The Trump Administration Convened a Select NATO Working Group in Poland to Discuss the Alliance's Future — and Pointedly Left Out the United Kingdom, France, and the Frontline Baltic States, Three of the Allies Most Committed to Defending Europe and Deterring Russia — Prompting Diplomats to Warn That Washington Is Trying to Split NATO Into "the Good Ones and the Bad Ones"

NATO's strength has never been any single country; it is the unity of all of them — the promise that an attack on one is an attack on all, which is only as credible as the alliance's cohesion. The fastest way to weaken that promise without firing a shot is to start sorting members into insiders and outsiders. The Trump administration just did exactly that, and left some of the alliance's most vital members on the outside.

Who was in, and who was out

The administration organized a Pentagon-led working group — reported as the "Bergen Group" — to meet in Poland and discuss NATO's future. The invitees: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands. The conspicuous absences:

• The United Kingdom and France — two of Europe's foremost military powers, its two nuclear-armed states, and among the largest defense contributors on the continent
• Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — the Baltic frontline, the NATO members most directly exposed to Russia and, relative to their size, among the most committed spenders and contributors in the alliance

These are not peripheral members being spared a minor meeting. They are, by most measures, exactly the countries that take collective defense most seriously and bear the most risk from Russian aggression. Excluding them from a conversation about the alliance's future is like planning the defense of a house while leaving out the people who live on the side facing the threat.

The alarm it caused

Allied diplomats reacted with confusion and worry, questioning what criteria could possibly justify the lineup and warning explicitly against dividing the alliance. One diplomat's summary captured the stakes on both sides of the Atlantic: "If they try splitting NATO into the good ones and the bad ones, it is dangerous for the US. But for Europe, this is existential." That is the crux. A tiered NATO — an inner circle hand-picked by Washington and an outer ring of the excluded — is a weaker NATO, because its deterrent power depends on adversaries believing every member will be defended. Introduce doubt about who is really "in," and you hand Russia precisely the wedge it has sought for decades.

Why it belongs here

In fairness, smaller working groups and coalitions within NATO are not inherently improper, and it is possible the administration had some functional rationale it did not clearly explain — the opacity of the criteria was itself part of what unsettled allies. But the pattern is what makes the benefit of the doubt hard to extend. This archive has documented a foreign policy that repeatedly strains America's alliances while easing pressure on its adversaries: gutting joint exercises with South Korea to flatter Kim Jong Un, offering to sell weapons to China, launching a war that alienated partners, and a general transactional contempt for the friendships that are the United States' greatest strategic inheritance. Sidelining the UK, France, and the Baltics — the allies most willing to stand against Russia — is of a piece with it. The countries that would be first to answer an Article 5 call were the ones not invited to the table. Moscow could not have drawn the guest list better itself.