In the 21st century alliances ceased to fulfill their key function — preventing conflicts. Instead, they have increasingly become sources of tension as old mechanisms of collective security no longer correspond to new realities.
The main reason for this is an asymmetry of interests. Major powers are no longer willing to pay for the security of smaller partners. The United States, which in the 20th century was the architectural and motivational core of most defensive alliances, increasingly demonstrates unwillingness to bear costs and risks for allies. Donald Trump has repeatedly emphasized this publicly. In March 2025, he stated: “If they don’t pay, I’m not going to protect them. No, I’m not going to protect them.” In the same series of speeches he repeated his position: “They must pay more.” This rhetoric is especially visible in Europe, where Washington questions commitments once considered unshakable. European governments increasingly doubt that the U.S. is willing to act as guarantor of NATO security. Trust was further undermined by the shutdown of Starlink over parts of Ukraine in 2022, which disrupted communications during a counteroffensive. There has also been concern over Trump’s readiness to consider Russia’s territorial claims as negotiable.
Most recently, Greenland has figured into this dynamic. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that talk of a possible “takeover of Greenland” would mean the end of NATO. And, at the beginning of 2026, European governments are taking action: the United Kingdom is negotiating a possible deployment of troops to Greenland while Germany is preparing a proposal to establish a NATO Arctic mission. These steps reflect not only growing tensions surrounding Arctic geopolitics but also the increasing determination of European states to act autonomously, without relying on the strategic predictability of the United States.
The second reason is an erosion of trust. In light of the above developments, governments increasingly doubt that allies will fulfill their treaty obligations in the event of a crisis. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty does not impose automatic military response; each country decides what measures it deems necessary. This legal space for interpretation undermines confidence in collective defense.
The third reason is the rapid growth of autonomous strategies. States increasingly prefer bilateral agreements, situational coalitions, and temporary alliances instead of cumbersome blocs that require consensus and lengthy procedures. Examples have already become the norm: AUKUS emerged as a narrow technological alliance, bypassing NATO and the EU; Turkey concluded its own defense deals with Russia and Middle Eastern countries; France and Greece signed a bilateral defense pact without waiting for EU approval. In a world where threats arise and change faster than summits are convened, flexibility becomes more important than formal commitments.
Finally, informational fragmentation and psychopolitics blur common goals. Informational fragmentation refers to the media space breaking into numerous unrelated segments, each forming its own picture of the world. Psychopolitics is the influence on the perception of threats, identity, and allies through language, symbols, and emotional markers. Together they create parallel realities in which allies see each other not as partners but as sources of problems.
Fragmentation and Autonomous Strategies
Changes in media tone often precede political ruptures. This is clearly visible in the case of Turkey: even before cooling relations with the EU and the U.S., Turkish state media began rhetoric about “Western double standards” and “disrespect for Ankara’s national interests.” Similarly, in Central Europe the rise of nationalist tone in media preceded the political drift of Hungary and Slovakia toward Moscow. When the symbolic field begins to crack in the information space, political rupture becomes a matter of time.
The case of CSTO is the most illustrative example of the destruction of the symbolic field of an alliance. Formally CSTO is a military union, but its actions in Kazakhstan in January 2022 demonstrate that it can function more as an instrument of internal suppression than collective defense. During the Second Karabakh War, CSTO displayed a total inability to protect Armenia, a member state. Even before the outbreak broke out, the tone in member state media subtly changed: rhetoric about “brotherhood” and “collective security” was supplanted by cautious formulations about “national interests” and “limited obligations.” Armenia’s subsequent move to scale back its participation in the CSTO — from freezing its activities to stopping financial contributions after the bloc failed to support Yerevan in the Karabakh war — demonstrates how large alliances can lose cohesion when they fail to fulfill their core security function.
Under this fragmentation, common values are replaced by mutual accusations, and collective identity gives way to national narratives — for example, the French concept of “strategic autonomy,” the Polish doctrine of the “eastern bastion,” or the Hungarian line of “sovereign foreign policy” oriented toward Moscow. Alliances created for unification increasingly become arenas of divergence of interests and competing interpretations of reality. In France, discussions of strategic autonomy and even the possibility of leaving NATO have intensified. European leaders have indicated concern about the future of the alliance, some have considered the implications of rising defense spending, others have questioned the reliability of US commitments amid troop reductions, and NATO commanders attempt to downplay the crisis amid evolving threats.
This crisis of global alliances reflects political disagreements and profound changes in international relations. When trust disappears and interests diverge, even the strongest unions can turn into sources of instability. And now, the global system faces a new necessity: seeking new forms of security capable of replacing the once-stabilizing effects of collective security blocs.
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