Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 20 March 2025. © Richard Kemp

President Trump is considering giving up US command of Nato, held by American generals since Dwight D Eisenhower became the first supreme commander 75 years ago. This has further shaken those already panicking about the prospect that Trump might be contemplating pulling out of the alliance altogether. They are right to panic about the state of Nato – but not because of Trump.

We hear never-ending boasts that Nato is the most successful defensive alliance in history. Perhaps it was once, although that was never really put to the test.

I and many other soldiers spent years of our lives manoeuvring armoured divisions across West Germany and rehearsing battles against the Soviet 3rd Shock Army as it rolled across the Inner German Border. It never came, but was that because Nato deterred it or it just didn’t intend to? Certainly Nato is no deterrent to Russian aggression today.

Look at Ukraine. It may not be a Nato member, but when Putin invaded, its defence became Nato’s number one priority. Innumerable summit speeches were packed with hard-charging rhetoric from Western leaders who promised to support Kyiv to the end, and fell over themselves to be filmed with President Zelensky in his besieged capital.

But Churchillian words never measured up to his dictum of ‘action this day’. Yes, lots of military aid poured into the battlefront, but never anything like enough to allow Ukraine to prevail. Putin must have been chuckling to himself and his sycophantic henchmen in the Kremlin, as his threats of escalation and nuclear war scared Nato leaders into stumbling procrastination. No tanks, no planes, no long-range missiles. Then when they eventually plucked up enough courage to gingerly send them, it was too late, too few, and too many restrictions on their use.

As a result it looks likely Ukraine will now end up settling with Russia on Putin’s terms, with 20 per cent of their sovereign territory in his hands.

Weakness provokes. Imagine a new scenario. Having licked his wounds from Ukraine, Putin stirs up the ethnic Russian population in the Baltic republics. Russian militias form in Latvia, take control of Russian population centres and then invite Russia in ‘for protection’. (more…)