Can Europe survive without US defence? Surprisingly, the Baltic sea nations are showing the way | Elisabeth Braw

WWhen European countries in the Baltic Sea region joined NATO to protect themselves against Russia, they did not expect that their most powerful NATO ally would be the one who would threaten to take over them. The shock of the Greenland crisis may have faded from the headlines, but Donald Trump’s United States has also hinted that it may decide not to defend Europe. And Russia continues to be a nuisance in the Baltic Sea.

Fortunately, the vulnerable Baltic countries have launched an impressive series of initiatives to ensure the security of their mini-ocean. As the United States offloads responsibility for Europe’s defense, these efforts could serve as a model for the future of NATO itself.

Finland announced in January that it would partner with other Baltic countries to create a maritime surveillance center. Finland sees this as a way to increase its capacity and authority to intervene in “situations” in its territorial sea and exclusive economic zone. This is a reasonable measure.

And it’s not the only one. When the two Nord Stream gas pipelines exploded in the exclusive economic zones of Sweden and Denmark in September 2022, the region was completely surprised. Certainly, some prophetic voices had been warning for years that undersea cables and pipelines were vulnerable to sabotage, but with virtually no suspicious incidents endangering this invaluable infrastructure, complacency set in. Then came the sabotage of Nord Stream, followed by the arrival of Russia’s ghost fleet – designed to evade oil sanctions – and the mysterious rupture of two cables and a pipeline in 2023.

Ocean coastal states – with the exception of Russia – began to cooperate more. As undersea cables continued to be mysteriously cut, threatening energy supplies and the internet, and ghost ships passed through these waters daily, they began to improve information sharing, an annoying but essential measure. They launched an AI tool called Nordic Warden to detect anomalies above underwater cables and pipelines. Their navies and coast guards have expanded their maritime patrols. They initiated phantom inspections of ships (a more difficult task than it seems, because international maritime law grants all ships freedom of navigation). Early last year, they even created a joint maritime patrol service to protect cables and pipelines day and night. Although Baltic Sentry, as this patrol is called, is officially a NATO initiative, it is executed by the Baltic Sea countries themselves.

For Estonia, 2023 was a rude awakening, as Erkki Tori, the country’s national security adviser, told me. Today, in 2026, he claims that the Russian Shadow Fleet is not only being fought in the Baltic Sea, but also in other waters. Existing maritime law is a constraint but it allows certain types of actions, Tori insists. Exchanging ideas and practices with other countries is an essential part of the solution.

The same approach – acting within the bounds of international law – applies to the protection of undersea cables and pipelines. “The international mechanisms the world has were not designed for things like this, but we tried anyway – respecting the rule of law,” says Tori.

The Baltic Sea nations seem to have inspired other countries. The French navy in January seized a so-called Russian ghost tanker registered under a false flag in the waters between Spain and Morocco. This is the second intervention of this type by France with a suspected ghost tanker in recent months.

Indeed, the Baltic Sea countries demonstrate what NATO member states can do, particularly by partnering with their neighbors. This is important now that the alliance’s ability to function is in question. As Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen concluded at the height of the Greenland crisis, NATO would no longer exist if the United States decided to attack the territory of another member country.

Trump may decide to leave Greenland alone for the time being (although Frederiksen is not very optimistic on this point, as she made clear at the Munich Security Conference). Still, the question remains whether the United States would support European countries in the event of an attack, as required by the NATO treaty’s mutual defense commitment, or Article 5. “If they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them,” Trump said last March, referring to his European NATO allies. A few months later, member states committed to spending 5% of their GDP on defense and related areas.

Ordinary Europeans have already drawn their own conclusions about how NATO needs to be reinvented for an era when the United States is deploying fewer and fewer military capabilities. In Sweden, only a quarter of the population thinks the United States would come to their aid in the event of an attack. Last June, 51% of Britons considered it unlikely that the United States would come to the aid of the Baltic states in the event of a Russian attack.

This is why initiatives such as the maritime collaboration of the Baltic Sea countries are so essential. NATO could survive, even prosper, in the long term. Trump could abandon his confrontational stance. But no one knows that. It is imperative to form smaller groups: this allows NATO countries to take care of their own regions, without NATO and without the United States. Moreover, it does not harm the alliance.

The localized cooperation we are seeing between Baltic Sea countries is a preview of NATO’s future.

• Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank. She is the author of Goodbye, Globalization: The Return of a Divided World and The Defender’s Dilemma: Identifying and Deterring Gray-Zone Aggression.