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NATO 3.0 Emerges Alive and Dangerous from the Ankara Summit
What was gained—and what did they refuse to admit—when the powerful military bloc held talks in Türkiye?
Jul 13, 2026
Despite its well-advertised tensions and tectonic geopolitical changes, this week’s NATO summit demonstrated that NATO has survived and is resilient. It remains committed to reinforcing US hegemony across Europe and globally. Not a lot has changed since former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote that US global dominance relies on controlling the periphery of Eurasia: NATO in the West, in Southwest Asia to the South, as well as its Asia-Pacific allies from South Korea and Japan through the Philippines and Australia. In the 21st century, military planning as well as trade is deeply integrated across these three regions.
The Summit served to reinforce what is emerging as a new bloc system for our yet to be named era. Threatened by the US and NATO, as John Mearsheimer remarked, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea each see the US as a mortal enemy. While each of these nations’ situations and ambitions are vastly different, they share an interest in fending off threats from the US. They are thus increasingly binding themselves to one another economically, militarily, and diplomatically.
There were four major dimensions to the summit: 1) NATO’s survival despite its fault lines, 2) the first day’s focus on expanding and integrating European and US military production infrastructures and weapons sales contracts. 3) The final declaration celebrated and committed to still more European military spending. And 4) support for Ukraine was manifest.
The move to what is termed NATO 3.0, with European nations assuming greater responsibilities for the European theater, reflects the United States relative decline, something which has been glaringly demonstrated in its failed war against Iran. Trump and his coterie understand that US “leadership” is only possible with NATO. Despite his rhetoric, Trump and company value NATO because it allows them to do what they want to do elsewhere, especially in the most economically dynamic part of the world: the Indo-Pacific.
The transatlantic and increasingly global NATO alliance remains strong despite its fault lines due to what the elites understand as overlapping US and European shared interests, if not values.
NATO Secretary General Rutte and his allies insulated the alliance from Trump, from his madness, his dementia, his claim that US ships have been attacked by the Islamic Republic of Japan, demands for Greenland, and his complaints that European nations didn’t deliver all that he wanted in his war on Iran. Toward that end, the summit was convened and adjourned in less than a day, and the final declaration was limited to just six paragraphs, leaving little room for debate.
In fact, although not widely reported, during the war European allies have allowed US warplanes and ships to operate from bases across the continent, and they have provided access to their facilities for repairs and refueling.
As we could read in Carnegie Europe, “…trans-Atlanticism was never only a values project. It was—and remains—a convergence of security, economic, and technological interests between two regions that together account for roughly 43 percent of global GDP and comprise the world’s most capable alliance.”
The best way to understand what transpired in Ankara may be to use the lens of transactional dealmaking among Mafia families. Trump and Colby got what they wanted: European elites signed onto NATO 3.0 with increased European military spending and preparations to militarily contain and press Russia, so that the US can focus on containing China’s ambitions and reinforcing its 21st century Indo-Pacific hegemony. Remember, this has been a US goal that began with Obama’s “pivot to Asia.”
With NATO 3.0, the US intends to gradually reduce its ostensible role in guaranteeing European security. It is worth noting that European NATO members already massively outspending Russia on their militaries. They have conventional military superiority over Russia. And with NATO 3.0 these differentials will only become greater.
In time, the US will provide only what its European allies cannot: nuclear threats and high-tech intelligence. But it is also worth noting is that Trump said nothing in Ankara about pulling more troops out of Europe. The announced 5,000 troop reduction in Germany has yet to begin, and a commitment for increased US troop rotations in Poland was made. The Hegseth-Colby campaign for major US force reductions in Europe has been slowed by the two-month review won by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In the end, Trump, and no one else, is the decision maker. Remember too that despite Trump ranting about NATO’s limited support for his war against Iran, the US would be very limited in its Southwest Asian and North African power projection without it bases still in Europe.
The West wasn’t shattered. In the transactional exchange, the US joined the dominant European narrative forged by the Baltic states and Poland about Russia and signed onto the summit’s final declaration with its commitments to support Ukraine in the war with Russia. This includes blessing Ukrainian debilitating attacks on Russian energy infrastructure deep within Russia. The declaration identified Russia as a long-term threat and reinterred the Treaty’s Article V commitment to come to the aid of any NATO member that is attacked. Ukraine won’t be joining NATO any time soon, but its advanced military technologies and warfighting experience make it an increasingly powerful adjunct to NATO.
In fact, the arms sales announced as the summit began serve as glue for the alliance’s future. Fifty billion dollars in weapons contracts were signed, with commitments made to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Palantir, Anduril, Germany’s Rheinmetall, French Airbus, Sweden’s Saab, and Turkey’s Aselsan. Even Denmark, despite Trump’s Greenland threats, will be buying US Hellfire missiles and ships to patrol the Arctic.
NATO 3.0 makes it possible for the US to reinforce its lattice-like military alliance system and its military buildup across the Indo-Pacific. Note that the RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific) naval show of force was held at the same time as the NATO summit. It includes the forces of 10 of 30 NATO nations. Almost one-third of all NATO countries sent military forces: land, air, and sea to Hawaii to participate in the RIMPAC 38-day war drills.
The summit also demonstrated Turkey’s increased role in NATO, both in relation to Southwest Asia, but also via its increased weapons production capacity for the alliance. Trump tossed Erdogan what may prove to be only a symbolic military bone with his offer to endorse the sale of F-35s to Turkey. There remain two major obstacles to those sales: Turkey’s S-400 air defense systems which were purchased from Moscow and the need for Congressional authorization for those sales.
On the subject of weapons sales, in his ostensible tilt toward Ukraine, Trump authorized the much-ballyhooed licensing for Ukraine to produce Patriot missile defense systems. This is too little too late to be meaningful. It will take at least a year to get such a complex weapons manufacturing system up and running. And Putin would certainly make these weapons facilities a primary target while they are being built. Moreover, to defend the construction of these facilities the already beleaguered Ukraine would need to divert its very limited missile and drone defenses to protect the construction, leaving the country still more vulnerable.
Reinforcing the global commitments of NATO, at a meeting on the sidelines of the summit the Japanese government called for deeper cooperation between NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners Australia, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand at a meeting on the summit sidelines. Japan, which hosts more than 100 US military bases and installations, and has its most militarist government since 1945, has a security and defense pact with the EU. In recent months, Tokyo has created or deepened strategic partnerships and weapons development agreements with countries including Britain, Germany, Italy, and Sweden.
