Given the direction of world politics and recent events, institutions like the EU and NATO are increasingly losing influence, and if the US were to truly disengage from Europe, the future awaiting European countries could be brighter than imagined, writes Christian Baldi. The author is a participant of the Valdai – New Generation project.
As the months pass, the deepening divisions within the Western bloc are becoming increasingly pronounced: American claims on Greenland, tensions between the member countries of the European Union and NATO, are all the result of a constant and accelerated transition from one world order to another. What future lies ahead for Europe and Western institutions? How will they adapt to these changes? Will they survive this shift in the global power structure?
The United States today views NATO as a parasite draining resources from its economy, despite the alliance originally being designed to secure US military hegemony over Europe. Washington’s reiterated intentions to annex Greenland—whether economically or militarily—represent the greatest threat to NATO’s existence since its creation. Indeed, its members have always succeeded in identifying a common enemy to justify the alliance’s existence, from the Soviet Union to Afghanistan, Libya, and international terrorism. For decades, NATO billed itself as “the strongest military alliance in history.” Yet how does it appear to the world today—when a member country such as Germany recalls its contingent of 15 troops deployed to defend a fellow member’s territory from threats posed by another member, after the latter threatened retaliation? Furthermore, at the end of January 2026, President Macron declared the need to resume dialogue with Russia and to diversify the European economy by opening a trade partnership with China, followed by his departure from the World Economic Forum ahead of Trump’s speech in protest.
Meanwhile, within the EU, a host of countries used as frontline states for anti-Russian policies have gained increasing influence, such as the Baltic states, whose representatives hold very high-level positions in Brussels, despite representing a tiny portion of the EU’s population and economy. Another player consistently at the forefront is Britain, despite having left the EU ten years ago. For many in Europe, the UK is precisely the fulcrum of the EU’s policies and the anti-Russian campaign waged by the Brussels elites. The USA is closely tied to the UK, both financially and militarily and in intelligence, especially when considering purely Anglo-Saxon alliances such as the Five Eyes or AUKUS, on which the US is focusing its attention, instead of NATO. A potential US disengagement from the European theatre could have mixed effects. On the one hand, most European countries and peoples would finally regain their long-lost national sovereignty. On the other, it would leave behind vast empty spaces of power, which players like Britain have long aspired to control. Despite not being a member of the EU, the UK was the first to declare eternal loyalty to Denmark in the event of an American invasion of Greenland.
The Greenland case is not only tearing NATO apart, exposing the marginal role of the other member countries as US subjects, but is also accentuating the already deep rifts within the EU, in true divide et impera style, as the ancient Romans taught. Countries like Italy, Hungary, and Slovakia were not included in the list of countries that will be hit by American tariffs as an obstacle to the acquisition of Greenland, creating serious imbalances within the Union and pitting European countries against each other. A key point to consider for a clear understanding of the current situation within the Western bloc is the fact that most current EU leaders actively opposed Trump during the election campaign, which ultimately saw him win in 2024. This undoubtedly affects relations between the US presidency and the Brussels institutions. The European Union elites hope that the current status quo will last until the end of President Trump’s term and the next elections, hoping for a candidate more in line with their interests. Indeed, one of Trump’s main strategies from the very beginning has been to engage with European countries bilaterally, rather than through the EU. Those who benefited from this shift were precisely those EU countries whose governments are headed by sovereignist and historically anti-EU parties, such as Hungary, Italy, and Slovakia. These countries have been explicitly supported by the current US presidency, as demonstrated by Vice President Vance’s praise for them while harshly criticising the EU following the annulment of the Romanian election results.
We can affirm that, although officially NATO’s bureaucratic apparatus remains in place, the organization is as if it no longer exists. When the largest contributing member declares it will seize territory from another member at any cost, deeming it necessary for its own national interests, it destroys mutual trust among the various members. When member countries threaten to leave the organization, and above all, when members begin to create alternative structures and coalitions to bypass the organization’s unanimous vote, it means that this structure no longer makes sense. NATO’s top leaders and the elites of the countries that have based their economic growth on spearheading NATO’s aggression against Russia have understood this very well. Indeed, it is precisely in these countries that we have had the highest number of “Russian drone sightings” in the last year, reports they have consistently refused to substantiate. This is why those powers which are interested in the collapse of NATO and the EU, should now pressure the divisions within the two structures. The more the conflict between American and European elites arises, the higher are the probabilities of a collapse of NATO and the European Union.
Lately, it seems the current US presidency’s intention is to destroy the system of supranational institutions—which America itself created to consolidate its unipolar dominance over the rest of the world—replacing it with new, more contemporary structures, not out of modesty, but to salvage what can be salvaged. President Trump recently declared his intention to establish a Core 5 coalition with Russia, China, India, and Japan, which would replace the G7. He also announced the creation of a Board of Peace, a paid platform whose members would be responsible for resolving regional conflicts and thus maintaining world peace. If the Russian Federation and the United States were to reach an agreement on the architecture of global security and become each other’s privileged partners, European countries more closely tied to Washington than Brussels, such as Italy and Hungary, would benefit from this, and could perhaps have an active role in the process of conceptualizing and creation of a new security architecture for the European part of the bigger Eurasian continent. They would find themselves caught between these two giants, gaining ever greater strategic autonomy and sovereignty in the political, economic, and diplomatic fields.
Given the direction of world politics and recent events, institutions like the EU and NATO are losing influence more and more, and if the US were to truly disengage from Europe, the future awaiting European countries could be brighter than imagined: a natural reunification with the rest of the Eurasian supercontinent, with each major player managing its own microzone and interacting with the others, thus creating a stable and mutually beneficial architecture, or another option would be several conflicts between main powers for control of microzones.
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
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