Trump has just handed Putin the prize he’s always wanted

Thanks to Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin has achieved the Soviet Union's long-held goal of dividing Nato. Photo / Getty Images

The Soviet Union spent more than 40 years trying to achieve what has just been handed to Vladimir Putin on a plate. Throughout the Cold War, the Kremlin’s primary objective was to split the Atlantic Alliance (Nato) by turning America and Europe against one another.

Every crisis over the security of West Berlin, from the Soviet ultimatum for the West to leave the city in 1958 to the building of the Wall in 1961, was designed to open cracks in Nato. “To make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin,” as Nikita Khrushchev, then Soviet leader, put it in 1959.

His successor, Leonid Brezhnev, deployed a new generation of nuclear missiles – the SS20s – in the satellite states of central Europe precisely to divide the West over how to respond.

All of those efforts failed. America and Europe knew exactly what the Soviets were up to and, though they differed and argued, the allies never allowed the Kremlin the satisfaction of watching them break apart.

Today, thanks to Donald Trump, Putin can revel in that spectacle. He has spent 25 years pursuing the old Soviet policy of trying to split the West. Time and again, he has denounced Nato for supposedly trying to “encircle” or “terrorise” Russia, as if the very existence of the Atlantic Alliance posed a threat to world peace, and as though the sight of sovereign countries choosing to join its ranks somehow justified his aggression.

Now, suddenly, the fissure Putin has always yearned for is opening before his eyes.

The President of the United States has not only laid claim to the sovereign territory of a Nato ally, Denmark, but threatened to use force to get his way. On Saturday, Trump deliberately escalated the confrontation by ordering punitive tariffs against no fewer than eight allies, including Britain, for the offence of saying what should be common cause: that the future status of Greenland is a matter for the island’s inhabitants and the government of Denmark.

Trump went further still by sending a threatening message to another ally, Norway. In a leaked letter to the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Store, Trump said that since he had been denied the Nobel Peace Prize he “no longer feel[s] an obligation to think purely of peace, although it will always be predominant”, adding that Denmark had no “right of ownership” over Greenland and that America’s “Complete and Total control” of the island was essential for global security.

Faced with looming American tariffs and constant threats, the EU is preparing to retaliate by invoking its “anti-coercion instrument” to impose €93 billion ($187b) of levies on US exports. This extraordinary measure, which has never been used before, is set to be deployed not against China or any other adversary, but against the superpower that has guaranteed Europe’s security for almost 80 years.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has so far declined to impose additional British tariffs on US exports, but the EU’s promised retribution shows the two sides are now doing their best to damage one another.

Putin can only sit back and enjoy the sight. And even if this quarrel is eventually resolved by some form of settlement between America and Europe over the future of Greenland – and, for all the sound and fury, that remains the most likely outcome – who will ever trust the United States to honour its Nato obligation to defend its European allies?

As Starmer said at Downing Street: “Alliances endure because they are built on respect and partnership, not pressure. The use of tariffs against allies is completely wrong.”

By heaping pressure on his friends – openly and boisterously – Trump has fundamentally undermined the Atlantic Alliance. Soviet leaders always knew that if they invaded any Nato ally, they would find themselves at war with America, a war they could not win. Peace itself depended on that belief. Why should Putin believe it now?

David Blair is the Daily Telegraph’s Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator.

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