In widening NATO spat, Rubio calls for the alliance to be "reexamined" while Trump tells U.K. and other allies that "the U.S.A. won't be there to help you anymore"

We’re in the middle of another NATO spat. The Americans are accusing the Europeans of disloyalty and ungratefulness, while the Europeans are quietly (or, in the case of Spain, not-so-quietly) criticising the Iran war and preparing for the looming energy crisis. Spain was the first NATO ally to deny the United States access to the jointly operated Rota and Morón air bases for Operation Epic Fury. Yesterday, the Spanish went further and closed their entire airspace to American planes involved in the war; Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles glossed the move by declaring the Iran war to be “profoundly illegal and unjust.” Last week, Italy denied use of its Sigonella air base in Sicily to American bombers involved in the Iran war, “because the U.S. had not requested clearance and Italy’s military leadership had not been consulted.” Over the weekend, France denied Israel the use of its airspace “to transport American weapons to be used in the war against Iran,” apparently for the first time. And finally today, Polish are reporting that Poland has turned down an American request to send its Patriot air defence batteries to the Middle East. Polish Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz explained that “Our Patriot batteries and their armaments are used to protect Polish airspace and NATO’s eastern flank. Nothing is changing in this regard, and we have no plans to move them anywhere!” The Americans have thus continued to sour on the alliance. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Al Jazeera that “If NATO is just about us defending Europe if they’re attacked but then denying us basing rights when we need them, that’s not a very good arrangement.” Such an alliance, he added, is “a hard one to stay engaged in and say this is good for the United States, so all that’s going to have to be reexamined.” And on Truth Social just a few hours ago, U.S. President Donald J. Trump made the following posts: A lot of commentators in the coming days are going to proclaim the death of NATO, so allow me to offer a counterpoint: It is the province of internet crazies like me to call for the phase-out of NATO. The Americans are not going to do it and the Europeans aren’t either. These squabbles over airspace and basing privileges have happened before, they’re not a big deal and technically speaking they’re also not really about NATO anyway. The alliance provides too many advantages for both sides and nobody has any serious interest in letting it go. These conflicts have other purposes. They are one way for Trump and aligned Republicans to score points with their nativist base at the expense of ostensible European allies who will not do very much about it, and they are probably also regarded within the Trump administration as a means of pressuring some allies to contribute to future efforts to open the Strait of Hormuz. For the Europeans, on the other hand, NATO spats in the Trump era provide an opportunity to distance themselves from a president who is pretty unpopular on the Continent and in this case from an even more unpopular war.