When Allies Are Treated as Disposable: The Cost of American Amnesia. By Dusty Wentworth

 

There is a fashionable line in Washington that European NATO members are feckless passengers, forever borrowing American protection while giving nothing back. It is a neat story, domestically useful, and strategically corrosive.

It is also false.

NATO’s collective defence clause, Article 5, has been invoked only once, after the attacks of 11 September 2001. It was invoked by the United States. European allies responded, not with speeches, but with troops, body bags, and decades of political fallout at home.

Yet Donald Trump’s public contempt for EU and NATO partners, coupled with threats of tariffs as a lever to force compliance, treats allies like subordinates and trade like a weapon. That posture cannot be waved away as “tough negotiating”. It is a rejection of diplomacy in favour of coercion.

And it is happening again, now with Greenland.

Article 5 Was Invoked Once. Allies Paid in Blood.

Afghanistan was not a side-show for NATO partners. Non-US NATO forces suffered over 1,000 deaths in the conflict. Britain alone lost 457 personnel.

Those are not abstract numbers. They represent allied governments choosing to stand with the United States after 9/11, despite domestic scepticism, limited national interests in Afghanistan itself, and years of political strain. This was solidarity in its rawest form.

It is precisely why claims that NATO allies “stayed off the front lines” are not merely wrong but disgraceful.

Afghanistan and the Reality of Conditional Commitment

The 2021 withdrawal did not only end a war. It exposed how little control allies really had over its course, and how quickly a US domestic political decision could override a coalition’s sacrifices.

The collapse of the Afghan state and the Taliban’s return to power raised an unavoidable question for allied publics and veterans: what was the point of the losses if the end state was abandoned at speed? That doubt did not arise from anti-Americanism. It arose from watching a partner treat a shared campaign as a tap that could be turned off without meaningful consultation.

If Article 5 is meant to embody collective resolve, Afghanistan showed that collective resolve can still be brought to heel by one nation’s electoral timetable.

Trump, Tariffs, and the Replacement of Diplomacy with Bullying

Threatening allies with tariffs to force political outcomes is not a minor breach of etiquette. It is the use of economic harm as a disciplinary tool against partners.

That behaviour matters because it signals intent. A state that is willing to punish its allies publicly and economically is not behaving like a leader of a voluntary alliance. It is behaving like a patron demanding tribute.

Even if one were to ignore the morality of that approach, it is strategically stupid. Coerced allies comply only until they can hedge, diversify, and reduce dependence. The long-term effect is the slow erosion of US influence in precisely the countries it claims to need.

Greenland: A Strategic Asset in the Mouth, a People on the Ground

The rhetoric around Greenland is worse, because it drifts into language that belongs to an earlier century. When prominent US voices talk as if Greenland could be acquired, traded, or pressured into alignment, they reveal a great power reflex: treat territory as a piece on a board, not as a homeland.

Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. It has its own institutions and a distinct population with political rights. The principle that should govern its future is not Washington’s strategic appetite, or Copenhagen’s preferences, or NATO’s convenience. It is self-determination.

If Greenlanders are divided, the legitimate mechanism is democratic choice by Greenlanders, including a referendum if their political institutions choose that route. The moment the debate becomes “what the US wants” versus “what Denmark will allow”, the people most affected are being sidelined.

That is not alliance politics. It is entitlement.

The Second World War Myth That Fuels the Attitude

Part of the arrogance comes from a myth, still repeated, that the United States won the Second World War almost alone. America’s contribution was enormous, but history does not flatter simplistic nationalistic claims.

The Soviet Union’s war dead are commonly estimated at around 26 to 27 million.
German forces suffered the bulk of their military deaths on the Eastern Front, often cited at around 80 percent.
America’s decisive edge was industrial power, producing close to 300,000 military aircraft and manufacturing more than half of the world’s produced goods by 1945.

The uncomfortable truth is that American manufacturing capacity often did more to determine outcomes than any single set of battlefield manoeuvres. That should encourage humility. Instead, it often feeds a dangerous expectation that allies should fall into line on command.

A Realistic Conclusion for Allies

None of this requires hostility towards the United States as a country. It requires realism about the behaviour of its government, and especially of leaders who treat diplomacy as weakness and allies as inconvenient dependants.

Allies did not invoke Article 5. The United States did. Allies answered. They fought and died. That fact alone should make sneering rhetoric politically unacceptable and diplomatically costly.

If Washington, under Trump or anyone else, insists on speaking to allies in threats and insults, then allies have every right, and arguably a duty, to adjust their posture accordingly: more hedging, more strategic autonomy, more refusal to be treated as disposable.

Friendship in international politics is not sentimental. It is proven. NATO partners proved it in Afghanistan.

The United States should not be allowed to forget.

#Dustywentworth

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