President Trump has said he is reconsidering the US’s position in NATO, because NATO has failed to back his war on Iran – a war in which serious violations of international law have been committed by the US, Israel and Iran. NATO backing for Trump’s war on Iran was never really on the cards, because NATO is a defensive alliance based on at least lip-service to international law. Trump does not understand this because he does not think in terms of formal structures and agreements. He sees relations between nations as emerging from a mix of armed force, personal chemistry between strong leaders, and diktats to client states. Trump’s allies in NATO have had to live with this as best they can, in the hope of keeping the US on their side against Russia, and even, in the case of Canada and Denmark, in the hope of fending off Trump’s ambitions to acquire their territory.

The Iran war has pushed to breaking point the uneasy compromise between Trump and his allies – who in the latter case broadly subscribe to the rules-based international order, whereas Trump does not. In Article 1 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the US and its allies pledge to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. Article 5 provides that an armed attack against one or more NATO allies in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all. They agree that if such an attack occurs, each of them will come to the aid of those attacked by taking such action as they deem necessary, including the use of armed force. While the Treaty refers to an armed attack, it does not mean that allies must wait to be attacked, as under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter pre-emptive measures of self-defence may be taken if an attack is sufficiently imminent.

A number of NATO allies have been willing to give a wide scope to the notion of an “imminent” armed attack. Most members of the EU, all of them NATO members, and including France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, accepted that self-defence could be stretched to........

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