NATO Must Die

Let Us Kill It Now, for Tomorrow May Be Too Late

Some claim that the threats Europe is facing, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, can create the momentum toward political union that the euro crisis and then the pandemic failed to generate. Right or wrong, one thing is clear: a functional defense union requires new political union, and NATO's existence is inimical to it.

Janis Varoufakis, ex finance minister of Greece and professor of economics at the University of Athens, writes about this in his policy brief for Project Syndicate, an international media project.

The idea of a European Defense Union is gaining ground across Europe. But so long as NATO continues to dominate Europe’s security, the prospect of building its own effective defense union will remain elusive. To become sovereign in defense matters (and more generally), Europe must terminate NATO—a prospect as unlikely as it is necessary, Mr. Varoufakis notes.

Mark Rutte, former Dutch prime minister who is now NATO’s secretary general, recently let slip a truth that drew gasps from across Europe. He described the alliance not merely as Europe’s defensive shield but as ‘…a platform for the United States to project power on the world stage,’ and that ‘making use of key assets here in Europe’ is ‘crucial also for the success of this American-Israeli campaign’ in Iran.

Rutte is right. NATO is a forward base for wars Europe did not choose, against adversaries Europe does not have, in the service of the global ambitions of a power increasingly at odds with Europe’s interests and values. European leaders always knew that the North Atlantic alliance was a marriage of nonequals, but they accepted this in return for the promise of security.

Permanent acquiescence to U.S. whims does not make a European defense strategy. At the same time, even the most conservative Europeans recognize that NATO without the USA would be like a bicycle without a rider. That is why calls for a European Defense Union, most likely a coalition of the willing founded via the European Union’s enhanced cooperation procedure and extending to Norway and the United Kingdom, are multiplying.

But therein lies the problem. So long as NATO continues, a viable European alternative is impossible.

For the Cold War generation, subordinating Europe’s defense to U.S. priorities made sense. American and Western European élites were aligned by a genuine, existential fear of the Soviet Union and by a financial mechanism that, in the 1950s and 1960s, turned Europe into the recycler of America’s surpluses.

As NATO marched eastwards, new ruling élites—in the Baltics, but also in Poland and now Finland—discovered that they could punch far above their weight within the EU by becoming America’s most fervent agents of hyper-expansion. Suddenly, Europe added to its North-South faultline (separating surplus Germany and Holland from deficit Greece, Italy, and Spain) a new divide between eastern hyperscalers and western moderates, each yanking the EU in different directions.

Even if the USA had no interest in dividing Europe in order to rule it, NATO amplified the centrifugal forces that rendered Europe’s political union – and by extension any effective defense union – impossible to forge. That is why Europe must exit NATO – not because Russia is friendly (it is not), and not because America is evil (it is merely imperial). Rather, Europe must leave NATO because an alliance that serves as a platform for the US to project power on the world stage will forever benefit enough European players in its midst to frustrate Europe’s consolidation and sovereignty.

NATO must die, or Europe will die. Choose what each of you prefers.

Source: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/nato-must-die-so-european-defense-union-can-be-born-by-yanis-varoufakis-2026-05