This would involve at least a tacit internal Alliance deal. If successful, in time it could amount to a strategy. Call it ‘Managed Co-existence’.

European Allies badly need to keep President Trump on side if they can. At present, they are hoping to agree a military deal with him: if they, in a phased, planned way, take over most of the burden of NATO’s collective defence, the US will remain engaged.

But that military deal would still have an embedded political risk. If Trump wants to transform America’s relationship with Russia to tackle other priorities better, then unremitting European collective defence against Russia could still cause him to walk away from NATO.

Europeans could mitigate that risk through a parallel, even if only implicit, political deal with Washington. They could complement their constrain, contest, and counter, full-on defence and deterrence stance, with indications of a political way out for NATO-Russia dynamics that runs with the grain of President Trump’s ambitions but allows the Alliance to get on with defending itself.

European Allies would simply need to lean into language that they have already agreed. The shift in mindset would be hard for some. But in reality, it would lose Allies nothing and could gain them valuable points in Washington and possibly even Moscow.

What could this shift look like? In return for and alongside familiar defence and deterrence language, it could use existing, more constructive NATO language in press lines, ministerial statements, and comments from Secretary General Mark Rutte.  It could draw on NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept, agreed by consensus after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of that year.  It could refrain from formally killing off the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. Language from that, including the nuclear restraints by NATO, would signal that some of its elements could feature in a future, more positive NATO-Russia relationship.

The starting point might be the language agreed with Trump in NATO’s minimalist 2019 London summit declaration: “We remain open for dialogue, and to a constructive relationship with Russia when Russia’s actions make that possible”.

But we have three more specific recommendations. Each might help to bridge the gap between European Allies who profoundly mistrust President Putin’s expansionist Russia and a US Administration that wants to offload collective defence and move on from confrontation to lucrative business with Moscow:

1. NATO communication.

• “We remain willing to keep open channels of communication with Moscow to manage and mitigate risks, prevent escalation and increase transparency.” (Strategic Concept, para 9.)

Disciplined communication with adversaries makes for better deterrence. Washington is unilaterally communicating with Moscow over the heads of other Allies.  NATO needs to communicate too.

2. NATO risk reduction.

• “We seek stability and predictability in the Euro-Atlantic area and between NATO and the Russian Federation.” (Strategic Concept, para 9.)
• “Arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation strongly contribute to the Alliance’s objectives.” (Strategic Concept, para 32)
• “We will pursue all elements of strategic risk reduction, including promoting confidence building and predictability through dialogue, increasing understanding, and establishing effective crisis management and prevention tools. These efforts will take the prevailing security environment and the security of all Allies into account and complement the Alliance’s deterrence and defence posture. We will make use of NATO as a platform for in-depth discussion and close consultations on arms control efforts.” (Strategic Concept, para 32.)

If the changing US-Russia dynamic makes mutual NATO-Russia risk reduction possible, Europeans could secure better deterrence at a lower cost. Meanwhile, why not take the political high ground?

3. Nato enlargement.

• “We will be in a position to extend an invitation to [new members] to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.” (Para 11 of NATO’s 2023 Vilnius summit declaration, with reference to Ukraine.)

The chances of two-thirds of the US Senate voting for Ukraine to join NATO are zero. If European Allies want to salvage the possibility of enlargement in the Balkans, they would do well to find an elegant way to accept the inevitable about eastward enlargement.

Of course, these quotes are selective.  But they are consistent with the fact that, whatever happens over Ukraine, NATO and Russia will each regard the other as a threat for a very long time to come. They might help to secure the vital continuing US acceptance of language and action on deterrence and defence. They position the Alliance for any Ukraine deal, which will inevitably require elements of NATO-Russia risk reduction, and they ready a US-lite or US-absent NATO to manage its risky, mistrustful, long-haul co-existence with Russia.

The European Leadership Network itself as an institution holds no formal policy positions. The opinions articulated above represent the views of the authors rather than the European Leadership Network or its members. The ELN aims to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security policy challenges of our time, to further its charitable purposes.

Image credit: Wikimedia commons / Mailtoanton