Once again Donald Trump makes people tremble the foundations of the most powerful military union on the planet until nowbut this time it is with the most direct and loudest threat he has made about break the historic agreement that for almost 77 years has united the defense of the United States with that of its allies, currently 31. And, although NATO is not exactly a framework that can be dissolved at the stroke of a pen or by a single political leader, the attitude expressed by the president of the main member country already means de facto putting the alliance in a coma.
Throughout Wednesday afternoon, in the hours before the urbi et orbi intervention of the disgruntled tenant of the White Housecirculated among the Spanish military, like a cup of lime, a clipping of a North American federal law: the NDAA 2024, or National Defense Authorization Act enacted for that fiscal year. That law, approved by the American chambers Joe Biden being the presidentcontains an article not modified until now: it is the call Section 1250A. Its content: The US president “will not suspend, terminate, denounce or withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty” if it is not first approved by two-thirds of the Senate and after the law is approved by a majority in Congress. Trump does not have those majorities, nor, at his lowest point of popularity, any signs of gathering them.
However, for some of the military personnel consulted, the damage has already been done. It is not so much that he has demolished the organization by removing its main contributor, but rather the message it conveys. He retired admiral Juan Rodríguez Garat, who was head of the Fleetbelieves that “unfortunately, the damage that the poison is injecting “Trump with his accusations can do things to people on both sides of the ocean.”
Once again the poison of suspicion between partners, which leads to consider as a possibility what has been implementable until now: what would NATO be without the United States?
No nuclear warheads…
To any expert in uniform who is asked, a NATO without the United States still seems inconceivable. But, even more than due to the economic pruning incompatible with the life that the organization would suffer, due to the loss of three key military capabilities in which Europe and Canada do not yet have sufficient autonomy: command and control, satellite intelligence and, above all, nuclear deterrence.
The first deficiency refers to technological, cybernetic, target-setting and communications systems, and the personnel who operate them, which make rapid and effective decision-making possible by the command on the battlefield. The second refers to a step still insurmountable for Europe in the ability to see and understand the Earth’s surface from spaceessential to know how external threats evolve, how armies move, where they place their missile batteries, where they hide their planes and where they garrison their armored units. And the third…
Nuclear deterrence is one of the most expensive chapters of the Western security architecture. The United States is the possessor of around 5,000 nuclear warheads. His allies put some money through the NSIP, the defense critical infrastructure investment program (of which Spain is the seventh taxpayer, according to the Atlantic Alliance’s accounting, but also one of its main beneficiaries).
…the war is closer
A widespread saying has circulated successfully since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. It is the one who maintains that yes Ukraine suffers from its current state of calamity because it once returned its part of its nuclear arsenal to Russia. Soviet, divesting itself of its main deterrent element.
NATO was founded as an entente of democracies facing the wall of the USSR, and strengthened its unity in the early stages of the war launched by the former Soviet intelligence agent Vladimir Putin. A NATO without the United States would lack sufficient nuclear power, and therefore its main element of conviction to deter the Kremlin, which stores 6,000 nuclear weapons.
Spanish Mountain soldiers from the San Marcial de Burgos Division participate in the tough NATO Cold Response maneuvers in Norway. / ET
It is not just a matter of arsenalis also determination. It is explained by a very high-level active officer who advises the Ministry of Defense: “The deterrence that NATO provides depends a lot on the perception of unity“, and Trump’s messages are doing him a lot of harm.”
In this sense, he sees a war in Europe caused by an attack by Putin’s Russia as “more likely” without the US in the Western military coalition. Now Russia is exhausted by the effort – in lives and material resources – that Ukraine represents, “but, If he perceives weakness, he will try to take advantage of it“Maybe in a few years,” estimates this source.
Your colleague and Retired Artillery Division General Alfredo Sanz It even points out, in this hypothetical scenario, a point of eruption of a new war in Europe: Narva, border enclave of Estoniawith a Russophile majority, “which could be the next Donbas.”
In this scenario of a headless NATO, “more than war, which is impossible against a power with 6,000 nuclear warheads, I’m worried about blackmail what we may have to give up to avoid it,” considers Admiral Rodríguez Garat.
