The alliance has no provision for the previously unthinkable: one of its members turning on another
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The idea that one Nato country could attack another – a US invasion of Greenland – is so alien that the most famous article in Nato’s founding treaty does not distinguish clearly what would happen if two of its members were at war.
Article 5, the cornerstone of mutual protection, dictates that “an armed attack against one or more” in Europe or North America shall be considered “an attack against them all”. Simple enough if the military threat comes from Russia, but more complicated when it comes from easily the alliance’s most powerful member.
“If the US chooses to attack another Nato country, everything will stop,” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Fredriksen, said on Monday. The military alliance may well continue to exist but its effectiveness will be called into fundamental question; the obvious beneficiary, an already aggressive Moscow.
