Andres Kasekamp: No more rules: The end of the transatlantic alliance?

The Transatlantic relationship relies on the rules-based international order established by the US and Western Allies after the Second World War. Rules, however, no longer apply to the behaviour of the United States under President Trump. His approach is purely transactional, and he does not believe in mutually beneficial alliances. He thinks that Europe and Canada have been ‘ripping off’ the US and now must pay for it. His administration is systematically neutering international bodies, for example by sanctioning judges of the International Criminal Court. Former Estonian President Lennart Meri quipped that international law is the nuclear weapon of small states. Trump, however, is returning the world to the law of jungle where weaker countries are vulnerable to larger predators.

Allies initially believed the best approach for dealing with Trump was to placate and flatter him, exemplified by the self-abasing fawning of NATO Secretary-General Marc Rutte. The US has nevertheless continued to treat its allies worse than hostile dictatorships. Other countries have now learned that making concessions to Trump only leads to greater demands. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was the first to articulate the gravity of the ‘rupture’ and assert that the old order is not coming back in his speech at Davos in January 2026. This was at the time when Europeans finally realized that Trump’s talk of taking over Greenland (the territory of Denmark, a NATO ally) was deadly serious. Trump has subsequently attacked Canada with egregious tariffs and questioned its sovereignty.

Russia’s war against Ukraine is the biggest security challenge for Europeans, but they have failed to convince Trump to aid the victim and punish the aggressor. Trump claims it is “Biden’s war”, not his, despite the US having given security assurances to Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Nor is Trump in the least bit bothered that legitimizing territorial expansion by force would erode the rules-based international order, including the UN Charter. While Trump’s behaviour is generally erratic, one constant is that he never criticizes Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is also obvious that he despises Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for hindering his desired business ties with Moscow.

Paradoxically, the US has successfully pressured the Europeans (and Canadians) to spend more on their own defence, but in doing so has undermined its dominance on the continent.  Americans are now upset that Europeans are investing in their own defence industries rather than purchasing American equipment. The new US National Security Strategy aims to support European ‘patriots’, meaning far-right parties, in order to subvert the unity and power of the EU. The US tech giants fear the European Commission’s regulatory power and are using Trump to shield their companies from EU legislation and oversight. Europe can no longer assume that the Transatlantic relationship will return to normal once Trump is gone. Too much damage has been done. And there is no guarantee that the American electorate will act rationally in the future or that the Democrats (if they are ever able to come back into power) will reverse Trump’s detrimental policies.

What does all this mean for the security of Baltic Rim and Eastern Flank NATO countries? Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are especially dependant on the US since they are the most geographically exposed to a potential Russian attack. To add to the uncertainty, deliveries of ammunition and equipment they procured from the US have now been postponed due to the depletion of American supplies in the US-Israeli war against Iran. The Baltic states have little choice but to hope that the US will return to its senses while making plans for alternatives. They can not publicly speak out about the havoc caused by Trump’s policies for fear of the US administration’s wrath. They must lie low, demonstrate that they are reliable allies, and prepare themselves for all eventualities. The danger lies in the short term when European military capabilities cannot yet substitute for American ones. In the absence of the US, the primary existing solution is the rapid response Joint Expeditionary Force, consisting of ten northern European NATO members, led by the UK. Canada would be a natural addition to this group of countries, especially in the Arctic.

President Trump’s musings about US withdrawal from NATO have caused alarm. However, perhaps an even more dangerous situation would be a US that remains within NATO and blocks the implementation of Article 5 (the collective defence clause) in the case of an attack by Russia on a NATO ally. Effective deterrence depends on the perception of credibility. Moscow needs to believe that the US will actually come to the assistance of its NATO allies if they are attacked. Trump’s words, actions, and inactions have made that seem less likely and thus have inadvertently increased the chances of a catastrophic miscalculation by the Kremlin. European allies and Canada might one day even need to come to each others’ aid against potential US encroachments – an improbable, but no longer entirely implausible scenario, that would spell the end of the Transatlantic alliance.