In early 2026, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by the US, since long regarded as the cornerstone of Western collective security, finds itself under an unusual form of pressure. This strain is not the result of battlefield defeat or strategic overstretch, but of political turbulence emanating from within its most powerful member: the United States. President Donald Trump’s return to office has reintroduced a familiar but intensified challenge to the alliance—one defined less by formal withdrawal than by rhetoric, symbolism, and transactional recalibration.

Trump’s public statements and policy decisions over the past year and the year beginning 2026 have generated confusion, unease, and strategic reassessment across NATO capitals. While Washington remains militarily indispensable to the alliance, confidence in the predictability and unconditionality of U.S. commitment has eroded. The result is an alliance that continues to function operationally yet increasingly questions the assumptions that have underpinned their cohesion for over seven decades.

President Trump frequently insists that NATO cannot be “Very Strong” without the United States—a statement that is factually accurate and rhetorically reassuring on the surface. The U.S. remains NATO’s largest defense spender, its most capable military actor, and the primary guarantor of nuclear and conventional deterrence. 

This logic has been translated into concrete policy shifts. In late 2025, the Pentagon announced plans to reduce U.S. participation in nearly 30 NATO advisory groups and associated command structures, affecting approximately 200 U.S. positions across Europe. Rather than recalling personnel outright, the U.S. intends to phase out roles without replacement—a bureaucratic adjustment with outsized symbolic impact.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the EU should not bend to “The law of the strongest,” while Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever said the bloc was “at a crossroads” where it must decide on how to get out of a “very bad position” after trying to appease Trump. Even European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen highlighted the “geopolitical shocks” and “a dangerous downward spiral.”

One of the most visible flashpoints in this evolving transatlantic dynamic has emerged not in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, but in the Arctic. Trump’s renewed push to “Acquire” Greenland—a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark and thus........

© Eurasia Review