Breaking News: How Trump triggers major upset in US-NATO ties…See More

An embarrassing situation has arisen for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) after its leading member, the United States, broke ranks with its European partners on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) by voting differently on a resolution condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine and upholding Ukraine’s territorial integrity. The US, oddly enough, ended up voting the same way as Russia, North Korea, and Belarus, among others.

Only a day earlier, Mark Rutte, NATO’s Secretary-General, had issued a short video message praising Ukrainian resilience on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion. Rutte, while condemning Russia’s “brutal aggression”, affirmed that NATO would continue to support and stand with the people of Ukraine.

Later in the day, the United States sponsored and voted for a resolution at the UN Security Council (UNSC) calling for an end to the conflict, but it contained no overt condemnation of Russia. The two key allies of the US in NATO viz. the UK and France—both permanent members of the UNSC—abstained from voting on the resolution after their attempt to amend the language was vetoed.

The rupture had been prefigured at the Munich Security Conference, where a rather unconventional speech delivered by US Vice President JD Vance stunned the European leaders. Vance criticised them for allowing unchecked immigration, suppressing free speech, and annulling elections. The only time he mentioned Ukraine was in the context of saying that Russia and Ukraine can reach a “reasonable settlement”. He urged Europe to “step up in a big way to provide for its own defence”. All his sermons were directed solely at European leaders, not at Russia.

On February 18, when senior American and Russian officers met in Riyadh to mark the start of talks aimed at improving ties and negotiating an end to the Russo-Ukrainian hostilities, the Ukrainian side was not even invited.

US President Donald Trump is evidently trying to shift the narrative on the Russia-Ukraine war. He recently accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of being a dictator, citing the lack of recent elections in the country. Ukraine, being under martial law, the election is kept in abeyance until its lifting. However, the Ukrainian Parliament chose to overwhelmingly repose its trust in Zelenskyy. A total of 268 MPs unanimously approved a resolution allowing him to remain in office, while 12 MPs absented themselves. The in-house vote in Kyiv took place on the same day as the UNGA vote.

Trump’s meeting with visiting French President Emmanuel Macron exposed the cracks developing in NATO over Ukraine. The Kodak moment came when Macron interrupted Trump during a joint press conference for a “fact check.” While Trump was claiming that European countries were loaning money to Ukraine and getting it back, Macron interrupted him, stating that, to be frank, they had paid only 60 per cent of the money. He clarified that, like US loans and guarantee grants, it was real money.

A recent research brief from the US Congressional Research Service states that since the start of Russia’s 2022 invasion, the United States has committed almost $66 billion, the EU over $52 billion, and the UK over $10 billion in security assistance to Ukraine (Ukrainian Military Performance and Outlook, 3 February 2025). Trump, however, has demanded $500 billion worth of critical raw materials from Ukraine as repayment for the aid already given to Kyiv.

Zelenskyy, on the other hand, claims that Washington has supplied his country with $67 billion in weapons and $31.5 billion in direct budgetary support, and he would not acknowledge the aid as a loan. While the United States and Ukraine have reached a deal over Ukraine’s rare earth resources, it does not provide the concrete security guarantees the East European country was seeking.

At the time of writing, Zelenskyy is scheduled to visit Washington to sign the deal with Trump.

The United States has been the leading and a founding member of NATO. The Brussels Pact—a mutual security agreement signed by Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and Luxembourg—was formalised on 17 March 1948. However, it was the entry of the United States that transformed it into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), also called the North Atlantic Alliance. The original treaty was signed in Washington, DC, on 4 April 1949, bringing together, in addition to the Brussels signatories, the United States, Canada, Italy, Denmark, Norway, and Portugal. Each member state agreed to treat an attack on one or more of its constituents as an attack on all.

The formation of NATO marked a reversal of the United States’ traditional foreign policy, which had been based on isolationism. The US had remained out of both World War I and World War II for as long as possible. On both occasions, an attack on its naval assets ultimately forced it into a state of belligerency. However, the onset of the Cold War brought about a dramatic shift in its approach. “Not since the alliance with France,” writes Robert McMahon (2003), “of the late 18th century had Washington formed an entangling alliance or merged its security needs so seamlessly with those of othemer sovereign states” (Cold War: A Very Short Introduction, p. 33).

The Alliance witnessed several expansions throughout the Cold War. Greece and Turkey joined NATO in 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982. However, the end of the Cold War in 1991 created an anomalous situation for NATO. For a time, it appeared that the Alliance had lost its raison d’être. But at the Madrid Summit in 1997, NATO decided to expand its membership to include three states that were formerly part of the Warsaw Pact: Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.

President Bill Clinton, the first US President to take office after the Cold War period, was a votary of NATO’s expansion. He launched the Membership Action Plan (MAP) at the Washington Summit in April 1999. Clinton linked this policy to the advancement of democracy, security, human rights, and comparable living standards to those of Western Europe across the whole of Europe. It might be remembered that the US could take credit for rebuilding the war-ravaged economies of Western and Southern Europe through the Marshall Plan (European Recovery Programme, 1948–51).

Trump, in certain respects, has distinguished himself from all his predecessors in the Oval Office since the end of World War II. His policy to “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) is marked by scepticism towards multilateral alliances in general. During his first term (2017–21), Trump seemingly toyed with the idea of withdrawing from NATO. His address on 11 July 2018 at NATO’s Brussels Summit was an indictment of the organisation’s European partners. He called the members “delinquent” in their defence spending and insisted that they increase it “immediately.”

During his meeting with then-NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Trump accused Germany of being a “captive of Russia” owing to its overdependence on Russian gas supplies. Trump was annoyed at the fact that numerous NATO countries had struck gas pipeline deals with Russia, and that Germany had made energy payments worth billions of dollars to the Great Bear.

In Brussels, Trump was on the verge of announcing America’s withdrawal from NATO. Whether such a move would have been consistent with America’s global stature or ratified by the US Congress is a separate issue. However, Stoltenberg is believed to have played a discreet yet crucial role in pulling Trump back from the brink. By February 2019, Trump had changed his stance. In his 2019 State of the Union address, he declared that the United States could secure a $100 billion increase in defence spending from NATO allies.

From an original group of 12 members, NATO has expanded to an alliance of 32 members over the last 75 years. Its newest members, Sweden (2024) and Finland (2023), also participated in the Washington, DC, Summit from 9–11 July 2024, marking the Alliance’s 75th anniversary. Some aspirants, such as Ukraine, Georgia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, remain on the waiting list. Meanwhile, three former Soviet republics—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—have been NATO members since 2004.

For the first time in American history, the bicameral US Congress last year passed a law prohibiting unilateral presidential withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty. Section 1250A of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 made withdrawal from NATO conditional on authorisation by the Senate or, alternatively, through an Act of Congress. The Act also includes several provisions aimed at bolstering support for Ukraine and NATO.

The Russia-Ukraine hostilities have already lasted for three years, not counting Russia’s occupation of Crimea since 2014. It has resulted in the largest war in Europe since World War II, with an estimated death toll exceeding one million and more than 10 million people displaced. While resolving the conflict will require considerable diplomatic tact, its satisfactory conclusion has become even more unpredictable under the Trump administration.

The writer is author of the book ‘The Microphone Men: How Orators Created a Modern India’ (2019) and an independent researcher based in New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.