Vladimir Putin could exploit Donald Trump’s threat to quit Nato by trying to provoke a “crisis or conflict” elsewhere in Europe, senior security officials believe.
Diplomats from European Nato members told The i Paper that relations with the US need to be urgently repaired to stop Russia taking advantage.
Otherwise, they fear Putin will try to “escalate” hybrid warfare tactics and gain more “leverage” over the final outcome in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Trump said he was considering pulling out of Nato and criticised the alliance as a “paper tiger”.
The US President is furious at what he sees as the alliance’s failure to help in his war against Iran, which has sparked a global economic crisis.
Atlantic rupture ‘plays into the hands of Putin’
His comments have alarmed other members of the Nato alliance, which remains highly dependent on America’s military might.
Responding to Trump’s remarks, a senior diplomat from a European Nato country told The i Paper: “It just emphasises once more the need to do more by everybody to preserve the transatlantic relationship and alliance.”
The president’s words have amplified existing concerns that the fallout from Trump’s attack on Iran – in which Nato members including the UK initially refused to give America access to their bases – is driving a wedge between the US and Europe.
“Of course it plays into the hands of Putin,” they said. “He can fetch his popcorn and watch America deal with the mistake [it has made and] divisions becoming more visible between the US and Europeans.”
Given Trump’s plummeting approval ratings in the US and widespread expectations that the Democrats will triumph in November’s mid-term elections, the diplomat said that Putin might conclude that he has a short “window of opportunity” which will close if a more Russo-sceptic, pro-Nato president is elected in 2028.
They suggested that Putin might try to generate “some kind of crisis or conflict” elsewhere in Europe to “try to create leverage” to end Russia’s war with Ukraine on the Kremlin’s terms.
A second European diplomat said that while Putin probably did not have sufficient forces to launch a direct military assault on a Nato country because of the number of Russian troops bogged down in Ukraine, “there is room for other types of escalation”.
They said that Russia could employ hybrid-warfare tactics, with many countries in Europe already being bombarded with “constant cyber-attacks, constant disinformation”. “It’s not peacetime we live in,” they said.
A third diplomat from a Nato country, speaking before Trump’s latest comments, said it would be dangerous for Europe if the president ended up scapegoating the alliance for any US failure in Iran.
Trump’s ‘mismatch between words and deeds’
They said it remained “difficult to tell” whether he would follow through on threats about pulling support for Nato.
“Despite everything that he has publicly said during the first term or now about Nato and Europe, when it comes to the military side of Nato – what really matters, where are the forces and things like that – he has been very good,” they said.
“There is a mismatch between words and deeds… I’m not looking so much at words, but where are the units, where are the military capabilities.”
Asked about Trump’s comments on Wednesday, Sir Keir Starmer said that Nato was “the single most effective military alliance the world has ever seen”, to which the UK is “fully committed”. However, in a significant strategic pivot he said it was “increasingly clear” that the UK’s “long-term national interest requires closer partnership with our allies in Europe and with the European Union”.
Within the UK Government, officials believe that the best way to manage Trump is by not reacting to his outbursts, but instead addressing the President’s wider criticism of Nato – such as by increasing European military contributions and buttressing the High North.
Hope’s plan for Strait of Hormuz will placate Trump
There is hope that the UK “stepping up” on the Strait of Hormuz – with the Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper convening a virtual meeting of 35 nations on Thursday to discuss opening the waterway – will also help to placate Trump.
The i Paper understands that at last week’s meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Vaux-de-Cernay in France, officials from non-US delegations swapped information about what they knew about the Trump administration and how to handle it.
Until recently, figures such as the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio have been viewed as more moderate interlocutors with whom America’s allies can do business.
However, allies have noted a more “punchy” and “fiery” tone from the Secretary of State recently, including his comment on Tuesday that the US would “reexamine the value of Nato and that alliance for our country”.
A UK Government source said: “He is his President’s Secretary of State.”
Lord Peter Ricketts, a former UK national security adviser and ex-top civil servant in the Foreign Office, said that Trump had hurt Nato with his latest comments.
While Congress passed a law in 2023 which prohibits a president from unilaterally withdrawing from Nato, Ricketts told the BBC that if Trump announced plans to quit it would create a “mess legally and politically” and “the very fact of that mess would be further damage to Nato”.
“Britain and others have to get used to the idea that we can’t depend on America to be there for us,” he said.
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