Tokyo is in the process of doubling its military spending. It is moving to trash Article 9, the heart of its Peace Constitution. It has deployed conventional preemptive strike missiles that can reach China and North Korea. And it has declared its readiness to go to war for Taiwan.
Despite the still open wounds of Japanese conquest and colonization of Korea in the last century, the US backed Japanese-ROK alliance is the strongest it has ever been. And there is increasing discussion in South Korea about returning US nuclear weapons to the Peninsula or developing its own nuclear arsenal.
Filling out the network of Indo-Pacific alliances, the US has been deepening military ties with its former colony, the Philippines. Add to this AUKUS (Australia, Britain and the US) and the QUAD (US, Japan, Australia, and India).
Several other points are worth noting. Europe’s massive military spending increases, trending at an annual rate of 20%, have been financed by increasing debt. That can’t continue. As Stop Re/Arm Europe network warns, if this increased spending continues it can only come at the expense of essential social services. Those cuts, and the suffering they cause, will further open the way for far-right wing political gains.
In truth, we are still a long way from an operational NATO 3.0. As the French and German refusal to cooperate on development of the next jet fighter indicates, continuing divisions among the leading European powers remain very real. Issues of command and control and many other concerns will be challenging for NATO to address. And while not widely reported in the US media, US and European national security mandarins have been remarking about the failure to announce a NATO summit in 2027. The absence of a NATO summit next year may serve to prevent a new round of headlines and reports about US-NATO divisions, and it will also allow for more backroom deals.
For more than 60 years (1945 – 1980) humanity was plagued by the clash of competing block systems. The Cold War was not always cold, and on several occasions, we were confronted by the specter of nuclear annihilation.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy and his advisors believed the odds were 50-50 that the crisis would end in a thermonuclear exchange.
Computer and human errors were not uncommon. NATO’s 1983 Abel Archer military exercise sparked fears that they were under attack. That same year computer Soviet systems mistook a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds for incoming US nuclear armed missiles. Most of us are alive today because Soviet Colonel Petrov, believed it to be a false alarm, defied his standing orders, dismissed the nuclear alert, and was later reprimanded for his courageous act.
Millions, from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Greece to Mozambique died in proxy wars between the US and Soviet led blocs. As President Dwight Eisenhower warned, the US military-industrial complex threatened democratic values and practice. And trillions of dollars, rubles, francs and other currencies were wasted on weaponry at the cost of essential medical care, education, housing and more.
One definition of stupidity is doing the same thing twice but expecting different results. With the creation of a new bloc system, the expansion and upgrading of the world’s nuclear arsenals, the climate emergency’s fires and rising seas, and uncertainty over where new high-tech weaponry will lead, it appears that NATO, Russian, and many other elites failed to learn the Cold War’s existential lessons.
But there is still time. It should be obvious that the only way to end the war between Russia and Ukraine is with a dirty deal that includes a ceasefire in place, security guarantees for both Ukraine and Russia, and a commitment to negotiate the status of currently occupied territories over time. How many more Russian and Ukrainian lives should be sacrificed in the killing fields of Donbass? How long should we tolerate spiraling military spending at the sacrifice of our living standards which in turn opens the way for fascist forces on the right?
There is also the lesson of Common Security diplomacy which thankfully provided the foundation for détente and the end of the Cold War. We can take some hope from off the record Track II discussions and others among elite Europeans, Russians, and US figures that there are increasing references to building on the traditions and surviving resources of the Helsinki process and the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) to build a post-war Common Security European and transatlantic strategic architecture. Too few among us now remember that three decades ago the Cold War came to an end when NATO and Russian leaders finally came to understand that security cannot be achieved against a nation’s rival, but only through hard won win-win diplomacy that addresses the fears of all parties to a conflict.
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An Open Letter to NATO: The False Promise of Militarized Security
NATO’s leaders would do well to remember that true security is not measured in the size of an arsenal, but in the strength of the societies it claims to protect.
Jul 08, 2026
As NATO convenes once again to double down on military spending, arms production, and the logic of deterrence through superior firepower—this despite the alliance’s own members having repeatedly used force in violation of international law in recent years, in Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Libya, Syria, and the open-ended War on Terror—it is worth asking: What kind of security are we actually buying?
These interventions, often justified under the guise of humanitarianism or collective defense, have in practice destabilized entire regions, fueled insurgencies, and visited immense suffering upon some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. The result is a perverse paradox of an alliance that presents itself as the guardian of a rules-based order but has, through its own actions, undermined that very order, deepening the insecurity it claims to combat.
The record is unambiguous: Militarized security is reactive, not preventive. It treats symptoms—territorial disputes, insurgencies, great-power rivalry—while ignoring root causes such as inequality, resource scarcity, political exclusion, and the erosion of trust in institutions. The post-1945 era, for all its flaws, demonstrated that stability is not the product of arms races, but of norms, institutions, and the rule of law.
The relative peace among liberal democracies, the decline in international armed conflicts, and the gradual expansion of human rights all occurred not because states built bigger arsenals, but because they built stronger frameworks for cooperation. International organizations—including the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Labor Organization, and the International Court of Justice—have encouraged cooperation and stability, while aircraft carriers or hypersonic missiles have mainly spread terror and destruction. Yet as NATO attempts to expand its influence these very institutions of social cooperation are under attack by the same NATO member states who have cut funding and even withdrawn from the organizations in some cases.
What we require is a legal framework that serves as the foundation for a truly equitable international community—one that enforces cooperation over competition, shared development over extraction, and the rights of all people over the privileges of a few.
The opportunity cost of this militarized approach urged by NATO is staggering. The combined military expenditure of NATO members now exceeds $1.3 trillion annually according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Reports indicates this is a figure that dwarfs the estimated $40 billion needed to close the global gaps in education, healthcare, and food security.
For the price of a single nuclear-powered submarine, a nation could fund universal pre-kindergarten for its entire population for a year. For the cost of a new fighter jet squadron, it could eliminate malaria in an entire region. These are not moral abstractions; they are strategic failures.
