NATO is unravelling as shared interests and trust with the United States collapse. For Australia, this raises urgent questions about the future value of ANZUS and related security arrangements.

Alliances are built on shared interests and trust. When interests are no longer shared, alliances wither. A breach of trust is fatal.

On both counts, NATO is in its death throes. America no longer shares Europe’s interest in its defence and security against Russia, while US President Donald Trump’s threat to annex Greenland has smashed trust.

We have seen this before. The ink had scarcely dried on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact before Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. The Pact was an exercise in duplicity and mala fides by both parties, as Germany sought a free hand in western Europe and Stalin sought something similar in eastern Europe.

NATO, however, was different. The nuclear age and the Cold War confronted western Europe and north America with the threat of military domination. Collective security in the face of possible nuclear blackmail represented a shared interest, where a treaty among the affected parties offered the best response to nuclear aggression by imposing disproportionate costs on the Soviet Union.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was viewed opportunistically by the US and a number of other NATO partners. Shared strategic interests and trust in the durability, efficacy and reliability of the Truman Doctrine had kept NATO together – sort of. But it began to expand rapidly as newly democratic former members of the Warsaw Pact sought security from their former occupier. Its expansion attenuated the focus of the original partnership as its interests became less convergent.

NATO’s evolving relevance was evidenced by its steady growth from 11 members in 1949 to 32 in 2024. But its........

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