Again, there is a lot of noise about the imminent end of the transatlantic alliance. ‘NATO may not survive the Trump era,’ reads a recent Time Magazine piece. ‘US intentions towards Greenland threaten NATO’s future. But European countries are not helpless,’ we are told in an expert comment for Chatham House. ‘From guarantee to risk: how Trump has changed Europe’s relationship with NATO,’ opines Colin Sheridan in the Examiner. This narrative does one thing and one thing only: builds consensus for increased militarisation among US allies.
There is no rupture; NATO is not under threat. This is at least our third time going through this theatre of ‘Trump is so unreliable the special relationship is in danger’. As I wrote in these pages last April, we had this with Trump in 2016. He said the US would no longer fork out the lion’s share for NATO, and we had a chorus of ‘Trump is untrustworthy’; ‘the EU needs “strategic autonomy”’; and so on. The end result: the PESCO agreement, perhaps the most significant stepping stone on the road to an EU army and runaway military spending.[1]
Again in early 2025: Trump says the US would think twice about defending EU member states that don’t spend 5% of GDP on weapons, and meltdown ensues—the transatlantic relationship is dead; the EU must prepare to go it alone. The end result: the EU Commission’s ReArm Europe plan and the Defence Readiness 2030 plan, which have the bloc spending at least an extra €600 billion per year on war preparation by the end of the decade.
That the pundit class and politicians are surprised by US actions today is difficult to take seriously. Elbridge Colby (Trump’s pick for Undersecretary for War Policy) has been telegraphing the new imperialist division of labour for some time now. In December 2025, the 2025 US National Security Strategy was published, followed by the 2026 National Defence Policy on January 23 this year. These documents are entirely consistent with Colby’s output since at least 2021.
According to official US strategy, the US must admit it has limited capacity and focus its energies on the challenge to its global dominance: China. It must push allies to build their military capacities to look after their spheres of interest, as the US will look after its sphere: Central and Latin America. Collectively, the US and its allies will build strength and ‘deter’ China. The 2026 Defence Strategy is explicit. It states the US will convey the urgency of the need to increase military spending. The US ‘will incentivise and enable them to step up. This requires a change in tone and style from the past.’[2] They will push allies around the world to meet the 5% military spending target, and as their ‘allies do so, together with the United States, they will be able to field the forces required to deter or defeat potential adversaries in every key region of the world.’[3]
The US is launching a desperate attempt to maintain its position as the global imperialist hegemon and sabotage the rise of China. It claims it ‘will be strong but not unnecessarily confrontational’ with China. Yet it openly talks about a strategy of ‘deterrence by denial’ that would see China’s naval trade routes blocked from Japan to Malaysia. They want ‘to set the military conditions required to achieve […] a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific that allows all of us to enjoy a decent peace.’[4] This is a recipe for proxy wars and eventual direct confrontation with China.
From Gaza to Ukraine, from Greenland to Venezuela, we are witnessing the excesses of a US imperialism that is scared for its future. As the white-supremacist, US-led capitalist order prepares to confront China, we will see even more genocidal violence, destabilisation, economic coercion, hybrid warfare, and invasions. NATO and the EU are essential to this plan, and to all appearances there is no real internal dissent here.
This, of all moments, is when the Irish comprador political elite have decided to ditch the Triple Lock, step away from the UN Charter order, and open up the possibility of sending unlimited numbers of our sons and daughters to join illegal EU and NATO-led war-fighting missions. They want to end a law that has protected our neutrality and commitment to UN peacekeeping since 1960, precisely when the forces we are most closely allied to are expanding military confrontation at a terrifying rate.
The legislation that will bin the Triple Lock, end Irish neutrality, and put our children in harm’s way will be voted on in the Dáil in the coming weeks. Let them know you will know who to hold accountable when the body bags start coming home.