Study after study has shown that spending on healthcare, education, and renewable energy generates far greater economic multipliers in terms of job creation and GDP growth than equivalent spending on defense. Military expenditure distorts economies, prioritizing a narrow industrial base of contractors and exporters over diversified, sustainable development. It exacerbates inequality by funneling public resources into capital-intensive sectors that benefit elites, while social services—hospitals, schools, public transit—suffer from chronic underfunding. When citizens see their tax dollars funding bombs rather than bridges, cynicism replaces civic engagement, and the very legitimacy of a country’s governance is undermined.
International law, which has been a strong impetus to cooperation in the world and which can provide fundamental rules of fairness, has been used as an instrument to promote militarization and violence in the world by the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world.
The path forward demands a radical reimagining of international law—not as it is currently wielded by powerful states to justify intervention, enforce economic dependency, or entrench global hierarchies, but as a tool for genuine equity, cooperation, and shared prosperity.
Today, international law is too often a weapon of the strong, invoked selectively to punish adversaries while ignoring the transgressions of allies. This is not the international law we need. What we require is a legal framework that serves as the foundation for a truly equitable international community—one that enforces cooperation over competition, shared development over extraction, and the rights of all people over the privileges of a few.
Such a system must prioritize binding agreements on climate change to ensure our natural environment is protected not as a luxury but as a fundamental right. A fair international legal system would mandate fair trade practices that prevent the exploitation of weaker economies, and it would guarantee economic rights—food, water, education, healthcare—as inalienable entitlements for every human being, not as charities doled out at the discretion of the wealthy. A rejuvenated international law would also hold all states, regardless of power, accountable to the same standards, ending the hypocrisy that allows some nations to flout norms with impunity while others are punished for far lesser offenses.
The argument for participatory governance is not merely moral but strategic. States that involve all their citizens in a meaningful way in the governance of their country are less likely to engage in external conflict because their leaders are accountable to electorates who bear the costs of war. But this participation must be substantive, not procedural. Holding elections means little if economic inequality allows elites to dominate policy, if media concentration distorts public discourse, or if voter suppression silences marginalized groups. True participation requires deliberative assemblies, workplace unionization, digital direct democracy, and local autonomy. When people feel ownership over their government, they are less susceptible to the siren song of populist demagogues and the xenophobic chants of nationalists.
The post-2008 austerity consensus has been a disaster for global stability. Neoliberalism’s core assumption—that unregulated competition drives progress—ignores the fact that markets produce winners and losers, and that losers, when abandoned, turn to extremism. The rise of far-right parties, the spread of extremist movements, and the surge in gang violence are all, in no insignificant part, responses to economic despair.
A global fair deal must prioritize universal basic services as human rights, not commodities. It must invest in green industrial policy to create high-wage, low-carbon jobs. It must cancel the crushing debts of the Global South and replace free trade with fair trade, ensuring that corporations cannot exploit weak regulations in developing States. And it must tax extreme wealth to fund the end of extreme poverty. These are not socialist or communist ideas; they are merely common sense policies.
Yet NATO’s current trajectory assumes that security is a zero-sum game, where one state’s gain is another’s loss. This ignores that the greatest threats of our time—climate change, pandemics, nuclear proliferation—respect no borders. Even China and the United States, despite their rivalry, have cooperated on climate accords and pandemic response when it served their interests. The Montreal Protocol succeeded because states realized ozone depletion threatened them all. Collective security, properly structured, can work. The question is not whether cooperation is possible, but whether we have the will to pursue it. NATO does not answer this challenge, but seeks to exploit it by setting people against each other in the name of militarization.
We have a choice. We can continue down the path of militarized security, where trillions are spent on weapons that guarantee mutual destruction, where inequality festers, and where the logic of competition ensures that no one is ever truly safe. Or we can invest in a future where no child goes hungry, no family lacks healthcare, and no nation lives in fear of another—a future where international law serves as an equalizer, ensuring that the rights and dignity of all people are upheld, and that our shared planet is preserved for generations to come. The former is the path of barbarism. The latter is the path of civilization.
NATO’s leaders would do well to remember that true security is not measured in the size of an arsenal, but in the strength of the societies it claims to protect—and that those societies are far weaker when their most vulnerable members are abandoned to the consequences of unchecked militarism.
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Spanish Minister Says Trump 'Is Confusing Diplomacy With Bullying' After Trade Threat
"Trump calls Spain a 'terrible partner' because it accepts neither blackmail nor threats. Because we are a sovereign, democratic country that defends multilateralism and peace."
Jul 08, 2026
US President Donald Trump's call on Wednesday to "cut off all trade with Spain" over what he said is the NATO ally's failure to pull its own weight in the alliance was shrugged off by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez as "business as usual," but a member of the leftist leader's Cabinet responded to the largely infeasible threat by declaring that her government will not succumb to bullying.
Sitting alongside NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the alliance's summit in the Turkish capital Ankara, Trump told reporters that “Spain is a wasted cause."
"We don’t want to do any trade business with Spain anymore, by the way,” the Republican president continued. “Spain is a terrible partner in NATO. They don’t participate. They don’t pay. I don’t want anything to do with Spain. Cut off all trade with Spain, please, including visits. Watch them come running back. Oh, they’ll come running back."
President Trump says he is "not happy" with NATO and demands to cut trade ties with Spain: "I don't want anything to do with Spain... cut off all trade with Spain please, including visits... watch them come running back." pic.twitter.com/3WCTAZU5mA
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 8, 2026
According to NATO's official estimates for 2025, Spain spends 2% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defense, equivalent to about $35.7 billion, the seventh-highest amount in the alliance. Five other NATO members—Belgium, Czechia, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, and Portugal—also spend 2% of their GDP on their militaries, the lowest percentage in the alliance. NATO members have agreed to meet a defense spending goal of 3.5% of GDP by 2035, while Trump has repeatedly urged alliance nations to budget 5%.
Sánchez brushed off Trump's tirade as "business as usual" while touting Spain's "excellent" trade relations with the United States and vowing to respond "with calm and patience" to the president's threat.
"When you step back a bit from these kinds of actions, what you see is that relations between the United States and Spain are very, very positive socially, culturally, economically, and politically," he said.
"Spain is a country that strives to maintain the best possible relations with all countries, especially allied countries, with whom we have very consolidated ties that have transcended the ideological orientation of the administrations that have governed Spain or the United States over the decades," Sánchez added.
Spanish Health Minister Mónica García was more blunt in her response to Trump's remarks.
