From guarantee to risk: how Trump has changed Europe’s relationship with Nato

As Trump unsettles alliances, Europe and Ireland face the implications of a world where Nato no longer feels permanent

The immediate Greenland confrontation appears, for now, to have eased, but the European reaction to it has been unusually raw.

For most Europeans alive today, Nato has never been a choice. It has been a condition. It has sat in the background of politics like gravity: unseen, rarely debated, but quietly shaping everything.

Governments rose and fell. The European Union expanded. Borders softened. Armies shrank. The Cold War ended. The War on Terror came and went. Russia re-emerged. China surged.