Donald Trump’s warning that he is ‘absolutely’ considering withdrawing from NATO has raised a difficult question for Europe: will Vladimir Putin seize on the chaos within the alliance to attack the continent?

The US President dubbed NATO a ‘paper tiger’ and said removing America from the defence treaty was now ‘beyond reconsideration’ in an interview with the Telegraph.

And in an address to the American nation last night, he appeared to wash his hands of the Strait of Hormuz, calling on his European allies to ‘build up some delayed courage’ and sort the situation out themselves as global oil and gas prices continue to spiral.

‘The countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage. They must cherish it. They must grab it and cherish it, they can do it easily,’ Trump declared.

‘We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on.’

Now, experts are speculating whether the Russian dictator could exploit Trump’s threat to quit NATO by launching an attack elsewhere in Europe. 

‘Of course it plays into the hands of Putin,’ a senior diplomat from a European NATO country told The i Paper. ‘He can fetch his popcorn and watch America deal with the mistake [it has made and] divisions becoming more visible between the US and Europeans.’

Considering Trump’s declining approval ratings in America and expectations that the Democrats will enjoy success in November’s mid-term elections, the diplomat added that Putin might conclude that he has a short ‘window of opportunity’ for an attack, which will close if a more Russo-sceptic, pro-NATO leader is elected in 2028. 

In recent weeks, Trump has accused NATO nations of being ‘cowards’ who have done ‘absolutely nothing’ to help his war with Iran, writing on Truth Social: ‘The U.S.A. needs nothing from NATO, but “never forget” this very important point in time!’

The sentiment was echoed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said America will ‘reexamine’ its relationship with NATO once the Iran war has ended.

‘When we need them to allow us to use their military bases, their answer is no? Then why are we in NATO?’ Rubio told Fox News, adding that you have to ask why the US has contributed ‘trillions of dollars’ to the alliance over the years.

Another European diplomatic said that while Moscow probably did not have sufficient troops to launch a direct military assault on a NATO country because of the bombardment of Ukraine, ‘there is room for other types of escalation’.

They added that Putin could employ hybrid-warfare tactics, with many countries in the EU already being pummelled with ‘constant cyber-attacks, constant disinformation’. 

‘It’s not peacetime we live in,’ they added. 

It comes as the Russian dictator dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for an Easter ceasefire, claiming the proposal was too vague to lead to a lasting peace.

Meanwhile, Moscow rolled out a terrifying intercontinental missile for nuclear drills this week, with eerie released by the defence ministry appearing to show the missile being driven through a snow-covered forest in the dead of night, its launcher looming out of the darkness during the exercise. 

Crews practiced a range of activities during the drills in Siberia, involving camouflaged movements of Yars intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

There is no denying that the US has long been NATO’s backbone. In 2025, the combined military spending of NATO states reached approximately 1.5 trillion dollars, with the US alone accounting for over 900 billion dollars of that total.

NATO members were previously expected to spend at least 2 per cent of GDP on defence, a number Trump had long argued should be higher, leading to a new 5 per cent target by 2035 being agreed upon at last year’s NATO Summit.

In 2024, the US spent around 3.38 per cent of GDP on defence, trumped only by Estonia who spent 3.43 per cent and Poland’s 4.12 per cent.

In military power, NATO as a whole dominates Russia. As of 2025, the alliance had around 3.5 million active military personnel compared with Russia’s 1.32 million.

NATO countries collectively have more than 22,000 aircrafts compared to Russia’s 4,292, as well as 1,143 military ships compared with their 400.

Meanwhile, the combined nuclear arsenal of the US, UK, and France is slightly lower, amounting to 5,692 nuclear warheads, compared with Russia’s 5,600.

On the whole, Europe without the US would not be defenceless. According to CNN, the 31 NATO members aside from America still control over a million troops, hold advanced weaponry, and significant industrial and technological capacity.

Turkey alone has the alliance’s largest armed forces after the US, with more than 355,000 active personnel, followed by France, Germany, Poland, Italy and the UK.

Several European NATO countries have weapons that rival or exceed Russian equivalents.

While Russia operates a single aging aircraft carrier, the UK commands two modern carriers capable of launching F-35B stealth fighters.

France, Italy and Spain also operate aircraft carriers or amphibious ships capable of launching combat aircraft.

France and the UK maintain independent nuclear deterrents, and European NATO members collectively operate around 2,000 fighter and ground attack jets, including dozens of F-35s.

Yet military experts argue that what Europe lacks is not manpower or hardware alone, but the strategic enablers that allow modern wars to be fought and sustained.

According to the Centre for European Policy Analysis, Europe remains heavily dependent on the United States for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, integrated air and missile defence, strategic airlift, space assets, cyber capabilities and long range precision striking.