"Trump calls Spain a 'terrible partner' because it accepts neither blackmail nor threats," she said on social media. "Because we are a sovereign, democratic country that defends multilateralism and peace. What's terrible is confusing diplomacy with bullying."
Experts say that while the International Emergency Economic Powers Act grants US presidents broad authority to block or limit trade with countries, they must prove that targeted nations pose an "unusual or extraordinary threat" to national or economic security, which Spain clearly does not. Furthermore, as a European Union member, any trade negotiations must be conducted via Brussels, not Madrid.
This isn't the first time that Trump has floated cutting off commercial relations with Spain. Earlier this year, he threatened a full trade embargo on Spain over its refusal to allow use of its military bases to wage the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran. Spain's rejection of Trump's call for NATO members to spend 5% of their GDPs on defense, its formal support for South Africa's Gaza genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, and its broader pro-Palestine stance have also angered the US leader.
Responding to Trump's renewed airstrikes on Iran and apparent abandonment of a frayed three-month ceasefire, Sánchez said Wednesday that "what we want is to avoid war."
"Wars are always bad news," the prime minister added, "especially for civilians, particularly children and women."
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Trump at NATO Summit: Greenland 'Should Be Controlled by the United States, Not by Denmark'
"This will not happen," Denmark's prime minister said for the umpteenth time.
Jul 07, 2026
President Donald Trump on Tuesday renewed his calls for US control of Greenland—an autonomous territory of NATO member Denmark—in remarks delivered at the Atlantic alliance's summit in Türkiye.
Greenland "doesn't help Denmark," Trump told reporters in Ankara. "Denmark doesn't really spend money to help Greenland. But it's an important part for the United States."
Trump falsely claimed that the Arctic island "is surrounded by China ships and Russian ships" and "should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark."
"With all the money we spend to help [Europe] with Russia, we don't have to spend any money, we can remove all of our soldiers out of Europe," he said.
"Because as you probably noticed, Europe's a very different place than it was 20 years ago... and they better be careful with immigration and energy; if they're not careful with those two things, you're not gonna have a Europe anymore," Trump added.
Hours later, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at the Ankara summit that she expected allies to respect her country's sovereignty and understand that Greenland is not for sale.
"I have heard what the American president has said," Frederiksen told Danish media. "It is a well-known position of the United States that it wishes to own and acquire Greenland. And I hope that it will continue to be, as always, a well-known position of the kabingdom of Denmark that this will not happen."
Trump has publicly floated acquiring Greenland since his first term, when he even reportedly mulled swapping the island for the hurricane-ravaged US territory of Puerto Rico. The president renewed talk of gaining control of Greenland "whether they like it or not" after returning to the White House last year, while threatening allies who opposed his plans with additional punitive tariffs amid his roller-coaster global trade war.
Greenlanders, Danes, NATO allies, and much of the world were alarmed by Trump's threats to take Greenland by any means necessary—including armed invasion—which came amid a surge in "Donroe Doctrine" militarism.
Trump ordered dubious airstrikes on boats his administration claimed without evidence were transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, as well as the brief invasion of Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro on what critics called trumped-up narcoterrorism charges. The self-proclaimed "peace president" also threatened to retake the Panama Canal, launch armed attacks on Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico, and make Canada the "51st state."
Leaders of the European Union and NATO nations warned that any US attack on Greenland would effectively mean the end of the Atlantic alliance.
Only a handful of Greenland's 57,000 inhabitants want to join the United States. More than 8 in 10 favor independence amid often strained relations with Denmark and the legacy of a colonial history rife with abuses. Greenlanders enjoy a Nordic-style social welfare system that features universal healthcare; free higher education; and income, family, and employment benefits and protections that Americans lack.
In the United States, only 17% of those surveyed in a January Reuters/Ipsos poll said they favored acquiring Greenland by any means, and just 4% said it would be a "good idea" for Trump to seize the island by force.
Trump also said Tuesday that he "was very disappointed with NATO."
"We weren’t treated well because we did something in Iran," he said, referring to the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on the Mideast nation. "We don’t need anybody’s help, but before I asked they said they wouldn’t be there."
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Report Details How Climate Crisis Fuels Crop Failure Risk in Global Breadbaskets
"As globally important food-producing regions face growing risks of climate-driven disruption, the effects can ripple through livelihoods, supply chains, food assistance systems, and geopolitical relationships."
Jun 09, 2026
The climate emergency is sharply increasing the risk of crop failure in regions that produce an outsized share of the world's staple food grains, according to a report published Tuesday that warns of "serious threats to Europe, the NATO alliance, and global stability" if cooperative resilience initiatives and other mitigation strategies aren't pursued.
The report, "Global Breadbaskets: Food System Resilience as a Strategic Imperative," was published by the Center for Climate and Security—part of the Council on Strategic Risks, a Washington, DC-based security policy think tank—and the Woodwell Climate Research Center, an independent nonprofit located in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
"Geopolitical fragmentation, conflict, extreme weather, and global aid cuts already strain food security. Meanwhile, climate change is increasing the likelihood of crop failures in the American, European, and Asian breadbaskets, which produce most of the staple crops underpinning global food security," the report states.
🆕 Across India, France, and Germany, in the next decade and a half, the odds of key crops failing are set to increase by between two- and six-fold. This isn't just a food story. It's also a #NATO security story.
[image or embed]
— Council on Strategic Risks (@councilonstrategicrisks.org) June 9, 2026 at 12:13 AM
The publication follows an April report from a pair of United Nations agencies on how extreme heat is impacting food production and food security around the planet. The new report includes a storymap that explores climate change-driven threats to wheat, rice, and maize (corn) crops in France, Germany, and India—three of the world's "global breadbaskets."
The analysis' authors note that compared with 2010 threat levels, by 2040, "the risk of a given year’s crop failing is projected to grow roughly twofold for Indian wheat and German maize, roughly threefold for French wheat, roughly fourfold for French maize, and roughly sixfold for Indian rice, with sharp increases in critical producing regions."
Climate-driven extreme heat "not only threatens crops, but also the laborers and infrastructure that translate them into food security," the report continues. "Extreme heat is projected to reduce the suitability of 15-40% of India’s rain-fed rice-growing regions by 2050, and to reduce physical work capacity during the average growing season to as little as 40% of 2000-era levels by 2100."
