Former NATO Chief Calls for European Conventional Defense Independent of U.S

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who served as NATO Secretary General from 2009 to 2014, called this week for European nations to form a "coalition of the willing" capable of organizing the continent's conventional defense without relying on the United States, citing what he described as mounting uncertainty over Washington's commitment to the alliance's collective-defense obligations. Rasmussen made the remarks in an interview with the German newspaper Welt. [POLITICO][4-2]

The argument centers on Article 5 of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, which provides that an armed attack against any NATO member shall be considered an attack against all members, with each party obligated to take "such action as it deems necessary," including armed force. [17-19][17-20] That provision has been invoked once in the alliance's history, by allied governments in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. [13-10] The Trump administration has repeatedly tested the credibility of that commitment. Before traveling to the June 2025 NATO summit in The Hague, President Donald Trump told reporters that his compliance with Article 5 "depends on your definition," adding that "there are numerous definitions." [15-9][15-10] Trump later walked back that framing at the summit itself, saying "we are with them all the way." [13-12] European governments have not treated the retraction as settling the question. [15-16][15-19]

Rasmussen did not call for NATO's dissolution. He described the alliance as the "cornerstone" of European defense and identified the U.S. nuclear umbrella as the appropriate "ultimate security guarantee," per POLITICO's account. His proposed division of labor would assign conventional defense, including ground forces, logistics, and command capacity, to a European-led coalition operating either within or alongside NATO structures. That formulation aligns with a broader analytic consensus: the Atlantic Council has noted that NATO's existing defense posture "relies heavily on US military support" for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, strategic lift, and command and control, and that European states must close those gaps to operate independently. [8-4] The European Policy Centre has observed that the existing coalition of willing nations already has a small embryonic operational command in Paris and could form the nucleus of a larger European defense union, though it currently has no legal personality or secretariat. [3-3][3-4]

The institutional backdrop against which Rasmussen spoke is significant. At the June 2025 Hague summit, all 32 NATO allies committed to a new defense spending target of 5 percent of gross domestic product by 2035, with 3.5 percent designated for core military spending and 1.5 percent for infrastructure and resilience. [13-14][13-19] That target, driven by Trump administration pressure, represented a sharp increase from the prior 2 percent benchmark. [12-11] Compliance is uneven: Spain announced it would not meet the target, and Belgium and Slovakia signaled similar resistance, creating fractures in the alliance's stated common front. [12-14][12-15][12-16] The Hague communiqué notably omitted any reference to a pathway to Ukrainian NATO membership or to the future of U.S. force posture in Europe. [19-14]

Rasmussen's current advocacy carries institutional weight beyond his former role. Since leaving NATO, he founded the Alliance for Democracies, a nonprofit organization, which published a five-point European defense plan calling for member defense budgets to reach 4 percent of GDP by 2028. [1-1][1-9] He has also argued, in a separate interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, that Russian defense investment now exceeds the combined defense investment of the rest of Europe and that Europe must "at least double" its own defense spending. [1-11][1-13] Both figures provide independent context for his call to reduce structural dependence on Washington.

The policy arc Rasmussen is engaging runs directly through the Trump administration's 2026 National Defense Strategy, which analysts at the European Policy Centre describe as ending "the era of automatic American primacy" in Europe. [10-1] That document explicitly ranks homeland defense and China deterrence above European contingencies, framing European allies as "capable, and therefore accountable for their own defence." [10-2] Under that logic, Europe is no longer a priority theater for U.S. conventional primacy, and while Washington intends to remain in NATO and retain its nuclear deterrent role, it has signaled it will no longer underwrite Europe's conventional defense by default. Rasmussen's proposed coalition would operate as the institutional answer to that strategic reorientation, formalizing what the NDS treats as an implicit expectation.

The "coalition of the willing" formulation Rasmussen invokes has a contested recent history. In early 2025, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a plan for European nations to organize a potential peacekeeping or security presence in Ukraine, generating a series of ministerial meetings but leaving unresolved questions about mandate, rules of engagement, and troop contributions. [1-2][1-3][1-5] Rasmussen himself, speaking to RFE/RL in May 2025, warned that the initiative risked becoming "a coalition of the waiting" rather than a functioning force. [1-3] His current proposal to Welt broadens the concept from a Ukraine-specific mechanism to a standing framework for continental defense, reflecting a longer-term shift in how senior European security figures are reconceiving the transatlantic relationship.

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