Estonia’s President Alar Karis told Euronews he remains confident that the United States will honour Article 5 of NATO’s common defence despite a turbulent phase for the transatlantic relationship under President Donald Trump.
Since his return to the White House last year, the US President has rattled the fundamentals of the bilateral relationship between the two blocs, imposing tariffs on the European Union and referring to its leadership as “weak” and “decaying.”
Still, President Karis said Washington would come to the assistance of Europe if there was an attack on an allied country. Article 5 is the bedrock of NATO and obliges allies to assist each other on the basis that “an attack on one is an attack on all.”
Without Article 5, defence analysts suggest NATO would be severely impacted and rendered futile as a defensive alliance. To appease Trump, European allies agreed to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP at a NATO summit last summer.
“We’re not worried,” President Karis said when asked about concerns that Washington is walking back on its commitments to collective security during an interview with Euronews on the sidelines of the World Governments Summit in Dubai.
Nonetheless, he suggested Europe should not put Article 5 to the test and focus on improving its defence capabilities, suggesting the continent had been “naive” to relegate its security following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“We don’t want to test Article 5, but we have to be ready to defend ourselves,” he said.
“After the fall of the Berlin Wall, we thought wars were over, and we were developing so fast, but if you look back in history, it’s a story of thousands of years of wars,” he added.
“We have to be prepared and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Or at least to postpone it,” the Estonian President warned in comments to Euronews.
Watch the full interview with Estonian President Karis on The Europe Conversation.
