What exactly is the ‘platinum security guarantee’ that Donald Trump is pushing Volodimir Zelensky to accept? While the full details remain confidential, the deal is described as an ‘Article 5 style’ guarantee after the clause in Nato’s charter that states that ‘an armed attack against one Nato member shall be considered an attack against all members’ and triggers ‘an obligation for each member to come to its assistance.’ 

Sounds reassuring. Except that little weasel word ‘style’ covers an abyss of real-world back-pedalling and caveats. For a start, Nato’s charter does not oblige members to actually take military action if one is attacked but instead leaves that decision to individual states. The ‘assistance’ required by Article Five ‘may or may not involve the use of armed force’ and can include instead ‘any action that Allies deem necessary to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.’ Whatever Trump’s ‘platinum’ guarantee may be, it will be less binding even than that.

The Europeans are arguing for a world as they would like it to be, while their US counterparts are dealing with the world as it is

At base, a credible security guarantee – formerly known as an alliance – means a promise to go to war to protect an ally. The Anglo-Polish Treaty of March 1939 that committed Great Britain to go to war to defend Poland from Nazi aggression was such a guarantee. So was the 1839 Treaty of London, which obliged us to defend plucky little Belgium when Germany violated its borders in 1914 – a national word of honour redeemed by the deaths of 880,000 Britons. By contrast the........

© The Spectator