As Ukraine could break the western alliance

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Fear in Russia gathered the western alliance. Now, fear of Russia is threatening to separate.

The North Atlantic Treaty organization was formed in 1949 by the North -American Allies, Canada and European Allies to deter Moscow. But if the Trump administration tries to force Ukraine to accept a partial defeat in its war with Russia, America will be widely seen in Europe as an assault of Russian aggression. If NATO allies can no longer agree on the threat they face and how to deal with -all their alliance is at risk.

The Atlantic Alliance has survived many deep disagreements over the decades, from Suez in 1956 to the wars of Vietnam and Iraq, because there was always an understanding that ultimately the United States and its European allies were on the same side.

The US-European collaboration was based on shared interests and values. Throughout the Cold War, shared interest was the containment of the Soviet threat. The shared value was the defense of democracy. Even after the end of that war, the terror and protection of the new democracies in Europe gave NATO a common purpose.

But this common understanding now extends. A disastrous conclusion of war in Ukraine could take it out of all.

Last week, the United States and Europe have been pressing different plans for peace for Ukraine. Europeans reject the key elements of the Trump Plan, above all, the legal recognition of the annexation of Russia of Crimea.

Donald Trump seemed to have a kind conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in Rome over the weekend, and the United States leader has also ventured a rare criticism of Vladimir Putin. But America has not withdrawn any of the elements of its peace plan that Europeans and Ukrainians consider so objectable.

Underlying to this disagreement are deeply different views of international security and where the threat of the next war comes from. Europeans believe that the reward of Russian aggression in Ukraine would make put the rest of Europe to attack, from the Baltic states.

Trump’s administration sees things very differently. It worries that the United States can be dragged into a direct conflict with Russia. Trump himself has repeatedly warned of the risk of a Third World War. The Biden administration was also concerned about the risk of climbing with Russia. But unlike Trump, he shared Putin’s deep suspicion in Europe and the determination that Russian aggression should not be rewarded.

The divergence in security views now goes far beyond the question of ending the Ukraine war. The Allies of America must face the reality that Trump directly threatens the territory of two NATO members.

Trump has been repeatedly committed to incorporating Greenland, which is an autonomous part of Denmark, in the United States. In a recent interview with Time Magazine, too repeated His desire to turn Canada into the 51st state of America. Trump has not made military threats against Canada. But it clearly wants to extinguish its existence as an independent country.

It combines these authoritarian instincts, their threats to NATO allies and their obvious sympathy for Putin, and it is difficult to argue that NATO is still an alliance based on shared values.

In fact, the values ​​conflict is already in the open. Both the United States and its largest European allies continue to argue that they defend democracy. But they both believe (or claim to believe) that democracy is under threat on the other side of the Atlantic.

In a speech now famous at the Munich Security Conference, JD Vance accused the North -American European Allies of suppressing freedom of expression and fear of their own people. The vice -president’s allegations encountered cold fury in most of Europe, where Trump’s efforts to annul the 2020 United States presidential election, and their court attacks, in the media and universities in the United States, have not escaped.

The Trump administration and its European allies now preach two conflicting views of Western values. Vance-Trump vision is ethno-nationalist, culturally conservative and illiberal. Europe is internationalist and is based on liberal law and institutions.

The division is even more bitter because both sides believe that this is an existential struggle for political survival and look at the Allies on the other side of the Atlantic. The Trump administration wants to work with nationalist populists such as Viktor Orbán of Hungary, Robert Fico de Slovakia or Nigel Farage of Britain. The main European governments expected Kamala Harris to win the United States’s presidency and are now desperately counting the days until the United States’s medium -term election.

The transatlantic alliance used to be a bipartisan commitment that could easily survive changes in government. Now it can only work if the liberals – or liberal – are in power on both sides of the Atlantic at the same time.

Even then there are reasons for doubt. In addition to shared values ​​and interests, the western alliance depends on trust. All parties need to know that it will last, whatever happens in the next election. But Europeans and Canadians now know that the United States are able to choose Trump twice. They can no longer give of course the North -American Firmness.

gideon.rachman@ft.com