The conflict between the US, Israel and Iran, which was halted by the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran on June 17, has been a difficult time for NATO. The US president, Donald Trump, resented the fact that America’s NATO allies refused to get involved, commenting that: “NATO wasn’t there when we needed them.” His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, went further, noting that after the Iran conflict, America should “re-examine the relationship”. Peter Hegseth, the US secretary of war, has a plan to put on the table at the Nato summit in Ankara on July 7 and 8. He calls it “NATO 3.0“. Hegseth wants to make official what has been discussed informally for years: that Washington intends to leave European security to Europe, while America downgrades its support. The US has been reducing the numbers of its troops in Germany for years. In recent weeks it has been reported that the Pentagon plans to cut the number of its aircraft available to NATO in Europe by about one-third.

This has put pressure on European members states to expand into any vacuum left by America’s withdrawal. NATO has been able to maintain its unity since its foundation in 1949. But its success in holding together present analysts with a paradox: ever since 1949 its members have regularly been at odds with one another. The crisis over German rearmament and inclusion in NATO, opposed by France, lasted from 1950 to 1955. This was followed by the Suez Canal crisis in 1956 which set the US at odds with France and Britain when the two colonial powers tried to retake the canal after Egypt announced its nationalisation. The post-war French president, Charles de Gaulle, clearly chafed under US primacy in NATO. He tried unsuccessfully in 1958 to set up a tripartite directorate within NATO comprising France, Britain and the US. A few years later he signed France up to the Franco-German Friendship Treaty in a bid to undermine American influence in Germany. The Balkan wars of the 1990s were also a........

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