US Major General (rtd.) Gordon ‘Skip’ Davis said these capabilities are essential to command and control multi-domain operations at scale.

‘What the US brings is capabilities like strategic command and control systems and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets,’ Davis said, warning that without them European forces would struggle to sustain prolonged high intensity conflict.

Command structures pose another major challenge. NATO’s most senior operational commands, including Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Allied Air Command and Allied Land Command, are all led by US officers.

‘I don’t think that NATO could operate without US commanders and staff. That would be extremely difficult,’ Davis said.

The war in Ukraine has also exposed shortages in ammunition stockpiles and industrial capacity.

The EU failed to meet its target of supplying Ukraine with one million artillery shells by spring 2024, while the US doubled its monthly production of 155mm shells.

Russia, meanwhile, is reportedly producing around three million artillery munitions annually. 

US aid has also been central to Ukraine’s cause, through American supplied HIMARS rocket systems, Patriot air defences and earlier deliveries of Javelin anti-tank missiles.

The pause in US aid at the start of March 2025 raised doubts about whether European allies can compensate if American support is withdrawn completely.

As Davis warned, if Russia is given time to rebuild while Europe fails to rearm at the same pace, the balance could shift.

‘I’ve been one of the strongest defenders of NATO during my time as a United States senator because I found great value in it,’ Rubio told Fox News. ‘And it wasn’t just about defending Europe. I said it also allowed us to have military bases in Europe that allowed us to project power into different parts of the world when our national security was threatened. 

‘If now we have reached a point where the NATO alliance means that we can’t use those bases, that in fact – that we can no longer use those bases to defend America’s interests, then NATO is a one-way street,’ he concluded.

In a recent post on Truth Social, Trump expressed about his disappointment with NATO, particularly his allies’ unwillingness to deploy naval escorts to help secure the Strait of Hormuz.  

‘They didn’t want to join the fight to stop a Nuclear Powered Iran. Now that fight is Militarily WON, ​with very little danger for them, they complain about the high ​oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open ‌the ⁠Strait of Hormuz, a simple military maneuver that is the single reason for the high oil prices. So easy for them to do, with so little risk,’ Trump wrote.

On Tuesday, the President singled out the UK over Sir Keir Starmer’s attitude towards military involvement, saying: ‘All of those countries that can’t get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you: Number 1, buy from the US, we have plenty, and Number 2, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT.’

He continued: ‘You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!’ 

Trump’s recent public criticism of the UK prime minister – deriding Starmer as ‘no Winston Churchill’ – has had a chilling effect on US-UK relations behind the scenes, according to the Financial Times.

Now, cracks are appearing in security cooperation between the allies as tensions rise over the crisis in the Middle East.

The President previously mocked Britain for seeking to ‘join wars after we’ve already won’ after the UK government’s initial decision not to join initial US and Israel strikes on Tehran.

Now, the handful of American officials seconded to UK government departments are increasingly being asked to exit meetings when sensitive information is discussed, in contrast to a more permissive approach historically, a source told the FT.

While such behaviour has been present since Trump returned to the White House, a more alarming development is the longer time taken by the UK to approve requests for American aircraft to use British military sites including RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, the person added.

These requests used to just be ‘rubber-stamped’ by the UK, but now were ‘stickier’ due to the ‘little bit of extra tension in the system’, they said.

Last week, the US President described Britain’s aircraft carriers as ‘toys compared to what we have’ in another swipe at the UK’s lack of support for his war against the Islamic Republic.

Speaking to reporters at the White House last Thursday, Trump said: ‘The British said: “We’ll send our aircraft carriers” – which aren’t the best aircraft carriers by the way, they are toys compared to what we have – “We’ll send our aircraft carrier when the war is over”. I said: “That’s wonderful, thank you very much – don’t bother.”‘

It comes amid claims that the US President threatened to stop supplying weapons for Ukraine in order to pressure European nations into joining a ‘coalition of the willing’ to reopen the strait.

In response to the reluctance of NATO nations to send warships, Trump said he would stop supplying NATO’s Purl, a European-funded initiative which secures the procurement of US weapons for Kyiv’s war, according to the FT.

As a result of Trump’s warning, and at the urging of NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte, a group of countries including France, Germany and the UK issued an urgent statement on March 19 which said: ‘We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait [of Hormuz].’

An official briefed on the President’s thinking told the FT: ‘It was Rutte who insisted on the joint statement because Trump had threatened to withdraw from Purl and from Ukraine in general.

‘The statement was then quickly put together, and other countries joined in afterwards because there was not enough time to invite everyone to sign up straight away.’

In the two days before the hastily written statement was released, Rutte was involved in several calls with Trump and Rubio.

The NATO chief will travel to Washington next week for a ‘long-planned visit’ as tensions continue to escalate.