The Erosion of NATO’s Moral Centre?

This interview, conducted by Midas van de Weetering in February 2026, features insights from Dr. Laurien Crump, a historian of international relations and European security. She is a researcher at the Centre for Parliamentary History at Radboud University and previously worked at Utrecht University in the History of International Relations field. Her research focuses on Cold War multilateral diplomacy and European security, including the Warsaw Pact and the post-Cold War transatlantic security architecture such as NATO enlargement.

Absolutely. The illegal capture of President Maduro, whatever you think of Maduro, goes right against international law while completely bypassing the United Nations. However, I think that Trump’s claims on Greenland are an absolute watershed. As we speak today [2nd of February], because with Trump, it can change every day. As we speak, it looks as though he’s not going to invade Greenland in the short term, but the mere fact that an American president threatens to invade part of a NATO country is unprecedented, and I think signals the end of NATO as we know it. I mean, Article 1 of NATO is all about values, it’s about international justice, about peace, about the United Nations, but it’s also about neither threatening with force nor using force. By threatening the use of force against Greenland, Trump has already greatly undermined article one of NATO. I also think he’s undermined a lot of it already by the way he deals with Putin, as it also goes against international justice. So I think you hear a lot of people asking questions about whether this is the end of NATO or not. I don’t think the end of NATO is near, but I think NATO has already been eroded, as we’re now dealing with a completely different NATO from a year ago. The biggest and scariest difference is that it doesn’t have a moral foundation anymore, an even scarier thought considering the ongoing genocide in Gaza and a war in Ukraine.

Exactly. It is exemplified in what Trump said in Davos, 10 days ago, as he agrees to defend Greenland only if he owns it. By saying that he’s completely undermined Article 5, as an attack on a member is an attack on all, regardless of ownership of the territory. Signs of erosion of NATO were already visible in the NATO summit in June in the Hague. While everyone seemed happy with the summit declaration, I think that people read it too hastily as it did not use the words at all times to Article 5, which were present in all the other NATO summit declarations, and is testimonial to the ironclad commitment to Article 5. Their absence undermines Article 5, adding a conditionality dimension to it: say Lithuania is attacked and you don’t have the words at all times, Trump could say, well I don’t think transatlantic security is at stake, let’s give Lithuania away.

Another shocking element of the NATO summit declaration is, for the first time in NATO’s existence, the lack of mention of Article 1, the words international justice, or UN peace. These words are important as they have this sort of moral meaning. The NATO we now have is the NATO of the law of the stronger. If you look at the American national security strategy, they have literally said that they are not so interested in a rules-based order. It is now a completely realist NATO, serving American interests and without a moral foundation. I don’t think the Americans will ever exit NATO voluntarily because it’s too useful of an instrument for them.

The dilemma faced by members in dealing with the whole Greenland case was that a fellow NATO member wanted Greenland. Had it been Putin, the reaction from NATO countries would have been much easier because Putin is the enemy. What can you do if your own ally wants to annex your own territory? How can you speak of an alliance in the proper sense of the word if one ally is threatening another? I think that NATO is becoming more and more a realist instrument serving American power and a paper tiger, deeply affecting its credibility in guaranteeing the security of its members.

I think that this EU clause is often underestimated. Although it’s more forceful than the NATO clause on paper, it’s less forceful in reality because the EU without the American military might is not half as powerful. However, I do think that it can provide a solution or at least the beginning of a solution in the future, especially if the EU continues joining forces with non-European members or non-Eurotransatlantic members like the UK, Canada, Norway, or Turkey. There are already talks now of having a sort of European Security Council which would be the EU, plus Canada, Norway, the UK, and Turkey. I think that the UK is absolutely essential in terms of security; if we lose the US we can’t survive without the UK. If the EU reinvents itself and starts operating on that clause, while having a European Security Council, and drawing from the experience of the Coalition of the Willing, it could absolutely be a solution. It demands a complete paradigm shift on the way of conceiving your own security, your own military forces, because up until now we have assigned that to the Americans. I think Greenland has confronted Europe finally, which is a positive side of the Greenland crisis, as we shouldn’t make the Americans any longer responsible for our own security.

