1. Donald Trump has fired a fatal shot at NATO. In addition to various acts of contempt for his European partners, the US president has declared that he will not respect Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. In front of an audience around the world, he said he didn't believe that Europe, even just France, would help the US in the event of aggression against the American superpower. This would justify his neutrality in helping Europe in the face of attacks from its eastern or southern borders. The orphanhood of the liberal elites at the helm of the European Union was immediately felt. Even more seriously, Trump and his beloved spy Elon Musk openly support the European far right against the liberal elites. Even more seriously, Trump does political and economic business directly with Putin, the sworn enemy of liberal Europe, not knowing London, Brussels or any European capital, apart from Budapest of his friend Orban.
2. A military alliance without military assistance is something that does not exist. We wonder, then, about the continuity of NATO as an organization. It is clear that the White House wants a separation without divorce. NATO is useful to the US for protecting its military bases stationed in Europe, for pressuring the purchase of American arms through joint command structures, and also for upping the ante in imposing to the Europeans the technological protectionism in the face of China. For London, Paris and Berlin, the illusion that they would have the American nuclear hat is gone. And now they are caught between the illusion that the US withdrawal is temporary and the fear of US reprisals if Europe consumed a de facto divorce. In doubt between the two attitudes, they want to arm Western Europe as never before in history.
3. This so-called European Rearmament Plan is the EU's most strategic decision since the creation of the single currency. The name isn't innocent, it's meant to make you believe that Europe is disarmed or that it's nothing more than a “military dwarf”, in Brussels jargon. It's not true, as the European NATO states already spend 1.5 times more on military expenditure than Russia. Even if in one or another military capacity there may be an imbalance of equipment that is already at the level of mutual destruction, the arsenal of these European states is more than convincing for their security and for some form of cooperation between them. This 800 billion euro plan, obtained from the indebtedness of the member states, was precisely the money needed to finance the energy transition and green jobs and homes.
4. The European Directorate wants to make military expenses, which don't count towards deficit or debt limits, the lever for a major state intervention in the economy, to pull in private capital to benefit from the operation, and to try to get out of economic stagnation. They didn't want the economy of Peace and the Environment, but they are installing a war economy. Not long ago, Admiral Gouveia e Melo (na announced candidate for President of the Republic in Portugal) said that it was necessary to die for NATO if necessary and that “there is no butter without cannons”. This shows the program of these NATO supernumeraries. The motto is to cut the welfare state in order to buy weapons. Macron in France and Merz in Germany have clearly stated that they will cut public services in order to cover military budgets.
5. Escaping this spiral of militarism requires a break with NATO, which is the cancer of warmongering. Today it is much clearer to Europeans that NATO does not protect them as it did when Russia invaded Ukraine. United States that share and plunder Ukraine in tandem with Russia. The United States are threatening Denmark with Greenland. The United States are threatening another NATO member with annexation: Canada.
NATO confirms what it has always been, now in sinking mode, a war machine at the service of the USA. The people have everything to gain by imposing a real divorce from NATO. We Portuguese will always have to remember that NATO supported Salazarism and threatened democracy in 1975. It's not enough for us Portuguese to leave NATO, we have to recover the Lajes base for national sovereignty. What is NATO for?
