The Financial Times recently reported that the EU plans to move forward with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to establish an Article 4-like mechanism among the bloc’s members. Per the NATO Charter, “The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.” Most EU members are already NATO members, however, so this proposal might seem redundant.
That’s substantively true, but the salience lies in the insinuation that European NATO (E-NATO) suspects that the bloc’s American leader might not share their threat perception of whatever it may be that prompts at least one of them to request urgent consultations. Extrapolating from that, the innuendo is that the US can’t be relied upon to unquestionably support them through the dispatch of troops and/or the launching of strikes if tensions (which can contextually only refer to Russia) explode into a hot war.
Accordingly, E-NATO is building parallel decision-making mechanisms for the scenario of them going it alone against Russia, in which case the US could remain on the sidelines on the grounds of having advised against whatever course of action E-NATO proposed during their Article 4 consultations. Nevertheless, in the spirit of Article 5, the US might still support them with arms, intelligence, and logistics just like it and the rest of NATO as a whole are presently supporting Ukraine.
E-NATO leaders have fearmongered that Russia might either soon test their resolve or do so by around 2030 at the latest, ergo the urgency with which they plan to move forward with von der Leyen’s Article 4-like proposal. In parallel, the US is reportedly planning to withdraw up to 40,000 of its 80,000 troops in Europe upon the impending conclusion of the Pentagon’s European force posture review by year’s end, thus imbuing a further sense of urgency to this task even if the US obtains a permanent base in Poland.
On that topic, Poland’s ruling liberal coalition has been leading E-NATO’s hysteria about a Russian attack against the bloc, yet its Foreign Minister just met his Belarusian counterpart on the sidelines of the UNGA in the first meeting between their countries’ top diplomats in a decade. Their resultant “snowdrop diplomacy”, which is inspired by Radek Sikorski’s quip right after that “a snowdrop can bloom if the weather is favorable”, could alleviate the hysteria that he and his coalition sparked if successful.
Even in this best-case scenario that could still easily be derailed, Poland and the rest of E-NATO likely wouldn’t ever feel fully comfortable due to their liberal elites’ sincere fear of Russia (irrespective of its irrationality), so it’s still important for them to prioritize the creation of an Article 4-like mechanism. The main role therein will arguably be played by Poland due to its central role in the western flank of the new “cordon sanitaire” around Russia imbuing it with outsized significance in the new security architecture.
That being the case, the most realistic guarantor of stability would then be the parallel pullback of some E-NATO forces from the Baltic States and some Russian forces from Belarus if the US first pulls back some of its own from the Baltic States, with Poland then taking responsibility for their security in a crisis. The creation of a crisis-control channel between Russia (which is responsible for Belarus), E-NATO (with Poland at the forefront and responsible for the Baltic States), and the US would then uphold the peace.
