Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The European counter-proposal to the original Trump “peace plan” for Ukraine has proposed changing point 5 from reading, super-vaguely, “US guarantee” to reading “US guarantee that mirrors Article 5.”

It is difficult to understand why NATO member states believe that the value of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty justifies the enormous costs of NATO membership, both financial (now 5% of GNP!) and in terms of being dragged into conflicts against countries disliked by Israel, and hence by the United States, which pose no conceivable threat to any NATO member state.

Indeed, it is difficult to understand how anyone (NATO member states, Ukraine or Russia) who has actually read Article 5 could believe that it “guarantees” anything.

The text of Article 5 reads:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they........

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