End of Nato? What Donald Trump's threat to withdraw US means for UK

In an article entitled “Is This the End of Nato?”, Ivo Daalder, a former US permanent representative at Nato headquarters, stated this was “by far the worst crisis” in the alliance’s history.

“Military alliances are at their core, based on trust: the confidence that if I am attacked, you will come help defend. That trust has been stretched for years under Donald Trump’s leadership. Has it finally been ripped apart and broken?” he wrote. “It’s hard to see how any European country will now be able and willing to trust the United States to come to its defence. Hope, perhaps. But they can’t count on it.”

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Daalder urged Europe to “build up its defences as quickly as it can, mobilise resources and production capabilities, recruit and if necessary conscript people to serve, train and prepare for attacks... and realise that all of this was needed yesterday rather than tomorrow”. We could not agree more.

Trump’s remark to the Telegraph that he was “never swayed by Nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way” was particularly telling. America’s military is no paper tiger; instead, in his mind, “Nato” means only its European members.

His anger at Europe for failing to join his ill-considered attack on Iran demonstrates a lack of understanding that Nato is a defensive alliance, not one to be summoned to war at the drop of a hat.

‘Trump always chickens out’, or so the saying goes. He also faces constitutional and political obstacles to withdrawing from Nato. So it might not happen.

But the European Union, an economic superpower, must now become a military one, and the UK has no option but to move closer to Brussels, while urgently rearming.

Failure to do so would leave this country weak, dangerously isolated and potentially forced to be at the beck and call of this chaotic and reckless US President.