\n<\/p>\n
Long before Donald J. Trump threatened over the weekend<\/a> that he was willing to let Russia \u201cdo whatever the hell they want\u201d against NATO allies that do not contribute sufficiently to collective defense, European leaders were quietly discussing how they might prepare for a world in which America removes itself as the centerpiece of the 75-year-old alliance.<\/p>\n Even allowing for the usual bombast of one of his campaign rallies, where he made his declaration on Saturday, Mr. Trump may now force Europe\u2019s debate into a far more public phase.<\/p>\n So far the discussion in the European media has focused on whether the former president, if returned to office, would pull the United States out of NATO.<\/p>\n But the larger implication of his statement is that he might invite President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to pick off a NATO nation, as a warning and a lesson to the 30 or so others about heeding Mr. Trump\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n His statement stunned many in Europe, especially after three years in which President Biden, attempting to restore the confidence in the alliance lost during Mr. Trump\u2019s four years in office, has repeatedly said that the United States would \u201cdefend every inch of NATO territory.\u201d<\/a> And while a spokesman for the White House, Andrew Bates, denounced Mr. Trump\u2019s comments as \u201cunhinged,\u201d by Sunday morning they had already resonated with those who have argued that Europe cannot depend on the United States to deter Russia.<\/p>\n Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, which comprises Europe\u2019s heads of government and defines their common policies, wrote that \u201creckless statements\u201d like Mr. Trump\u2019s \u201cserve only Putin\u2019s interest.\u201d He wrote that they make more urgent Europe\u2019s nascent efforts to \u201cdevelop its strategic autonomy and invest in its defense.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And in Berlin, Norbert R\u00f6ttgen, a member of the German Parliament\u2019s foreign affairs committee, wrote on the social media platform X, \u201cEveryone should watch this video of #Trump to understand that Europe may soon have no choice but to defend itself.\u201d He added, \u201cAnything else would be capitulation and giving up on ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n All of this doubt is bound to dominate a meeting of NATO defense ministers on Thursday in Brussels and then the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of national security leaders, on Friday. And while Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will doubtless use the moment to celebrate the NATO solidarity that has been critical to keeping Ukraine an independent nation two years after Russia\u2019s invasion, any statements they make will almost certainly be met with doubts about what the alliance will look like in a year\u2019s time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In fact, that re-evaluation has been underway for months, some European diplomats and defense officials say, though they have alluded to it only obliquely in public, if at all.<\/p>\n Germany\u2019s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, has begun talking about how Germany must prepare for the possibility of decades of confrontation<\/a> with Russia. The departing secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said last week that the alliance had to prepare for a \u201cdecades-long confrontation\u201d with Russia.<\/p>\n In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Stoltenberg said, \u201cAny suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the U.S., and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.\u201d He added, echoing statements made by NATO members in 2016, \u201cI expect that regardless of who wins the presidential election the U.S. will remain a strong and committed NATO ally.\u201d<\/p>\n Denmark\u2019s defense minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, has said that within three to five years, Russia may \u201ctest\u201d NATO\u2019s solidarity by attacking one of its weaker members, attempting to fracture the alliance by demonstrating that others would not come to its defense. \u201cThat was not NATO\u2019s assessment in 2023,\u201d he told Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper<\/a>, last week, calling it \u201cnew information.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At its core, the argument underway in Europe goes to the question of whether members of the alliance can be assured that the U.S. nuclear umbrella \u2014 the ultimate deterrent against Russian invasion \u2014 will continue to cover the 31 members of the NATO alliance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Britain and France have their own small nuclear arsenals. If, over the next year, NATO\u2019s European members came to doubt that the United States would remain committed to Article V of the NATO treaty, which declares that an attack on one constitutes an attack on all, it would almost inevitably revive the debate about who else in Europe needed their own nuclear weapons \u2014 starting with Germany.<\/p>\n During the last Cold War, that discussion was quite open, in ways that can seem shocking today. Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, declared in 1957 that tactical nuclear weapons \u2014 the kind Russia has threatened to use in Ukraine \u2014 were \u201cno more than the further development of the artillery.\u201d He added, \u201cWe cannot, of course, do without them.\u201d In a 1962 meeting he added that the defense of Berlin \u201cmust be fought from the very beginning with nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n