FP Foreign Policy
NATO Has Become a Zombie Alliance
European leaders must revive it before disaster strikes.
With dust barely settled from Davos, global leaders will convene again in Europe this week for the Munich Security Conference. On the conference’s main stage and in countless private meetings, the future of the trans-Atlantic alliance will top the agenda. Some leaders, such as NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, may attempt to explain away the recent crisis over Greenland, asserting that any post-American concept for European security is nothing short of delusional. But that perspective, however hopeful, is losing credibility. Worse, it undermines the urgency that this moment of crisis requires.
Rather than lulling themselves into a false sense of security, the United States’ European allies must accept an uncomfortable—and unfortunate—reality: NATO has become a zombie alliance. Formally, its procedural features remain intact. There is a bustling headquarters in Brussels, an empowered American supreme allied commander, and formidable military capabilities deployed across the continent.
But the alliance’s animating spirit—the U.S. commitment to collective defense under Article V of the founding charter—is gone. Without that life force, NATO lacks the credibility and trust that have reassured allies and deterred adversaries for decades. A revival is possible, but it will require Europeans to take ownership of the alliance before it’s too late.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term already created a crisis of confidence for NATO. The president repeatedly criticized the alliance, calling it “obsolete” and “very unfair” to the United States while excoriating allies for not paying their share of defense spending.
More alarming, he portrayed the Article V mutual defense clause as conditional. Trump privately considered withdrawing from the alliance and publicly mused about leaving NATO if allies did not “pay their bills.” Admittedly, these broadsides were interspersed with reassuring messages from Trump and his first-term team, but allies’ anxiety persisted. By 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron had pronounced NATO “brain-dead.”
Yet Macron’s words were premature. NATO survived and even thrived. The nadir of the first Trump term was followed by remarkable alliance unity under U.S. President Joe Biden. The alliance cooperated on a concerted response to Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine while a growing number of allies met their defense spending commitments and Finland and Sweden joined as new members.
For much of the past year, it seemed as though NATO could weather the storm of another Trump presidency. The 2025 NATO summit at The Hague avoided controversy and delivered Trump a big win with allies’ commitment to increase defense and defense-adjacent spending to 5 percent of their GDPs. Rutte developed a shamelessly obsequious relationship with Trump, which served to keep lines of communication open between the White House and Brussels. Even some of the most concerning pro-Russia turns in Trump’s Ukraine policy were largely reversed after European pushback.
But this time is different. The crisis over Greenland is unlike any that has come before, and it follows on a series of U.S. moves that have exposed the hollowness at NATO’s core. Trump’s proclaimed willingness to use military force to annex Greenland represents a threat to invade one of Washington’s most steadfast NATO allies. He then threatened escalating tariffs against the eight allies who opposed Washington’s imperial quest and, for good measure, suggested that he might not defend Greenland against Russia or China.
The Greenland episode exposed the fiction of appeasement as a sustainable strategy for Europe. Rutte was able to broker a framework agreement that pacified Trump for the time being. But the deal reached at the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, Switzerland, was essentially a fig leaf, more of a detente than a permanent settlement of the Greenland issue.
What is more, Trump’s Greenland threats built on two months of mounting trans-Atlantic abuse. In December, the White House released a stunning National Security Strategy that downplayed the Russian threat to Europe, warned of the continent’s “civilizational erasure,” and called for political intervention in support of far-right, anti-EU parties. The month prior, Trump shocked the world by trying to force a pro-Russian 28-point peace plan upon Ukraine and its European supporters. Even though he belatedly walked it back, the damage was done.
These events have exposed NATO as an essentially hollow alliance, lacking signs of life in the areas that matter most. NATO’s heart has always been Article V—a commitment by the United States to come to allies’ defense if attacked. Though Washington’s true willingness to “trade New York for Paris,” as Charles de Gaulle memorably put it, was always a question, the U.S. commitment was credible enough over decades to keep the peace. This credibility derived from the capabilities that the United States deployed forward in Europe—but also from the attestations of political will and the postwar legacy of trust that bound nations across the Atlantic.
