The US Department of War is outlining ways to punish European countries for not obeying Donald Trump’s command to join the Iran War, Reuters reports today. The leaked email lists as possible options kicking Spain out of NATO, blocking other “difficult” countries from having important positions, and ending US recognition of Britain’s claim on the Falklands. More broadly the email suggests the US could review the legitimacy of all European territory in the Western hemisphere, which could include French Guiana, Dutch Aruba, Danish Greenland, Norwegian Bouvet Island and the British Virgin Islands. Though the email doesn’t explicitly mention next steps, disputing these claims could then be a first step toward invasion and annexation.
But even more interesting than the options that are listed in the memo is the options that are not. The email does not suggest that the US could withdraw from NATO, nor does it propose closing US bases in Europe or withdrawing American forces - even though this has been a consistent Trump threat over the past months. And that exposes the truth: the White House threats of withdrawal are a bluff. As I’ve noted before, the US needs its European bases in order to project its power across the world. Without them, they could not be staging the Iran War in the way they are right now. Trump is not going to withdraw the US military from its 80-year-long European occupation. We should be so lucky.
The memo says such retaliation is necessary not only in response to the refusal by all European countries to send ships to forcibly open the Strait of Hormuz, but also for the decisions of Spain and Italy to forbid the use of US bases on their territory to conduct the Iran War. That gives us a sense of who the “difficult” governments are. It would include not just anti-Trump Pedro Sanchez but pro-Trump Giorgia Meloni, newly-identified by Trump as an adversary. Assumedly France would be included as well for its reported refusal to allow overflights with Israeli weapons for the war in its airspace (though France denies that it’s done this).
These “access, bases and overflight” rights, known as ABO are, “just the absolute baseline for NATO,” according to the official who drafted the memo, which was reportedly circulated at the highest levels of the Pentagon. The Department of War has not denied the memo’s existance, with a spokesperson saying: “As President Trump has said, despite everything that the United States has done for our NATO allies, they were not there for us. The War Department will ensure that the President has credible options to ensure that our allies are no longer a paper tiger and instead do their part.”
The news comes as EU prime ministers and presidents hold a summit in Cyprus today where they are discussing options for invoking the EU’s mutual defence (assistance) clause Article 42.7 alongside or instead of NATO’s Article 5. As I noted in yesterday’s video, Nordic and Eastern EU countries are still very squeemish about even discussing this because they fear it will give the US an excuse to pull out of NATO and abandon European defence. But these fears are absurd. NATO is already effectively dead, and it’s now only being used as a tool to control and extort European countries. Why are discussions about establishing EU defence being blocked for fear of ending that?
As I write in my new book The Owned Continent, Donald Trump has spent the past year making Europeans do his bidding by using the threat of NATO withdrawal. It is only in the past three months that European leaders finally started saying no (at least on the subjects of Greenland and Iran, though they are still in appeasement mode on the tariffs and legislation).
Already in September 2024, before Trump won, his vice president JD Vance was threatening that Europe could pull out of NATO if the EU dared to regulate Elon Musk’s X. The threats continued from there. They were used to make Europe back off from considering to resist Trump’s tariff threats as Brazil, India and China did and instead surrender to the US president on Trump’s Scottish golf course. Europe didn’t have the same power as Brazil, India or China, we were told by the surrender deal’s defenders, because it could not afford a collapse of NATO amid Russian aggression. That was followed in the Autumn by President von der Leyen’s omnibus proposals implementing US wishes by tearing up EU digital and climate legislation.
And now, incredibly, European countries (including Spain) have signed up to NATO’s extortionate PURL program in which they buy the weapons that the US used to send directly to Ukraine. Europe is now acting as the middleman and paying the American military-industrial complex immense amounts of money for the privilege. But the worst part is that those weapons deliveries are now proving imaginary, because the equipment is now being used in the Iran War instead. In his Sentinal post today Sam Wilkin writes about the absurdity of this system where Europe sends taxpayer money to America for weapons it doesn’t receive. What kind of European leader willingly participates in a system like this?
We are in a bizarre situation where European leaders are blocking efforts to build independent European defence because they don’t want to damage the protectorate institution that’s being used as a tool to extort and humiliate them. We know that NATO is being used to extort Europeans, we can see it with our own eyes. It is spelled out in this Pentagon memo. But we do not know whether the American security umbrella through NATO even exists any more. All indications from the Trump regime are that it doesn’t, even if people in the US Congress keep insisting that it does. In the end it isn’t Congress’s decision to make, it’s a decision for the White House. We are letting Washington control us in Europe in order to preserve an illusion.
That is the Rutte route that our leaders are still intent on sticking to. They are wed to a Schrödinger’s NATO which is inside a box both alive and dead. And as I explained in yesterday’s video, that is the reason that EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas did not outline a fourth scenario in her presentation to the prime ministers last night. She cannot even contemplate the possibility that the American security umbrella is no longer there. Even though she herself has said “there is no NATO without the US”. So our leaders, other than Pedro Sanchez and (less so) Emmanuel Macron and Rob Jetten, continue to obey Rutte’s diktat that “there is no alternative to NATO” - echoing the US Defence Secretary’s command to Europe 25 years ago.
Our European leaders continue to leave us all vulnerable to extortion by Trump. Because they do not have the courage or imagination to envision a world in which Europe is not dependent.
Rutte would keep Europe reliant on a Schrödinger's NATO
The NATO Secretary-General has scolded EU lawmakers for wanting to build independent European defence. But Rutte's strategy will leave Europe dependent on a protectorate that is both alive and dead.