Responding to Transatlantic Troubles: NATO, President Trump, and the EU’s Quest for Strategic Autonomy

While it is a highly adaptable institution and has reinvented itself at several points in its seventy-year long history, NATO is not immune to the wider contestation of the post-Cold War multilateral order. Since 2016, NATO has been confronted with new challenges of unprecedented nature that question its continued raison d'être. Unlike most previous challenges that came from without the alliance, critical contemporary challenges stem from within. US President Trump has frequently put the future of NATO into question, infamously declaring it ‘obsolete’. Meanwhile, the EU Global Strategy called for greater strategic autonomy, thereby raising the spectre of decoupling from NATO. Alas, NATO is not merely a pawn at the mercy of its member-states. Institutionalist literature demonstrates that international organisations (IOs) can play a consequential role in shaping their fate, though some are better than others at coping with challenges. Different challenges require different responses, and IOs’ ability to effectively respond to, and thus survive, a challenge, should depend on their institutional characteristics. This article consequently develops a new theoretical framework to explain IO’s varying ability to deal with challenges. It suggests that the fit between, on the one hand, the necessary institutional responses arising out of the nature of the challenge and, on the other, the actually exhibited institutional features determines the institutional outcome. The article subsequently tests this theory by 1) analysing the nature of both the ‘Trump Challenge’ and the ‘Strategic Autonomy Challenge’; 2) process-tracing NATO’s institutional responses; and 3) examining its (early) outcomes. Novel data from original interviews with NATO and national officials conducted in 2020 serves as the primary source. By applying a new institutionalist framework to analyse most recent contestation of NATO that has hitherto not been addressed, the article seeks to contribute to an emerging research agenda on IOs under pressure and a better understanding of the dynamics of the Euro-Atlantic security environment and NATO’s role within it.