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Today, it is hard to imagine Trump making the decision to intervene in defense of a NATO ally. His affinity clearly lies with Russia, and Russian President Vladimir Putin knows it. There are all too many ways that Moscow might capitalize on this: a major escalation of Russia’s ongoing sabotage campaign in NATO countries, an attempt to seize a land bridge through Lithuania to Kaliningrad, or a purportedly humanitarian operation to protect Russian speakers in Estonia. If Putin acted quickly enough and with the right cover story, how would Washington respond? Perhaps the political and reputational pressure would prove overwhelming for Trump. But who would stake their safety on his willingness to act decisively and risk war with Russia over a sliver of Baltic territory?
While elites in NATO capitals have been navigating stages of grief, European publics seem to understand the dire state of affairs. Polling conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations shows that, even before the Greenland crisis reached its recent fever pitch, only 16 percent of EU citizens viewed the United States as an ally, whereas 20 percent saw Washington as a rival or adversary.
The question, then, for leaders gathered in Munich’s ornate Hotel Bayerischer Hof this week is: Where does NATO go from here?
NATO could limp along in a zombie state, avoiding crisis but failing to meet the moment. A Trump-pacification strategy, with a steady stream of splashy announcements about defense spending, could be enough to forestall a high-profile rupture.
But this will mean little if European leaders refuse to translate those promised euros into real capabilities. Without politically difficult choices, NATO’s European members may well fall short of the estimated $1 trillion in necessary investments to provide for their own defense. As a result, the alliance would gain in capability and fill some shortfalls, but it would still fail to achieve real security autonomy. In other words, Europe’s future would continue to rest on the credibility of Washington’s commitment to Article V.
This might be fine if the alliance is never tested. But it would spell the death of NATO if either Trump or Putin decided to act. Trump, for his part, could simply make good on his threats and withdraw. Even if the United States were still legally bound to the North Atlantic Treaty, an executive order (or even a Truth Social post) announcing the United States’ departure would be enough to kill the alliance. Putin, for his part, has long sought the demise of NATO and may decide to force Trump’s hand through an act of aggression. Even if the alliance chose to avoid invoking Article V as a means of saving face, this in itself would be fatal.
The better alternative is for European leaders to act before it’s too late. NATO can regenerate itself by building a European pillar of the alliance that stands on its own, with or without the United States. The EU has unlocked significant resources, and NATO members have ratcheted up defense spending targets. If European allies can translate these plans and pledges into focused and coordinated investments, with time, they will be able to grow their defense industrial base and generate meaningful defense capabilities.
Europe faces gaps in air defense and space launch; strategic lift; long-range strike; and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. But the continent also has resources that it can mobilize to fill them and bolster these conventional capabilities. In the nuclear realm, France and Britain could adapt their arsenals to provide something resembling European extended deterrence. And the coalition of the willing, founded to coordinate Ukraine policy, could become the kernel of a decision-making body that influences NATO from the outside in. A glimpse of this future was just on display, when NATO allies conducted a major exercise—Steadfast Dart—with 10,000 troops from 11 nations, but not a single U.S. weapon or soldier.
European leaders can’t control what Trump or Putin do. But they can anticipate the worst and prepare accordingly. If NATO’s European members want the alliance to survive, they must face reality this week in Munich. This means rejecting any attempts at reassurance from the Trump administration and abandoning the comforting illusion that the pre-Trump status quo will return after Trump’s gone. Only by recognizing that NATO has become a zombie can European leaders do what it takes to bring the alliance back from the dead.
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Rebecca Lissner is a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. She served as a deputy assistant to the president and principal deputy national security advisor to the vice president in the Biden-Harris administration. X: @RebeccaLissner
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