"By 2040, southwestern France will average up to 16 additional days per year above 35°C (95°F), exceeding thresholds that reduce yields, impact grain quality, and cause heat stroke," the paper warns. "Extreme heat also threatens to damage or disable road and rail networks critical to food transportation, agricultural machinery, civil defense, and military mobilization."
The publication also states that global breadbasket failures in Europe "could open rifts for Russian meddling, fuel instability in key partners, and elevate food production as a geopolitical lever."
The Council on Strategic Risks operates within the transatlantic security policy community, whose work often overlaps with NATO's interests.
“We have plenty of examples of how crop failures can contribute to political instability, from the French Revolution to the Arab Spring," Center for Climate and Security deputy director and report lead author Tom Ellison said Tuesday in a statement. "In today’s environment, global breadbasket failures could strain NATO priorities, prompt unrest in key countries, and upend trade relationships."
Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist and report co-author Alexandra Naegele warned that “climate change doesn't just threaten crop yields and grain quality—it destabilizes entire food systems, from labor and livestock to food storage and transport."
"Quantifying these climate-driven risks is an essential step toward building resilient food systems and safeguarding global food security," she added.
The report recommends steps countries—specifically members of the European Union and NATO—can take to mitigate risks to food security, including strengthening cooperative resilience, anticipating instability and hybrid warfare, supporting strategic and vulnerable partners, coordinating trade responses, and investing in agricultural research and development.
"Amid climate change, geopolitical uncertainty, food shocks from the war in Iran, and Russian hybrid warfare, investing in a resilient food system isn’t in competition with security—it’s a key part of it," Ellison stressed.
Monica Caparas, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and report co-author, said, "Understanding and preparing for breadbasket failures is both a national security priority and a humanitarian imperative—one that can help protect lives, reduce instability, and strengthen food resilience before a regional shock becomes a wider crisis."
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‘Makes No Sense’: NATO Allies Bash Trump’s Strait of Hormuz Blockade as Oil Rises Above $100 a Barrel
"It’s one more episode in this whole downward spiral into which we’ve been dragged,” said Spain's foreign minister.
Apr 13, 2026
Contrary to President Donald Trump's claim that "other countries will be involved" in imposing a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz after ceasefire talks ended over the weekend without a deal with Iran, North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries on Monday made clear they did not plan to join Trump's effort as the news of the blockade sent global oil prices skyrocketing once again.
“We are not supporting the blockade," British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the BBC Monday before the closure began at 10:00 am Eastern time. “It is in my view vital that we get the strait open and fully open, and that’s where we’ve put all of our efforts in the last few weeks, and we’ll continue to do so."
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called for the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened through diplomatic means, while Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles told Al Jazeera that Trump's decision to block ships “entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas" in the strait "makes no sense."
"It’s one more episode in this whole downward spiral into which we’ve been dragged,” said Robles, who along with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has vehemently condemned the US and Israel's decision to go to war with Iran and has refused to involve Spain's military assets in the conflict.
Starmer called the closure of the strait "deeply damaging" and said that this week the UK and France will convene a summit "to advance work on a coordinated, independent, multinational plan to safeguard international shipping when the conflict ends."
US Central Command said Monday that US forces “will not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports," appearing to step back from Trump's original Sunday statement, which he reiterated Monday on Fox News, that he would impose a "complete blockade" on the key trade waterway.
The news of the blockade came after Iranian negotiators accused Vice President JD Vance of acting in bad faith in the high-level ceasefire talks and Vance claimed Iran would not comply with US demands regarding nuclear development.
The two-week ceasefire deal that was announced last Tuesday—just before a deadline Trump had imposed, saying the US would obliterate Iran's "whole civilization" unless the government struck a deal—sent oil and gas prices tumbling blow $100 per barrel, but prices rose again after Trump's new threat of a blockade.
Brent crude prices were at $102.52 per barrel on Monday, a 7.7% increase, while US crude also rose nearly 8% to $104.02. The UK's wholesale gas contract for the month of May rose by 11.7%.
About 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies passed through the Strait of Hormuz before Iran effectively closed the waterway after the US and Israel began the war, as well as major shipments of fertilizer.
Priyanka Sachdeva, a senior market analyst at the broker Phillip Nova, told The Guardian that "the market reaction" to Trump's threat "underscores a simple but powerful reality: Hormuz risk is not theoretical; it is structural, and it is real.”
“In today’s environment, every barrel of risk added to oil markets carries an inflation price tag for the global economy," Sachdeva said.
Trump's threat of a blockade included any ship that has paid Iran a toll to pass through the strait since the Middle Eastern country began its blockade, with the president accusing Iran of "extortion."
At Responsible Statecraft, Kelley Beaucar Vlahos wrote on Sunday that under Trump's threat, the US is now planning to block "major allies."
"The Philippines is a treaty ally and gets 98% of its energy resources through the strait," Vlahos wrote. "A Japanese vessel carrying liquefied natural gas reportedly passed through the strait two weeks ago."
Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said the US blockade "is another step toward a might-makes-right world."
"Illegalities are being heaped on top of illegalities. The attack on Iran that started this war was compounded by Tehran's seizure of the Strait of Hormuz. Washington's blockade of the strait has further upped the ante," said Shidore.
An adviser to Iranian Supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei said that Iran has "large, untouched levels" to fight back against a US blockade, while Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, said that Americans will soon "be nostaligic for $4-$5 gas."
At The Conversation, international law professor Donald Rothwell of Australian National University wrote that Trump's blockade would "certainly" imperil the fragile temporary ceasefire while roiling international markets.
"In purely legal terms, if the US imposes a blockade then the ceasefire is over and hostilities have resumed," wrote Rothwell.
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After Tantrum at NATO, Trump Reportedly Pushes Allies to Draw Up Plans to Fix His Iran Mess
Trump has shown he "is utterly helpless to fix the disaster he personally caused," and is now "trying to blame others for his own incompetence," said one critic.
Apr 09, 2026
Hours after President Donald Trump pitched an angry tantrum at US allies, he reportedly demanded that they draw up plans to help fix the geopolitical and economic disaster he caused by launching his illegal war with Iran.
In a Wednesday night social media post, Trump posted an all-caps tirade against members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) who refused to commit forces to fight in a war he started without their approval or even consultation.
"NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN," Trump wrote. "REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!"
As Trump was attacking longtime allies, he was simultaneously demanding their help.
According to a Thursday report from Bloomberg, the US has been seeking "specific commitments from European allies on their pledge to help secure the Strait of Hormuz after the fighting in Iran stops," going so far as to request that they "present concrete plans to ensure navigation through the waterway within days."
Trump last month tried strong-arming allies into sending their navies into the strait to help secure safe passage of commercial vessels, but all of them refused.
Even as Trump is berating allies, he still hasn't achieved the primary goal of the ceasefire he announced on Tuesday: The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has kept shut down since the start of the war more than a month ago.
As Bloomberg reported on Thursday, ship traffic through the strait has "remained blocked," being "limited to a handful of Iran-linked ships, another sign that a fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran has yet to improve flows through the world’s key energy chokepoint."
As the strait has remained shut, the price of Brent crude petroleum futures, which initially crashed upon news of the ceasefire deal, have been slowly climbing back up to the $100 mark.
Given Trump's failure to achieve even the most basic tenet of his own ceasefire deal, many critics questioned why US allies should commit to helping him clean up his own disaster.
Dominic Waghorn, international affairs editor at Sky News, noted that "neither a military escort nor military force can reopen the Strait short of a full scale occupation of southern Iran and even then insurgents could keep it closed with the threat of action."
Journalist Marcy Wheeler observed that Trump's demands show he "is utterly helpless to fix the disaster he personally caused," and is now "trying to blame others for his own incompetence."
Economist Dean Baker encouraged US allies to remain completely defiant of the president.
"The European countries should specifically commit to pay the toll Iran is requesting," Baker wrote.
HuffPost White House correspondent SV Dáte summarized Trump's geopolitical strategy as follows: "I broke it, someone else can fix it."
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To Stop US Wars, Saying No Is Not Enough
The US left needs a foreign policy platform that projects a positive global role for the US and can gain enough popular support to catalyze a deeper resistance to Trump 2.0 and then shape the policy of a post-MAGA government.
Apr 09, 2026
The US-Israeli attack on Iran put an exclamation point on the Gaza genocide. It sent a message to the world from the regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv: We will do anything that our military strength allows us to do. There are no rules or international laws we are bound to respect.
Most European governments, many regimes elsewhere, and major sections of the Democratic Party leadership offer only a few “process objections” to this level of ruthlessness but go with the flow.
This is a road to global catastrophe. Despite the fragile (and welcome) ceasefire, It is accelerating a process that was already underway where every government in the world is deciding that their overriding priority must be increasing their military strength. And that security requires cracking down on opposition movements within their own countries as well.
An Interconnected World
To halt and reverse this course, it is essential but not sufficient to build mass opposition to the war on Iran and all the other evils perpetrated by Washington, The US left also needs a foreign policy platform that projects a positive global role for the US and can gain enough popular support to catalyze a deeper resistance to Trump 2.0 and then shape the policy of a post-MAGA government.
In today’s world, there will be security for no one unless there is security for all.
That vision starts with the reality of an interconnected world where humanity’s very survival is in doubt. Viruses and the fallout from nuclear explosions know no borders. An interruption of supply chains in the Middle East threatens food security across the globe. Destruction in the Amazon Basin wreaks havoc on the climate worldwide.
In today’s world, there will be security for no one unless there is security for all. Weaving the fight for human survival together with peoples’ struggles for self-determination and against all forms of oppression, and with the fight for working class power, workers fighting for their rights, is a complex task. Yet in a world where diplomacy and inter-state cooperation predominate, movements for democracy and social justice have more favorable conditions to achieve their goals.
Without softening our critique of the US-dominated world order that is passing away, developing a forward-looking platform entails assessing the heightened dangers faced under Trump 2.0. It means breaking down the largely artificial division between domestic and foreign policies. When militarism, racism, and misogyny is practiced abroad, these pathologies inevitably come home.
Competing Visions as the Old Order Collapses
Today this quote from Antonio Gramsci is popular throughout the Left: “The old order is dying, and the new one is struggling to be born.” The different factions of the oligarchy are rushing into this “interregnum” to shape what comes next.
MAGA-Trump 2.0 argues that considering values like democracy or human rights when formulating policy is naïve if not treasonous, and that multilateral institutions are simply shackles on US power. It sees staying No. 1 in global “lethality” as the road to safety and prosperity for the “heritage Americans” who will dominate the country after removing or subordinating the various “others” who now live here.
The anti-MAGA wing of the US elite insists that the “rules-based” world order of the last 80 years produced a great American way of life. A few “mistakes” (Vietnam, Iraq) just need to be corrected to get back on the right track. Their program is to preserve NATO and other Cold War-era alliances; keep China at bay; and use “soft power,” sanctions, and “smart wars” to remain the world’s dominant power.
The left has trenchant critiques of the racism and exploitation inherent in both variants of Washington’s imperial project. But we won’t win popular support if we don’t go beyond critique to offer a positive vision of what the world can look like if we are shaping US policy.
Global Cooperation vs. American Exceptionalism
That vision has to address the hopes, fears, and pressing needs of the majority of US people. It has to be compelling enough to counter the American exceptionalist ideology that permeates US culture. Resting on the longstanding position of the US as the hegemonic global power and promoted unceasingly by the political class and mainstream media, the idea that the US is an inherently virtuous nation which always acts as the world’s “good guy” has long defined US “common sense.”
Anti-war and solidarity movements targeting Washington’s role in Vietnam, South Africa, Central America, Iraq, and Palestine have spotlighted the destructive role the US has played in each case. At times, energetic social movements have built mass support for arms control agreements and aggressive steps to fight climate change. But we have yet to win a durable majority to a structural critique of imperial behavior and support for an alternative world order where all countries are on equal footing, conflicts are resolved via diplomacy, and a transition away from fossil fuels is a worldwide priority.
The left has always stressed the common interest of the global majority in fighting imperial exploitation. But in a period when the most dangerous threats to human life—climate change, nuclear war, global pandemics, obscene degrees of inequality—can only be addressed by joint action by all countries, the arguments against American exceptionalism and the way it makes US national sovereignty absolute become stronger and more urgent.
This is a framework that draws on the insight of Albert Einstein at the beginning of the nuclear age (“Everything has changed except our thinking”). It embraces the outlook of the United Nations Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which expressed the most advanced thinking in the coalition that defeated fascism in World War II.
