Given Donald Trump’s unpredictability over what he may or may not do regarding the US presence in and support for NATO, there are a range of possible consequences arising from his quixotic actions for America’s longest-standing alliance. David Richards and Harlan Ullman unpack how Europe can compensate for any major US force reductions and what a revitalised NATO might look like.
Despite the success of the Ankara summit, the US is gradually decoupling itself from Europe in ways that will have profound consequences for European security and strategic stability. As ELN Senior Associate Fellow Nicholas Williams writes, NATO will not collapse in a single dramatic moment; it is slowly changing into something less able to perform its central task.
Ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara, calls for higher defence spending are dominating the agenda. But military investment alone cannot guarantee Europe’s security. Sabine Mengelberg argues that NATO’s long-term strength depends equally on political cohesion and shared values, foundations that sustain deterrence and the alliance’s ability to confront security challenges.
On the eve of the United States of America’s 250th anniversary, ELN Senior Associate Fellow Ilana Bet-El is joined in conversation with Laurel Rapp, Director of the US and North America Programme at Chatham House, to discuss the US experiment and how recent developments across Greenland, Venezuela and Iran – as well as domestically – have altered global perceptions of the US.
NATO’s ongoing adaptation process and unilateral US decisions have created the foundations for a larger European role in transatlantic security, writes ELN Programme Lead Alexander Graef. Whether Europeans can sustain that role politically remains uncertain. The value of the alliance’s upcoming summit may therefore ultimately lie in whether it helps Europeans begin addressing the political implications of a military transformation that is already underway.
On the anniversary of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, former European Commission Vice-President Catherine Ashton reflects on the diplomacy behind the landmark JCPOA agreement, why it worked, and what its collapse means today. Ashton argues that collective leadership and renewed European engagement remain essential to securing long-term regional stability.