In a recent article posted on Foreign Affairs by Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg a week before the 75th anniversary of NATOs establishment, he outlines the goals and hopes for the meeting regarding primarily the war in Ukraine and NATOs role in providing aid to the Ukrainians. I feel I generally agree with the actions that should be taken in the name of global security. But I find it harder and harder to justify myself in that position due to the potential second Trump term and the breakdown of global norms more generally.

Good Steps

Stoltenberg does lay out a few good projects that NATO will discuss during the meeting with the 32 member countries in Washington D.C. He highlights that “security is not a regional matter but a global one,” a sentiment that I feel not many people share in the American political establishment. In our globalized world and specialized economy, any major blockage of a resource (in this case Ukrainian grain), it does affect everyone. African countries like Ethiopia and Somalia import significant amounts of grain, and higher prices due to lack of supply means that governments are unable to provide support for those starving. Continuing to echo this message in domestic politics is key to securing our commitment to our European friends. 

Arguing for more swift actions to counter Russian aggression, Stoltenberg wants to have an agreement for NATO to lead training and coordination of security assistance, streamlining the military aid process and taking a significant weight off of lawmakers domestically. It more or less solidifies NATO funding for Ukraine through their shared fund by collecting the 2% guideline, making it much easier for aid to get to Ukraine and less friction within the House and Senate. This is a great change, as the most recent Ukraine funding “debate” in the House of Representatives stalled funding for months. Bypassing the need for individual funding bills and going straight through NATOs shared fund is a much needed change. 

I still have doubts about his overall message about the Indo-Pacific in particular. He highlights the fact that Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea are joining the summit for the third time and how this is a major improvement in commitment and growing ties between the nations and the alliance. I find it strange, however, that there are no specific outlined plans to counter China’s growing aggression in the South China Sea, against Taiwan or the Indo-Pacific more generally while we have a more direct policy for Ukraine. Part of me is optimistic and that there is a strategy in the pipeline that requires a bit more workshopping before putting into practice or announcing said policy, which is valid to an extent. Even if the policy is still being worked on, you can make direct calls against countries for violating international laws. Calling out China for its aggression in the South China Sea or against Taiwan would be a consequence, though small, for what is believed to be China playing both sides.

Bad Prospects

What I think misses the mark is the lack of acknowledgement of Trump as a possibility as president and what that can mean for the alliance in combination with the fact that norms don’t have as much weight as they used to. We can go on and on about how we are strengthening our commitment to countries and how the rights of self-defense, autonomy, and the binding nature of Article 5 all we want, but at the end of the day there is nothing tangible holding us to our word. Trump has made it clear that he is not supportive of NATO, does not care about the rule of law or really formal agreements at all. He says in his debate performance that because European NATO allies are not paying as much as us, that we should extort them or leave them out to dry if Putin decides to press his slight battlefield advantage. The famous clip of Trump saying that he won’t come to the aid of a country who hasn’t paid 2% of their GDP into NATO is a prime example of him not caring about the rules outlined in the UN Charter. 

The use of norms as reasoning for deterrence has long since passed when it comes to Putin and Russia at this point. With his recent trip to North Korea and support from the nation, it is clear that Putin is no longer interested in playing by the rules laid out by the Western world like we had done once before. It becomes mandatory for us to look at this conflict much more pragmatically in terms of hard support rather than rule based fines and sanctions. It’s going to be a hard thing for us to come to terms with, but the reality is that the rules based order is broken down once again. A bipolar world has emerged with the US, NATO and the whole of Europe up against Russia, China and its close allies. We need to begin having discussions about what our goals are in this transitional point in time and how we are going to achieve them from a pragmatic point of view rather than the idealistic and symbolic gestures Stoltenberg is suggesting.

As I said before, the goals Stoltenberg outlined in this article are admirable and are steps in the right direction as a whole. But it fails to recognize the existential threat NATO faces from the inside from a second Trump election. He also fails to consider that norms aren’t as strong as they once were because we are no longer in a unipolar world. Europe unfortunately has to grapple with the fact the US may not be there to aid in its defense when the going gets really tough depending on the outcome of the election. And the US is going to have to reconsider its place in the world if it does step away to become more isolationist. There will be some serious questions to answer in the wake of that outcome.