Amid a continuing genocide in Gaza and seeing the disaster of the war on Iran, the numbers of people saying “stop” to the guardians of empire is growing by the day. Fanning those flames of opposition and offering these millions a vision to fight for is the combination needed to accumulate the political power to transform the US role in the world.
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Let's Be Very Clear: Trump's Iran War Is Making You Poorer
In addition to reducing our security and jeopardizing the well-being of people around the world, his belligerence will cost us a huge amount of money. But at least he and his friends will get even richer.
Apr 02, 2026
Our Secretary of Defense (or War) Pete Hegseth seems to be having a really great time killing people in Iran, but his live action video games come at a big cost, not just in lives, but in budget dollars. To be clear, the main reason to be opposed to this pointless war is its impact on the people of Iran and elsewhere in the region. But it also has a huge economic cost that is seriously underappreciated.
The short-term cost is the shortage of oil, natural gas, fertilizers, and other items that would ordinarily travel through the Straits of Hormuz. This shortage has already sent prices of many items soaring. The impact is not just on the goods themselves, but there is a large secondary impact due to higher shipping costs, and if fertilizer supplies are not resumed soon, higher food prices, due to lower crop yields. This is a big hit to people in wealthy countries, but it is life-threatening to people living on the edge in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
But in addition to the short-term cost, there is also a longer-term cost insofar as we are making new enemies and therefore will have higher bills for military spending long into the future. We already got the first taste of this as the Trump administration floated the idea of a $200 billion special appropriation to cover the cost of the war.
The Military Is Really Big Bucks
There is remarkably little appreciation of how much money is at stake with wars and the military. This is because the media have a deliberate policy of uninformative budget reporting. They just write huge numbers in the millions or billions, knowing they are completely meaningless to almost everyone who sees them.
Trump seems determined to raise military spending even further. He has said he wants the country to spend 5% of GDP, or $1.5 trillion a year, on the military. This comes to $12,000 per household. That’s real money.
It would be virtually costless to provide some context for these numbers, for example, expressing them as a percentage of the budget. That would take any competent reporter 10 seconds and add maybe 10 words to a news article. This would tell you that the $200 billion (2.7% of the budget) Trump wants for his Iran war is a relatively big deal, while the $550 million (0.008% of the budget) Trump saved us by defunding public broadcasting was not.
It is striking to see that Congress might be willing to quickly cough up this money when it has refused far smaller sums that could have made a huge difference in the lives of tens of millions of people. For example, the extension of the Covid-19 relief enhancement of the Earned Income Tax Credit would have cost around $40 billion (0.6% of the budget) annually. Extending the more generous Obamacare subsidies would have cost $27 billion (0.4% of the budget) annually.
And it is important to remember that these increased costs are not likely to be just a one-year expenditure. The military budget was 3.0% of GDP in 2001, before the war in Afghanistan, and projected to fall to 2.7% over the next several years. Instead, we got the Afghan War followed by the invasion of Iraq. By 2010, spending was up to 4.6% of GDP. The difference between actual and projected spending comes to almost 2.0% of GDP, or more than $600 billion annually in today’s economy.
The Peace Dividend
In contrast to the Trump administration’s efforts to seek enemies, in the 1980s and 1990s, the United States looked to diffuse tensions with the Soviet Union and saved a huge amount of money on military spending as a result. Military spending hit a post-Vietnam War peak of 6.1% of GDP in 1986. It then fell sharply as Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush I negotiated arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. It was down to 4.7% of GDP in fiscal 1992, when the Soviet Union collapsed. It continued to fall through the 1990s, when the United States faced no major enemies.
At that point, Russia was actually a limited ally. There were many people in the foreign policy establishment who wanted to keep it that way, looking to accommodate post-Soviet Russia in a post-Cold War world.
Instead, we took the direction of expanding NATO eastward, incorporating the former East Bloc countries into NATO, starting with Hungary. Eventually, all the former East Bloc countries were added to NATO, and then former Soviet republics such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were added. In 2008, President George W. Bush pushed for the addition of Ukraine and Georgia as well.
It is worth noting that it was not pre-ordained that NATO would be expanded eastward. NATO was formed as an anti-Soviet alliance. With the Soviet Union out of business, it was reasonable to think that NATO would be disbanded.
This was not just the dream of fringe peaceniks; many fully credentialled cold warriors also argued against expanding NATO eastward. This list includes Jack Matlock and Richard Pipes, both of whom held high-level positions under Reagan. It also included George Kennan, the godfather of the Cold War doctrine of containment. Even Henry Kissinger opposed including Ukraine in NATO.
It’s not clear whether Russia would have developed into a hostile state and potential enemy if NATO had not continued to exist and expand Eastward. We can all share our speculations on that counterfactual, but one thing that is not debatable is that having a major enemy is costly.
The Iran Nuclear Deal and Trump’s War
President Barack Obama negotiated an agreement to restrain Iran from developing nuclear weapons in 2015. While there were issued raised with the monitoring of the deal, rather than trying to work through these problems, Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018. That decision, along with President Joe Biden’s failure to restore the agreement, created the conditions under which a second Trump administration could be pushed by Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu into this war. The war has already proved incredibly costly for the country and the world, and the costs could well go far higher.
But apart from this war, Trump seems determined to raise military spending even further. He has said he wants the country to spend 5% of GDP, or $1.5 trillion a year, on the military. This comes to $12,000 per household. That’s real money.
That is a lot of money to spend for no obvious reason. It means less money for healthcare, childcare, education, and many other items that people care about.
If the point is to put taxpayer dollars into the pockets of his family and friends, it can work out just fine. Until there is evidence otherwise, we should assume this is Trump’s real agenda for his big military budget.
The question people should be asking is who is this spending supposed to defend us against? Perhaps Trump has Russia in mind, but he is supposed to be good buddies with its President Vladimir Putin. Besides, Russia’s GDP is less than a quarter the size of the US economy. Do we really need to spend an amount that is more than 20% of Russia’s GDP to protect us against them? Can our military be that inefficient and corrupt?
Maybe Trump is thinking of China. That would be a problem, since China’s economy is already one-third larger than ours and growing far more rapidly. If Trump’s plan is to have a New Cold War with China, that is one we are likely to lose, especially since he just told all our allies to go to hell.
