BERLIN — Trump administration officials have made a flurry of visits to Moscow over the last month, with Europe on edge over a spate of hybrid attacks attributed to Russia.
But America’s European allies aren’t taking the visits as reassurance. Rather, security experts say they see it as another sign of the deep strain plaguing the NATO alliance.
American action is now less predictable, and its leaders are less communicative and less reliably committed to the NATO structure that has governed European security for 75 years, the experts said. Even if President Donald Trump doesn’t ultimately fulfill his threats to leave the alliance, the experts in the region said NATO needs to prepare to go it alone.
“There’s very real concern here,” said Ian Lesser, a security analyst at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels. “One can debate why Russia is doing this. To keep NATO allies on edge? To create a sense of anxiety?”
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He added: “Nonetheless, they are doing it. It is having effects. Europe is going to have to deal with this in a more deliberate way.”
CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a rare, unannounced trip to Moscow in late August, marking the first known visit by a senior Trump administration official to the Russian capital in months. He reportedly warned Russian intelligence officials against attacking NATO territory and pressed Moscow to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz by cutting off Iran.
Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, visited Moscow last week, holding over three hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin before flying to Kyiv to brief Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Kushner spoke of Putin’s “aspirations” for Russia, adding that they could be achieved once the war is over — a sign that the U.S. isn’t backing away from its onetime adversary.
The visits come as Europe deals with aggressive events across the continent that officials say were carried out by Russia, including drones and debris found in Poland, Romania and Germany. The most high-profile incident was a failed explosive drone attack on Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport, a hub for Ukrainian and NATO military logistics, that was attributed to the Kremlin. Experts said the events were a test from Russia to see how NATO allies could and would respond.
But Trump’s posture has been much more relaxed than his own officials’. He told reporters he wasn’t worried about a Russian attack on NATO territory, pointing to his own relationship with Putin as reassurance. Asked directly whether his CIA director had warned Russian officials, Trump declined to answer.
And European officials have made attempts to listen to Trump’s grievances publicly. Just in July, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told Trump, “I know you are disappointed” on Iran.
Despite decades of reliance on American military operations and intelligence, one former State Department official says NATO countries must shift their posture to one in which they depend solely on themselves. Jeff Rathke, who now serves as president of the American-German Institute in Washington, said there’s a growing sense among NATO allies that the alliance cannot depend on U.S. coordination before taking action.
“It has been the Russian foreign policy objective for 25 years to weaken NATO,” Rathke told The Washington Sun. “That has been a Russian aspiration since the time when Vladimir Putin came to power, and the United States’ actions now bring that closer to reality.”
As the incidents attributed to Russia pile up, the question becomes whether NATO should respond. Marta Prochwicz, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and the deputy head of the organization’s Warsaw office, explained that NATO hasn’t really defined how to respond to attacks from Russia outside a full-blown war.
“NATO is not created for that. It’s a collective security, but we don’t have an answer to this sort of activity. And this is what Russia is exploiting,” she told The Sun.
Prochwicz explained that America’s European allies have begun figuring out how to move along without the U.S.
“There’s the sense that you need to be prepared for a contingency where the U.S. basically isn’t there,” she told The Sun. “We’re not going to prepare defense plans because you can’t plan for a military operation without the U.S. That’s … out of the question because that’s not how NATO was built, and NATO still functions in the old way.”
“But in the hallways, you can start thinking about it,” she added, noting that those familiar with NATO have said the alliance is “like a cat that always falls on its feet.”
Those allies are seeing U.S. reticence in action. Trump suggested in an interview with a British broadcaster last week that the U.S. may not back the United Kingdom if Argentina seeks to reestablish control over the Falkland Islands. Trump said he’s reconsidering that support because Britain did not assist the U.S. with the Iran War.
Trump is mistaken, Rathke said, and being part of the alliance does not mean NATO countries must help the United States with all of its interests.
“It was not a treaty obligation for American allies to support every military action the United States took,” Rathke said. “NATO members did not participate in the war in Vietnam.”
But Prochwicz was optimistic this posture won’t last forever.
“A lot of voices in Europe are saying, ‘Let’s just move away from the U.S. entirely. Let’s lock the door. Let’s think of our own stuff. Let’s not think about NATO. Let’s build a European alternative and just cut ties with the U.S,’” she said. “I think that transatlantic relations are here to stay, and we’re just basically having a bad moment.”
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