Without order or concert
In absolute quantitative terms, the absence of the United States in NATO would mean leaving 30 fixed bases and 18 locations of lower rank in Europe, and the withdrawal of 84,000 soldiers deployed on the old continent. But that does not necessarily have to be the scenario that, according to Sanz, would follow a dissolution of the Alliance. “In reality Trump may be seeking to break up Europe, negotiate bilateral agreements with the countries that are most inclined to him, instead of having all his allies together in a single organization,” the general suspects.
That would mean that the countries further east, those bordering Russia, They would have no choice but to accept the impositions of the White House without complaining, “but Trump makes a mistake if he believes that this way he could control them better or it would be easier for him to negotiate,” he warns.
The dystopian interior of NATO headquarters in Brussels. In the photo, Secretary General Mark Rutte with Bulgarian Prime Minister Andrey Burov on March 19. / NATO DPA
Alfredo Sanz was Director of Human Resources with an office in the unique building that serves as NATO headquarters in Brussels, through whose interior, an architecture of emptiness flanked by glass, light and shiny floors, parades a multinational staff of officials, soldiers and diplomats, of whom one in three is North American. From that experience he points out that The Alliance without the United States would not be viable because the consensus mechanism would be broken.
No major decision in NATO is made without the agreement of all allies. And for that “consensus must be generated, even if it is based on negotiate until the last commaIn these complicated processes, “the United States very often plays a power role to force the agreement.”
Economic loss
It is not just a question of money, as has seemed to emerge from the many times that Trump has reproached his European allies. But, certainly, a NATO without the US would be a defensive alliance without 59% of its financial resources.
The balance of economic effort has leveled a lot with the North American knocks that have been ringing since the Glasgow summit in 2014. If twelve years ago The European allies and Canada contributed only 27%, now they already contribute 41%, according to data from the annual report published by the alliance at the end of March, which confirms that Spain has reached 2% of its GDP dedicated to defense.
The Atlantic Alliance moves 1.41 trillion dollars in defense investment. Of those, 574,000 million are those provided by the European allies and Canada. The rest comes out of the US treasury.
What NATO has done for Spain
These days Spanish soldiers of a certain age remember What NATO has done for the Spanish Armed Forces. The most important thing, a democratic didactics. General Alfredo Sanz has it written and meditated. The Spain that joined the Atlantic Alliance in 1982 “came from an attempted coup d’état, and with military personnel largely hardened during Franco’s regime and refractory to civilian control over the Army,” he recalls.
Entering NATO meant for the Spanish armies “learning democratic standards,” says Sanz. And that change in culture came hand in hand with a revolution, that of having to integrate young Spanish officers, the most brilliant, into the command tables of the Alliance structures. “It is much more than an Erasmus to integrate and work in multinational headquarters,” he summarizes.
Over time, more than ten years after Spain joined, It was up to the Spanish military to do this democratic didactics themselves with those of other countries. And so, Sanz remembers his mission in the Balkans in the 90s, speaking to Bosnian and Croatian officers about the necessary limits of military power.
Last visit received in Spain from a military chief of the Atlantic Alliance. Alexus G. Grynkewich, Supreme Allied Commander (left), with the King and the Chief of the Defense Staff, Teodoro Esteban López Calderón, on March 25 / Diego Radamés EUROPA PRESS
There are, of course, other gains. The Spanish Armed Forces are today considered to be of those with the most experience and elasticity for international deploymentsof so many that they have done. So many, that today it is rare for an active soldier who does not have at least two outside rotations on his resume.
NATO’s other contribution to Spain is operational. It is graphically reflected in the pattern of flags seen on the paper when the Alliance describes a multinational brigade. Several of the soldiers with whom this newspaper spoke this Wednesday have cited the interoperability. That is, the capacity of men, groups and machines of talk and coordinate with those from other countries.
Sanz points out as an example the raids flights of Spanish and North American pilots F-18 fighters over Serbia in the Kosovo war… “and North Americans do not fly with those who do not generate trust,” he emphasizes. An active officer of the Air and Space Army points out in this part of the conversation the many exchanges with allied aviators in the air police missions in the Baltic.
Manuel Rey, aviator colonel and former CESID agent, now deceased, would now contribute a scene of full stop in Spanish military history, a prologue to joining NATO that he related to this newspaper: the shame that happened on February 23, 1981, for him another school day of a course with the US Air Force when, upon landing and getting off his plane on the runway of a base in South Carolina, he saw an American colleague coming hurrying up who did not understand anything of what he had just seen on television: “Manuel, Manuel, what a bullfighter has shot into your country’s parliament!”
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