I think that two months ago I would have answered your question very differently. Recent research by the Netherlands Atlantic Association shows that more Dutch citizens find Trump to be a greater threat to our security than Putin. I would agree with them, not because Putin is a better man than Trump morally, as in sort of moral terms I would say that Trump and Putin are on a similar level, but because Trump has more military might. I think we’re slowly beginning to realize that Trump is an authoritarian leader as the US has become as authoritarian in one year as Turkey, Hungary, and Russia did in about 10 years. The Greenland crisis has really shown that, apart from what’s happening with ICE and the shooting of innocent citizens, a lot of Europeans don’t want to be associated with America anymore. You see that there are fewer tourists going to America and fewer students going to America. I think that everything that Trump does is so over the top, that there is finally a real realization, not only in the governments and in the capitals, but also among people, that we can’t rely on the US anymore. This has been a big issue since the end of the Cold War: you had two camps, NATO versus the Warsaw Pact, and of course, you could rely on the US because the US wanted to win the Cold War: it needed a coherent NATO.

The biggest and scariest difference is that it doesn’t have a moral foundation anymore, an even scarier thought considering the ongoing genocide in Gaza and a war in Ukraine.

I’m currently working on archival research on the Dutch case and the NATO expansion in the 1990s. It is interesting to already see that in 1993 and 1994, the Dutch parliament proposed a European pillar in NATO, which is exactly what we can read in current government. After the Cold War, there was this huge concern not because there was a lunatic leading America, but because NATO had lost its purpose after the Cold War and there was a huge concern that the Americans would withdraw or would lose interest in it. This sparked a lot of talk concerning strategic autonomy, by building a European pillar in NATO and spending more on defense. I am currently writing an article on the foreign and defense policy of the Schoof government, and some of the arguments are identical to those of the 1994-95 NATO expansion. It was fair, the Cold War was over so why were the Americans going to be interested in Europe. For the last 30 years, there’s been a trend of Americans slowly withdrawing from NATO which has been completely accelerated by an authoritarian leader. NATO always prided itself on being an alliance of liberal democratic countries. And according to some international relations theories, liberal democratic countries can’t go to war with each other. Yet, I think that the mere fact that Trump considered going to war over Greenland shows that America is not a liberal democratic country anymore. I think that the seeds of this crisis have been here since the end of the Cold War, but the real paradigm shift is America’s transformation from a liberal democratic country into an authoritarian country. In that way, we live in an era which is sort of the opposite of the end of the Cold War. Between the 9th of November, 1989, and the fall of the Berlin Wall to the 31st of October 1990 and the reunification of Germany we had the period often called the acceleration of history. So many things happened so quickly: countries in Eastern Central Europe were liberated, Communism fell in authoritarian regimes. As put by Fukuyama, it very much seemed like the end of history as we were all on one way to liberal democracy. What we now see is an acceleration of history in the exact opposite direction: the world order is collapsing, populism, right-wing nationalism, and authoritarianism are rising in Europe. Trump is a kind of caricature of that tendency. A recent article portrayed Trump as the anti-Gorbachev. The Warsaw Pact fell apart because these were all authoritarian leaders and suddenly the head of the alliance became almost a liberal democratic leader, precipitating the collapse of the whole of Eastern Europe. The American president has always really been in charge of NATO: but now that president is actually saying goodbye to liberal democracy. We’ve had America that was a sort of likeminded country but it no longer is: NATO is suddenly headed by a country whose president has more in common with Putin than with the other NATO members. It’s not a coincidence that the Russian government was very enthusiastic about the American national security strategy. This proves my point that we might find ourselves at the beginning of history, in that we’ll witness major clashes again. The US current defense strategy is very explicitly saying goodbye to the rules-based order which calls for a completely different EU, one that works very closely with the UK and other strategic partners.

