Nato is not a “charity” or an “act of generosity” but an organisation that bolsters US global power and saves the American taxpayer money, former top diplomats and senior military chiefs have said.
Nearly every living former US ambassador to Nato and former supreme allied commander has warned President Trump against withdrawing from or diminishing the alliance. In a statement on the eve of the Munich security conference, 16 former senior figures said Nato was vital for American national security.
Without the alliance, they said, American costs and the risk of conflict would rise, American influence would shrink and the legitimacy of US-led operations would be weakened. “Nato is not an act of American generosity,” they said. “It is a strategic bargain that ensures the United States remains the world’s most powerful and economically secure nation at a fraction of the cost of going it alone.”
Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to Nato, co-ordinated the statement before talks in Germany with world leaders and diplomats. The other signatories included the former US ambassadors to Nato, Alexander Vershbow, Nicholas Burns, Victoria Nuland, Kurt Volker, Douglas Lute, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Julianne Smith., and the former Nato supreme allied commanders Wesley Clark, Joseph Ralston, James Jones, John Craddock, Philip Breedlove, Curtis Scaparrotti, Tod Wolters and Christopher Cavoli.
Curtis Scaparrotti, a former Nato supreme allied commander
JIM WATSON/AFP
Nato defence ministers gathered on Thursday in Brussels where they discussed Ukraine and bolstering defences in the Arctic region to placate Trump, who wants to take Greenland from Denmark because, he claims, he can better defend it from President Putin of Russia and President Xi of China. Experts have said that the threat to Greenland from Russia and China has fallen in recent years as Putin’s forces are distracted by the war in Ukraine.
Although resources in Europe are stretched, allies have been forced into diverting fighter jets and troops to the High North under political pressure from the US. John Healey, the defence secretary, said this week that he would double the number of Royal Marines on exercise in Norway to 2,000.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, will hold talks with the Danish government about Greenland on Friday, on the sidelines of the conference. Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, said: “We have agreed to hold several meetings with American politicians, including the secretary of state.”
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European allies would like to stand up to Trump but rely on the US for security, although they are now spending billions more on defence in an effort to reduce that dependency. Senior figures in the US administration have repeatedly derided Europeans for their small armies and lack of fighting power.
Pete Hegseth last week in Washington, where he led a re-enlistment ceremony for National Guard troops
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of state for war, did not turn up to the meeting in Brussels on Thursday but sent his deputy, Elbridge Colby, in one of many diplomatic slights. Colby argued for a reformed “Nato 3.0” that was closer to the original, Cold War iteration than an alliance mostly underwritten by American military power.
Colby said he hoped to forge a “transatlantic relationship defined not by dependency nor by canned recitations detached from reality, but rather by common strength and a shared grammar rooted in flexible realism”.
He said: “A strategy that pretends the United States can indefinitely serve as the primary conventional defender of Europe while also carrying the decisive burden everywhere else is neither sustainable nor prudent. It is an aspiration divorced from resources.”
He added, however, that the US was not engaged in a “retreat from Europe”. He told defence ministers that his message was “an affirmation of strategic pragmatism and a recognition of our allies’ undeniable ability to step up and lead on Europe’s defence in a way that leaves all of us stronger and safer”.
He said: “Let me stress something: there is nothing anti-European about this vision. To the contrary, it reflects hope and indeed confidence in Europe’s capacity to act substantially and vigorously.”
At a summit last year, alliance members acceded to calls from the Trump administration to increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP by 2035. On Thursday, Colby urged European allies including Britain to increase spending on real military capability more quickly and not delay into next decade.
Defence ministers are in Munich for a flurry of diplomatic activity including more discussions on a Ukraine peace deal. Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, and Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, are attending along with Healey.
Yvette Cooper
STEFAN ROUSSEAU/PA
President Zelensky of Ukraine said on X after arriving on Friday: “Today in Munich, Germany. An important day, and there will be new steps toward our shared security — that of Ukraine and Europe. We need more of our joint production, more of our resilience, more co-ordination and effectiveness of our shared security architecture in Europe.”
Zelensky toured a Ukrainian-German drone production facility and will make a speech to the conference on Saturday, according to an agenda released by his office.
Andriy Sybiga, the Ukrainian foreign minister, said he had met Wang Yi, his Chinese counterpart, on Friday to discuss ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He said: “We discussed peace efforts and China’s important role in facilitating an end to the war.”
Confirming that he had pushed for a meeting between Zelensky and Xi, he said: “I reiterated Ukraine’s interest in contacts with China at the highest level.”
Beijing has not condemned the invasion of Ukraine and remains a close partner of Russia. Relations between Washington and Beijing remain high, and Rubio also met Wang on Friday.
Rubio is due to give a speech on Saturday and delegates will be hoping there is no repeat of last year, when JD Vance used the stage to attack the Europeans, rather than Putin, for the illegal Russian war. Rubio struck a warmer tone before the conference, saying that the US was deeply tied to Europe, adding: “Our futures have always been linked and will continue to be.”
However, he said transatlantic ties faced a “defining moment” in a rapidly changing world. “The old world is gone, frankly, the world I grew up in, and we live in a new era in geopolitics, and it’s going to require all of us to re-examine what that looks like and what our role is going to be.”
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, leaving the White House on Wednesday
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI /AFP
Since then relations between the US and Europe have plummeted further, with a series of spats over Greenland, trade tariffs and in the case of the UK, the future of Diego Garcia and the role British troops played in the war in Afghanistan.
In the statement on Thursday, the US former senior figures said Nato provided the legal and physical infrastructure that enabled US forces to operate globally, including guaranteed access to strategic bases across Europe that serve as launch points for operations in Africa, the Middle East and central Asia.
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“The US does not maintain a military presence in Europe solely to protect Europeans; it does so to protect American interests. Nato provides the legal and physical infrastructure for the United States to operate globally,” they said.
“Through Nato, US forces have guaranteed access to a network of air, naval, and ground force bases throughout Europe. These serve as the ‘jumping-off points’ for US operations in Africa, the Middle East and central Asia. In military operations, geography matters and Europe is a continent closer to global hotspots where US interests can be challenged.”
They pointed out that non-US Nato allies spend more than $560 billion on defence and more than $1.6 trillion in bilateral trade flows across the Atlantic annually. Nato’s maritime and security framework helped safeguard critical sea lanes and transatlantic commerce, they said.
In addition, Nato’s “global nervous system” of intelligence provided the US with capabilities and interoperability that would be costly and difficult to replicate alone.
“Whether it is monitoring Russian submarine activity in the North Sea, extremist movements in North Africa, or emerging cyber-threats, Nato provides the United States a ‘fused’ intelligence product it could not replicate alone,” they said.
Nato’s nuclear sharing arrangements reduced proliferation risks by providing a credible US deterrent umbrella in Europe. They wrote: “Far from being a ‘charity’ or a one-way security guarantee, Nato is a vital force multiplier that allows the United States to project power, protect its economy, and share the immense burdens of global leadership in ways that would be impossible — or prohibitively expensive — to achieve on its own.”
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They said a strong Nato “enhances deterrence in the transatlantic region and enables the US to ensure security in other global regions”.
“It is crucial to our future security that Americans recognise the value of Nato to our security and ensure its vitality for decades to come,” they wrote. “Allies that work together and trust one another give the US an unmatched strategic advantage.”
They also said the US economy relied on the stability of the European market and the safety of Atlantic sea lanes. “If the United States were to withdraw from Nato or diminish its utility by eroding trust among allies, the immediate result would not be a ‘peace dividend’. Instead, the US would face higher costs, greater risk, loss of influence, less legitimacy.”