What Trump’s threat to withdraw from NATO means for Ukraine War

In Paris, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, US President-elect Donald Trump has indicated that the Ukraine War required closure speedier than the Gaza War in the Middle East/West Asia. In the same vein, he also told the local media that the US in his second (non-consecutive) term would not hesitate to withdraw from NATO.

Trump did not elaborate on the latter, but in his first term too, he had held out such threats, declaring that Europe should pay for its security and not expect the US to underwrite their expenses too for NATO. This time, however, it holds a larger meaning and purpose as the Ukraine War is draining the resources of the US and its West European allies, and with no end in sight.

Now, a situation has arisen when Ukraine’s allies would be happy for even their ward to lose the war if that is what would lead to a closure. However, they cannot afford such a closure, nor can they be seen as forcing one on Ukraine and against the latter’s interest by holding back on arms supplies halfway through what has increasingly become their proxy war.

Already, there are talks of the military-industrial complex in the US and elsewhere, where host governments underwrite weapons supplies for Ukraine, being able to make their billions from reconstruction efforts, which, too, the very same governments have to foot—whether as grants or long-term credit. From the Vietnam War era, the world has seen this happen in Iraq, Afghanistan, and wherever the West has invested their men and/or material in fighting wars that are strictly not theirs.

Demoralising Western Europe

In the current context, Trump’s threat to consider US withdrawal from NATO means much more than what he intended in his first term. Any weakening of the US resolve to proceed with the Ukraine War just now could demoralise Western Europe, where nations like Germany and France, among others, are at it only because the US took stakes in the conflict early on and left them with little option.

As may be recalled, France and even more Germany were reluctant customers, as the latter especially feared an imminent shortage of Russian oil. Long before the first war-winter arrived in 2022, Western media were full of speculative stories about average Germans freezing to death and all German industries coming to a standstill for want of Russian oil. There were also pen pictures of a return of Stalingrad dating back to the Second World War, for Germans, both the common man and policy-maker, to woe behold!

None of it happened, and Germany and also France, not to miss out the UK, have all been vigorous participants in the war through regular supplies and replenishments for Ukraine. A situation has arisen since in which Western Europe cannot afford to blink without loss of face, nearer home and overseas, and also with a real fear of security concerns, going beyond the theoretical possibilities of the Cold War.

Ready to blink?

What does Trump’s threat of US withdrawal from NATO entail in real terms and in real time? Any indication that the West, especially the US, is ready to blink, whatever the reason and circumstances, could strengthen Russia’s morale and strengthen President Vladimir Putin’s position within and outside.

The world is tired of manufactured Western media ‘plants’ of the past two-plus years of Putin suffering from stomach cancer, memory loss, and worse. It is the kind of psy-war that worked during the World War and even during the Iraq and Afghan Wars in the new millennium. Saddam Hussein’s ‘WMD cache’ was the height of it.

Today, in this social media era, psy-wars come naturally to nations, including Russia, but there is little or no stomach elsewhere for accepting them at face value. In their effort to prove Russia’s planted stories as psy-operations, Western analysts have also handed over the tools of such exposure to social media users, with the result that they too have become adept at applying them to see through the West’s psy-operations, too.

This may have produced a positive effect on the global mood, unlike even during the two US-led Iraq Wars against Saddam Hussein. The first one, after Saddam’s Iraq occupied Kuwait, had certain justification to it. The same could not be said about the WMD theory, as just a day after then US Secretary of State Colin Powell had sought to convince the UN General Assembly, an academic scholar punctured the all-American balloon, claiming that it was based on his PhD theory.

Unpredictability and more

Even without all this, Trump, during his first term, had become more unpredictable for America’s allies than, say, adversaries. At least the latter, like China, were put on notice, especially on trade and tariff fronts. In the case of his unpredictability, allies in Europe and Asia, especially Southeast Asia, were left questioning Washington’s political intent and the consequent change in the content of their century-old relations, dating back to the First World War.

If this was not enough, now you have him reiterating his past position of reconsidering America’s NATO membership. This would cause Western Europe, both as nations and geo-strategic regions, to tread cautiously at every turn, then check and verify before taking the next step. From a Ukrainian perspective, this could be the beginning of a feeling of being let down by Western allies.

Yet, from what Trump has said about the Ukraine War being the worst of the two when compared to the Gaza War, the implication is that he would try and use his good offices to end and not escalate the same. To retain the all-American credibility among its allies, present and prospective, if any, the solution that he works out should ensure a honourable exit for Ukraine and West Europe.

For all this, he will have to negotiate with Putin. Whether he enters the talks directly or through intermediaries, Putin too would welcome the Trump initiative wholeheartedly, as a victorious closure is not in sight for either Russia or Ukraine unless the West stops arming the latter.

Honourable way out

From within, the chances are that Putin too would come under pressure to end the war if there is an honourable and meaningful way out. After all, the war was over Russian concerns that Ukraine would be admitted into NATO, and this in turn would turn the Russo-Ukrainian border into a Russo-NATO border. In other ways, Putin and Russia would not want to go back to the Cold War era, where the erstwhile Soviet Union and NATO maintained eyeball-to-eyeball contact even when Ukraine was a part of the former.

Maybe, by reassuring Russia that Ukraine won’t join NATO, Trump could begin the process of normalisation. Yet, he would have to work on the legitimate Ukraine demand for Russia to vacate the territories it had annexed during the war, first militarily and then politically. For Putin to surrender the same now could weaken him politically within the Kremlin setup.

It will be no different for Zelensky in Ukraine, but the stakes may remain within the democracy domain. Yet, it would be a concern for the current leadership, after all. The question is thus the kind of additional guarantees that Russia would want against a non-aggressive posture from NATO on the one hand and anticipated Ukrainian demand for ironclad guarantees that Russia would not attack the nation again in the next hundred years.

One welcome development unconnected to the Ukraine War yet possibly influencing Moscow’s decision could be the rebel takeover of Syria and the loss of Syrian ports and posts for the Russian navy. That way, a peace facilitator may be negotiating with Russia from a position of geostrategic strength. Trump’s Paris declaration that post-coup Syria would have to fend for itself may be an encouraging message for Putin that the US does not intend to exploit the Russian helplessness in the Mediterranean.

That may be a good place to begin peace facilitation to end the Ukraine War when Trump returns as president a month from now. The way he has spoken about the Ukraine War and the priority he has conferred on ending it early implies that Trump hopes to hit the road running. How far and how fast he goes is what the world, including the two European adversaries, is looking for just now.

The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst and Political Commentator. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.