I think it doesn’t have a choice and you can already see states are doing it. Over the past couple of days, the UK has really tightened its relations with China, notably at the leadership level. And I think we should also do what Carney [Canadian Prime Minister] said in seeking other medium and regional powers to work with. I really hope that the American Treaty is coming into effect within the EU despite the legal issues. I think we should become more pragmatic and distinguish two things: the EU including the UK, should act as a moral actor by, for example, condemning the genocide in Gaza. And on the other hand, who we do business or deals with simply to survive. We can’t survive anymore by having the moral high ground alone because now that the US doesn’t have the moral high ground anymore, our moral high ground isn’t high enough to survive. And of course the genocide in Gaza has already exposed how much Europe deals with double standards. And I think it would become easier for Europe because then it could also loosen ties with Israel and the Netanyahu regime to, you know, deal with two levels. We’ve got a moral level and we have moral judgments at that level. But it doesn’t mean that we only engage with the regimes that we morally agree with. Because basically there are too few regimes of those left, you know, because the US is collapsing and Israel isn’t the moral regime. Having this moral high ground only exposes the double standards because by dealing with Israel and dealing with Washington, we’re already not dealing with regimes that we agree with in terms of human rights and international laws. So we might as well deal with China too, if you see what I mean. And then be honest about it. I think this is also what Carney said in not keeping appearances anymore. I think he said we should deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. It was a very nice sentence.

I think what Trump is trying to do is to divide the world between Putin, Xi, and himself. There is this whole idea of influence spheres which can be seen with all the deals that have been made about Ukraine over the past year. None of them were deals in favor of Ukraine. They were all deals in favor of sort of a pragmatism saying, you know, let’s give a little bit to Putin and I keep a little bit and we can all rule in our own influence spheres. So I think we do have to watch Russia, but I don’t think Russia is strong enough. Although I fear Russia’s strengths since Trump plays so much into the hands of Putin, you know, with the whole Greenland crisis. Putin just has to sit back and laugh and say things about international law occasionally because Trump is breaking it at least as much as Putin is. I think what we do have to look out for is the Global South. I think we really have to start taking the Global South seriously and deal with those countries. I think that we have to deal with China and sort of step over our own shadow. I also think the BRICS is something we’ve very much underestimated. We also have to become aware of things like that in the eyes of, say, the Global South: the war in Ukraine is a regional war, whereas the genocide in Gaza is a global crisis. Whereas I think from the European perspective we see it the other way around. We think that the war in Ukraine is the beginning of World War III and Gaza is a regional crisis.

Turkey, I think, is an interesting player that we have to watch out for, because it plays on different chessboards simultaneously. The BRICS countries, like I said, and a lot of other medium powers. I think we have to deal very seriously with the UK, because we can’t survive without them. Canada, I think, is becoming a very interesting partner, you know, a transatlantic partner that we do share moral values with. So I think we completely have to start conceptualizing how we view international relations. I was worried about the objections and the legal procedures against Mercosur, because I think what we have to become aware of now is, you know, we’ve lost the moral high ground already. And we now have to be aware that we don’t, as with the moral high ground, lose our independence altogether as well. And we have to start dealing with other countries, regardless of how they treat homosexuals or whatever. I mean, that sounds awful, but that is how the world is. We have to face the facts, I think.

Yes. In 2021, the Global Gateway Initiative was launched as a European alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative. Although Europe is now in fact investing strategically in infrastructure in the Global South, which before this wasn’t done, one of the main things that it is often criticized for, is that we are still tying it to European norms and reforms, a very slow and bureaucratic process.

Yes, I think it already is. With the rise of populism and far-right nationalism, I think there’s not that much left that we can export anymore, to be frank. And like I said, with our own former allies like Israel, you know, turning into a genocidal regime, and Trump turning into an authoritarian regime with ICE as this kind of fascist bully. I think we have to separate the whole idea of exporting norms from how we geopolitically deal with other countries. It doesn’t mean that we have to let go of those norms, but I actually think in order to at least safeguard those norms in Europe, we have to be less obsessed with imposing them on other countries.

