Eastern Europe must earn its security in a post-American NATO

Al Jazeera

3 days ago

From the Baltic states to the Black Sea, Central and Eastern European (CEE) governments remain anxious about their security in the face of Russian aggression. Despite NATO's enduring pledge to Article 5, many officials in countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Romania continue to express concern over a potential US shift in focus towards Asia‑Pacific and the Middle East, creating fears of weakening American vigilance in Europe. This anxiety has heightened in light of Russia's steady military rebuilding and escalating hybrid threats targeting critical infrastructure across the region.
To be clear, President Trump has long criticised NATO members for failing to hit defence spending targets and has even suggested the US might withhold protection from countries that do not meet the 2 percent of GDP target. In response, the June 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague marked a turning point: all member states agreed to raise combined defence and related spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035, including 3.5 percent for core military capabilities and 1.5 percent for broader security measures such as logistics, cyber resilience and support for Ukraine, which was viewed as an 'ironclad' commitment to NATO Article 5 and a pledge of continued backing for Ukraine.
For all the robust signalling, however, the agreement's gradual timeline – 2035, with a review in 2029 – and its flexible accounting, where spending on Ukraine aid, infrastructure upgrades and cyber projects all count, leave the Eastern flank states uneasy because timely implementation will be essential for credibly deterring Russia.
Moreover, tensions over US-EU burden sharing remain, as shown recently when, during a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Trump announced that the US would send Patriot air defence systems to Europe 'for Ukraine' but insisted that European allies foot the bill by donating the interceptor missiles themselves.
The breakdown in diplomatic decorum with European partners has been on display for a while, notably during the March Signalgate incident in which Trump's Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth called Europe 'pathetic' and suggested European NATO states were 'freeloading', and during the infamous February diplomatic debacle when Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was publicly humiliated during a joint White House news conference with Trump.
Yet despite the turbulence, CEE capitals cannot afford the luxury of disengagement from the second Trump administration. Indeed, the volatility reinforces the need for these states to remain actively engaged and push for better outcomes. This is for several reasons.
First, the US military presence has long served as the cornerstone of regional deterrence against Russian expansionism. Even as Washington's commitment to European security appears uncertain, CEE's security architecture has been fundamentally anchored in US guarantees since the end of the Cold War. The traumatic historical experience of Western abandonment during critical 20th-century junctures, such as the 1938 Munich Agreement, when Czechoslovakia was handed over to Nazi Germany by Western powers, has left a deep-seated awareness that diplomatic decoupling from Washington often correlates with heightened vulnerability along NATO's eastern flank. This is why Poland and the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) have for years hosted US troops and air defence systems, alongside NATO battlegroups. NATO's eastern flank countries have routinely cautioned that if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, 'they are next.'
This concern is particularly acute in light of the Trump administration's active push to broker a flash ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine, reportedly involving territorial concessions to Moscow. President Trump has made clear he wants to be remembered as 'a peacemaker and unifier', a theme he emphasised again in his second inaugural address. His advisers have floated frameworks that would freeze the conflict along current front lines, potentially recognise Russian control over Crimea and parts of Donbas, and block Ukraine's NATO aspirations. But Ukrainians are not seeking peace at any price, nor should the Europeans. Any deal that cedes Ukrainian territory or is seen as legitimising Russian aggression risks emboldening the Kremlin, weakening NATO's credibility and undermining Europe's long-term security architecture.
Since Russia's 2022 full-scale incursion, the Kremlin has repeatedly tested NATO's Article 5 resolve through various provocations along the eastern flank, including airspace violations and missile incidents. For example, in February 2024, Estonia was subjected to electronic warfare from Russian territory that disrupted GPS signals across its eastern border regions, affecting both civilian infrastructure and military communications systems. One month later, a Russian cruise missile entered Polish airspace for 39 seconds before returning to Ukrainian territory. Moreover, in August 2023, Russian fighter jets conducted aggressive intercepts of NATO surveillance aircraft over the Baltic Sea, coming within dangerous proximity and executing unpredictable manoeuvres that risked mid-air collisions.
Such a status quo can deteriorate quickly should Putin's aggression, under a Trump-brokered deal, enable Russia to carve out a piece of Ukraine or achieve troop disengagement from Eastern Europe. Russia may also continue its military buildup after the war stops, buying time for later aggressions and compounding the challenge for CEE and Europe.
Against this backdrop, CEE leaders would do well to pursue a dual-track strategy, despite the volatility of current US foreign policy.
First, the region's engineering workforce and industrial might have an outsized role to play in rearming Europe in the face of US disengagement and Europe's stepped-up defence pledges, particularly in partnership with Germany. In Germany, this shift of actively repurposing idle civilian manufacturing facilities into military production hubs is already firmly under way. Its defence firms have been actively converting shuttered or underperforming automotive facilities, such as those in Berlin and Neuss, and rail plants in Gorlitz, to produce Leopard tanks, Puma IFVs and artillery systems, into hybrid military production hubs. This industrial push is enabled by Germany's domestic reforms, notably Berlin approving a sweeping defence procurement law that simplifies contracting, raises tender thresholds and fast-tracks construction for military infrastructure.
Such deliberate reallocating of resources from beleaguered civilian industries toward military industrial output holds clear implications for allied production networks in CEE. In addition, CEE countries have been ramping up their own heavy manufacturing capacity, with Poland and Slovakia stepping up joint production of artillery and armoured vehicles, and Czechia's Czechoslovak Group surging to the forefront of Europe's munitions supply chain, with a 4-billion-euro ($4.6bn) revenue spike and an 11-billion-euro ($12.7bn) order book anchored in Ukraine bound exports.
The CEE region, with its faltering car manufacturing competitiveness now worsened by Trump car tariffs, needs to latch onto this opportunity to tackle both its security and economic imperatives. In doing so, it can benefit from the 800-billion-euro ($921.8bn) defence mobilisation plan, coupled with its proposal for 150 billion euros ($172.8bn) in EU-backed loans, approved in Brussels on March 6.
Second, hedging against US security disengagement through the combination of strategic industrial repositioning and European solidarity must be complemented by persistent efforts to secure better outcomes through diplomatic channels with Washington.
This remains necessary even as ideological alignment frays, because transactional partnerships can still deliver meaningful security benefits. To that end, the region can leverage some of its unique strategic assets, including Poland's substantial arms purchases from US manufacturers, Romania's critical Black Sea security infrastructure and the Baltic states' sophisticated cybersecurity capabilities, with an administration that prizes transactional diplomacy.
The path forward requires setting aside both illusions and grievances at a time when security guarantees must be earned rather than assumed. In this emerging reality, Eastern European nations can meaningfully partake in rearming Europe while demonstrating their value as partners, as they navigate the shifting fault lines of post-American Europe.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.