The US Went to War, Europe Stayed Home

By EC Assets · Published 1 April 2026 · Updated 1 April 2026

NATO has survived the Cold War, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, and four years of Trump's first term. It is not clear it will survive Iran.

On April 1, President Trump told Reuters he was "absolutely" considering withdrawing the United States from the alliance. Hours earlier, he called NATO a "paper tiger" in an interview with The Telegraph. Secretary of State Rubio backed him up, saying the relationship would need to be "reexamined" after the war. This may still be posturing. But the damage underneath is structural, and the fractures now visible will not close when the fighting stops.

The catalogue of European refusals reads like a roll call of NATO's core membership. Spain shut its airspace to U.S. military jets and barred two jointly operated bases from Iran operations. Defence Minister Robles called the war "profoundly illegal and profoundly unjust." Italy denied U.S. bombers permission to land in Sicily. France blocked weapons deliveries to Israel through its airspace. Germany's foreign minister said Berlin would not join military operations. President Steinmeier went further, calling the war illegal. Poland declined to redeploy Patriot batteries to the Middle East. For Warsaw, the calculus is straightforward: Russia remains the primary threat.

Even the United Kingdom drew a line. Starmer allowed British bases for defensive operations only and has repeated that the UK will not be "dragged into" the wider war. Trump mocked the Royal Navy in response: "You don't even have a navy."

The reasoning across Europe is remarkably unified. NATO is a collective defence alliance, not a mechanism for supporting unilateral military campaigns. Article 5 has been invoked exactly once in 77 years: after September 11, when European allies came to America's defence. The Iran war does not meet that threshold. The U.S. and Israel struck Iran on February 28 without consulting NATO allies. There was no UN resolution. Allies were not asked. They were told.

Poland's Foreign Minister Sikorski captured the European position precisely: if there is a formal request via NATO, we will consider it carefully. Use the proper channels, make the legal case, and we will talk. But do not demand automatic compliance with a war we had no say in starting.

Trump has threatened NATO before. European capitals have developed institutional muscle memory for managing his provocations. But several things make this episode qualitatively different.

The stakes are not theoretical. The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since late February. Only about 5% of normal traffic is passing through. Brent crude sits around $105. European inflation is climbing. Fertiliser prices have reportedly jumped over 50%. Ryanair's CEO has warned of jet fuel disruptions by early May. This is not a burden-sharing argument about defence budgets. It is a live economic crisis caused by a war Europe neither supported nor was consulted about.

The operational infrastructure of the alliance is being actively disrupted. U.S. military operations in the Middle East rely heavily on European bases, ports, and airspace. With Spain closed, B-52 bombers from the UK's Fairford must fly longer routes. Around 15 U.S. tanker aircraft have been relocated from Spain to France and Germany. The war has exposed how dependent American force projection remains on allied territory, even when allies refuse to participate.

And the rhetoric has crossed lines that previous disputes did not. Insulting the Royal Navy. Threatening trade sanctions against Spain. Rubio asking "what's in it for us" regarding European bases. These statements damage institutional trust in ways that are not easily reversed.

Beneath the headlines, a longer-term structural shift is accelerating. European defence cooperation has been deepening for years, driven first by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and now by growing uncertainty about American reliability. With the Trump administration having cut military aid to Kyiv, European nations now fund the majority of arms transfers to Ukraine. The EU has moved to deepen defence integration across multiple fronts.

Starmer's announcement of a 35-nation conference to discuss Hormuz reopening, led by the UK Foreign Secretary, represents a step toward a European-led maritime security architecture in a region traditionally dominated by the U.S. Fifth Fleet. If that framework materialises, it would mark a historic shift in how global energy infrastructure is protected.

The NATO commitment to 5% of GDP on defence by 2035, agreed at the Hague summit last year, now looks less like an aspirational target and more like a baseline. Germany, Poland, the Baltics, and the Nordic states are leading on spending and mobilisation. The centre of gravity in European security has shifted decisively north and east, toward the Russian frontier, and away from the southern and maritime theatres that historically aligned European and American interests.

At EC Assets, we view geopolitical risk not as background noise but as a variable that systematic strategies must account for. In periods of structural realignment, the discipline to size positions conservatively, manage tail risk explicitly, and maintain liquidity becomes the foundation of portfolio resilience.

NATO will likely survive in some form. Institutions with 77 years of infrastructure do not dissolve overnight. Legal constraints, including the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act requiring congressional approval for withdrawal, provide a procedural brake.

But the alliance that emerges from the Iran war will be fundamentally different from the one that entered it. The assumption that the United States would always be there, that American naval power would guarantee freedom of navigation, that consultation and shared purpose were the baseline of transatlantic relations, has been shattered.

The question is not whether NATO survives. It is what the world looks like when the most successful military alliance in history can no longer agree on what it is for.