As with the Iran War, Trump’s push towards a newly militarized economy does not seem well-considered. Or at least it doesn’t seem well-considered as a defense strategy. If the point is to put taxpayer dollars into the pockets of his family and friends, it can work out just fine. Until there is evidence otherwise, we should assume this is Trump’s real agenda for his big military budget.
In addition to reducing our security and jeopardizing the well-being of people around the world, Donald Trump’s belligerence will cost us a huge amount of money. But at least his family and friends will get even richer. Who knows, maybe he will even get the Nobel Peace Prize this year.
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Will Trump's Idiotic Iran War Spell the End of NATO?
Trump launched the US attack on Iran without any consultation at all with NATO allies, and on the basis of incoherent and transparently false justifications. With real geopolitical and economic impacts, who would want to be in an alliance with a nation that does this?
Apr 02, 2026
In the view of General de Gaulle, “Treaties are like young girls and roses; they last while they last.” By that standard, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization seems to be wilting pretty fast. The Israeli-US war on Iran has opened up (or revealed) divisions that may prove fatal.
This week, in the first call of its kind from the European right, Tino Chrupalla, federal spokesman of Germany’s Alternative For Germany (AFD) party, declared, “Let’s begin to put into practice what our party manifesto says: the withdrawal of all US troops from Germany.” He said that Germany cannot call itself a truly sovereign country while it hosts foreign bases over which it has no real control.
Chrupalla praised the Spanish government’s action in closing US bases and Spanish airspace to participation in the Iran War: “Ships under the Spanish flag are allowed to pass the Strait [of Hormuz]. Why are the Spaniards allowed to cross? Because Spain has closed its bases for the Iran war. And that is totally right.”
This is an obvious riposte to President Trump’s latest remark that “countries like the United Kingdom”, that refused to get involved in the Iran War” should “Go get your own oil.” Iran has in fact allowed ships with oil destined for neutral countries to pass the Strait of Hormuz.
Understandably however, Tehran does not consider European countries that host bases from which the US is attacking Iran to be truly “neutral.” If the war continues and energy shortages in Europe worsen, calls for other European countries to follow Spain are bound to intensify. The fate of the Gulf Arab states in this war has underlined the risks of hosting foreign military forces that you do not control.
The longer the Iran war goes on, the greater will be the pressure in Europe to cut a deal with Iran — especially if European establishments have come to believe that the NATO guarantee of US military protection no longer holds.
France and Italy are indeed beginning to head in this direction. Italy has denied permission for US planes headed to the war to refuel in Italy. France has closed its airspace to US flights linked to the war. Trump’s response has been predictably furious, posting that “The US will remember” France’s lack of help, and warning Britain and France that, “You’ll have to learn how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.”
This is despite the fact that Britain has allowed the US to use its bases for strikes on Iran — officially, only ones “defending” the Strait of Hormuz, but who is checking?
In a more measured but therefore perhaps even more menacing way, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said, “If NATO is just about us defending Europe if they’re attacked but then denying us basing rights when we need them, that’s not a very good arrangement. That’s a hard one to stay engaged in and say this is good for the United States. So all of that is going to have to be reexamined.”
NATO has of course been through crises before. President Eisenhower brought the Anglo-French seizure of Suez in 1956 to an end through economic pressure. President Johnson was furious with the British refusal to send troops to Vietnam. The US strongly opposed the creation of the network of gas pipelines from Siberia to Europe in the 1970s. France and Germany attracted great anger from the Bush administration by refusing to take part in the attack on Iraq in 2003.
This crisis does however look significantly worse. Apart from Suez (where it was the US that brought the war to an end) none of these cases touched on the vital interests of Europe or the US On the US side, Washington was well aware that European participation in the wars in Vietnam and Iraq would in any case have been almost entirely symbolic. By contrast, a united European move to close airspace to US flights would critically undermine the US campaign against Iran.
On the European side, none of the previous clashes with the US had direct and obvious consequences for European economies and political systems. The Iran War risks creating an economic depression leading in turn to increased radicalization and polarization in Europe.
Finally, in the case of the Iraq War there was at least a facade of consultation and reasoned justification by the Bush administration. The Trump administration launched the attack on Iran without any consultation at all with NATO allies, and on the basis of justifications that are both incoherent and transparently false.
In their refusal to participate in the Iran War, West European governments have solid support from their own populations, where large majorities in every country oppose the Israeli-US campaign. European public opposition to the war has been greatly increased by Trump’s deep personal unpopularity in Europe, and his crude insults against European countries. This has been a key factor in shifting right-wing populist movements like AfD into distance from or opposition to the war.
As self-styled patriotic movements, they cannot be seen to be siding with attacks on their nations. In the case of Britain, the most instinctively pro-US of all the NATO countries, Trump caused outrage by his insults to the British armed forces, and forced even the opposition parties to come to the defense of Prime Minister Keir Starmer when Trump insulted him personally. Almost 60% of British respondents to a poll oppose the US using British bases for the war.
In the background to these European responses also lies the growing unpopularity of Israel in European populations, and especially in the younger generation. Even before the attack on Iran, Israeli atrocities in Gaza had led 63-70% percent of European respondents to take an unfavorable view of Israel. Significantly for the future of European policy, these figures are considerably higher in the younger generation.
One massive barrier to European distancing from Washington has been the Ukraine War, European fears of an attack by Russia, and consequent desire for continued US military support. However, as both Russian interests and the grindingly slow and appallingly costly progress of the Russian ground war against Ukraine both indicate, this alleged Russian threat is both completely hypothetical and grossly exaggerated; whereas the threat of the Iran War to European economies is all too real and imminent.
The longer the Iran war goes on, the greater will be the pressure in Europe to cut a deal with Iran — especially if European establishments have come to believe that the NATO guarantee of US military protection no longer holds.
Lastly, there is the question of what Trump does after the Iran War. It has been suggested — let us hope wrongly — that one way in which he could distract attention from failure in Iran, and gain some compensation for it, might be by seizing Greenland. This would end NATO, for no alliance can survive an open attack by its leading member on another one; and after all, Russia has not claimed a single inch of NATO territory.
If the US no longer defends and instead attacks Europe, and Europe no longer acts as an airstrip for US force projection elsewhere in the world, then the basic rationales for NATO’s existence will have vanished.
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