It’s one of the problems with the Mercosur Treaty, a treaty with countries which have different norms than ours. But if the alternative is a complete dependence on America, where people are either Trumpian or are already fleeing from America, I think we have to face the fact and say there’s a kind of moral bankruptcy that’s irreversible. If we want to survive and at least maintain the norms in Europe, we have to be more pragmatic in what we do outside Europe.

I think it’s irreversible. So I think what Trump has done, and it’s, of course, a longer process, but he’s been the biggest protagonist in this process, is a kind of demolition that’s irreversible. So it’s not just saying, I don’t care about the UN or doing your own thing, but it’s saying out loud in an interview with the New York Times, you know, I don’t believe in international law, I steer on my own moral compass. Or that the National Security asserts that rules-based order is over. And these things aren’t mere rhetoric, because if an American president says that, and while judges from the ICC don’t receive their salaries anymore, not because America is a partner of the International Criminal Court, but because they belong to the Swift system.

I think there’s a kind of power politics at play that will grant a big role for tech, and will survive without Trump. I don’t think the damage that has been done in international institutions, as well as national institutions in the US, which have been eroded from within, I don’t think that’s a reversible process. You see it with the war in Iraq: there was America, supported by European countries, intervening in other countries for reasons that actually weren’t morally justified or in line with international law. Until recently, before Trump too, there was also always the pretext that it was to fight terrorists or export democracy or, to get rid of non-existing weapons of mass destruction. And that pretext mattered. Because of that pretext, all these acts were taking place within the system of international law. The fact that Trump sort of practices what he preaches in a very ironic and paradoxical way, I think that’s the sort of final blow to a pattern that we’ve seen going on for longer.

I think that if a democratic president were to come to power, there could be a small sense of damage control. But the world, as we’ve known it since, you know, the end of World War II and the way we’re celebrating 80 years of peace and all those liberal institutions being built up, I don’t think that is something that you can reverse easily. And I think there are too many factors at play, not just Trump, but also populism, antiglobalism, far-right nationalism. Look at the government we’ve had until recently now, actually until the next three weeks probably. Look at the fact that Reform UK now looks to become the biggest party in the UK, Le Pen in France, Alice Weidel [Germany] gaining traction. And I think, previous American presidents have ignored international law or they’ve sort of cast it aside, where Trump has really demolished it. So I don’t think that can be undone. About the elections, I don’t think we can call America a liberal democratic country anymore. I’ve got colleagues in the US who don’t dare to google certain words because of their own security. There were five American senators or congressmen, I forgot, in favor of curbing Trump’s military power after the Venezuela intervention and they were pressured so much that I think three of them changed course again. You know, I wonder if there are going to be democratic elections. And the other thing is, if we get someone like Vance who’s more ideologically still than Trump, it could be worse.

I think at best we’ve got a setback of several decades. And of course with the environment that’s almost lethal because you can’t undo what you’re doing now. If you look at what’s happened to the Paris Agreement, to the United Nations, to the World Health Fund and so on, we’ve backtracked a lot on what we’ve done. So there might be a backlash in a positive sense, but that will take time and we can’t help make up for the lost time. I think we were already almost too late.

I think what we really see is the end of the rules-based order with Trump playing an altogether different game, and a game that Putin understands better than that a lot of European leaders understand. And I think the only positive thing that happened over Greenland was that Europe started talking the language of strengths with the idea of trade and Bazooka [officially: EU Anti-Coercion Instrument]. I’m afraid that speaking the language of strengths, which is the language that Trump but also Xi, and people in BRICS countries and so on, understand. That’s the language we need to speak, you know, the power of strength. And that we can combine our own morals and norms, with being realistic on how much we can impose them on others. I think that’s the best-case scenario for now.

Yes, and also you can have those norms yourself, but you can’t perhaps expect to be able to export those norms everywhere else when you have to fight for your own survival.