Prior to NATO top this week, Europe is uncertain about its old ally, the US

NATO this year opens on Tuesday against the background of an increasingly aggressive and unrestrained Russia, combined with an increasingly unleashed United States, who seems willing to turn their back on traditional allies to enter into new conflicts and threats in the middle and Asia.

Writing French newspaper Le MondeColumnist Sylvie Kauffmann said it was difficult to introduce NATO top last summer in Washington, DC, when 32 countries met to celebrate the 75 -year anniversary of the Transatlantic Alliance under the motto: “Stronger and safer together, in NATO.”

A year ago, she said, the members of the members’ new life were revived around the leading partner, the United States, [and] Through Russian aggression in Ukraine. ”

“Six months later,” wrote Kauffmann, “Donald Trump succeeded Joe Biden in the White House and everything shifted”,

NATO – which stands for the North -Atlantic Convention Organization – is a military alliance of 32 Member States, 30 European countries and the United States and Canada. This year’s top is held for two days in The Hague, in the Netherlands.

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States – a non -profit organization focused on transatlantic affairs – agrees that the top of this year will be a test for the torn alliance.

“What you see today – with the simultaneous crisis on the European continent with the war in Ukraine, the tensions in the inputacific region and the escalation in the middle – you now have three different theaters who come across unprecedented tensions, crisis and war,” Scheffer told NPR. “This will clearly encourage the United States to re -prioritize the way in which it is involved on the European continent.”

De Hoop Scheffer said it is something that European allies will have to prepare for.

NATO Secretary -General Mark Rutte speaks to the press while on March 13 he meets President Trump in the Oval Office of the White House.

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That is exactly what the new secretary -general of NATO, former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, is trying to do NATO members to bind to raising the defense expenditure.

Rutte said that European countries should make a “quantum jump” in defense options, including a “400 percent increase” in aerial and rocket defense to protect the alliance against Russia. Because he took over as Secretary -General last October, Rutte warned that members had to spend “considerably more than 3%” of the value of their economies to Defense.

In a recent interview in the British think tank Chatham House, Rutte warned that the danger would not disappear when the Ukraine war ends.

Since the start of the Cold War, Europeans have harvested a huge peace dividend by being under the wings of the American military protection. That has given them the freedom to invest resources in their societies, to build robust social welfare systems.

Rutte warned that Europe should now make choices. “You could still have your health systems, the pension system … But you better learn to speak Russian,” he said. “I mean, that’s the result.”

Although the US may be able to look away, the hope Scheffer said what is happening in Ukraine, an existential threat is for Europe, and it cannot afford to lose this war.

“I think this top is really about one head issue, which are Defense expenditure and European NATO members who are committed to the new goal of 5%,” said De Hoop Scheffer.

“The war in Ukraine has been going on for more than three years now, the situation on site is very tense and Ukraine still needs substantial support,” she said.

Although there will be no discussions about Ukraine that is part of NATO this year, said Paradoxically, the hope Scheffer said, the longer the war in Ukraine continues, the more the future of that country is actually interwoven with the future of Europe.

“European countries look at Ukraine and realize that its war fighting capacities and creativity – for example with drones – must of course be part of the future of a European military industrial basis.

Kauffmann wrote in Le Monde: “Our American ally has become so elusive and hostile that no one dares to imagine how this NATO will unfold.”

Moreover, the US’s attention has been elsewhere in recent days. At the end of Saturday, President Trump announced that his country had completed air strikes against three nuclear locations in Iran, which brought the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel to the front door of NATO.

Given the short attention of President Trump and divided, it is good news that NATO will be short of 2025 and end within two days. And the last communiqué will be limited to one page.

Some European newspapers talk about reinventing the transatlantic alliance and the shedding of American custody. Whatever happens, everyone seems to agree from NATO, as we have known for the past 75 years, has been completed.

De Hoop Scheffer said this NATO -top is about Europeans who stay together. “We have to perform seriously and work collectively for our own safety and defense,” she said. “We have no choice.”