For eighty years the free world’s security ran on a single hub, and everyone knew who it was: the United States. What the Viking Alliance is building is the first credible answer to what happens if that hub is captured from within by a combination of grifters, neofascists, and chaos monkeys. The people who spent a decade telling Europe to carry its own weight have finally gotten their wish. And the United States is much less powerful a weight in world security affairs as a result.
Capture the hub of a hub-and-spoke alliance, and it collapses. That is the vulnerability NATO has carried since 1945. Putin thought he had captured the hub via his “special relationship” with Donald Trump as Washington went awry. But every place that Vikings ever set foot—Sweden, Canada, and Ukraine at the core; with Germany, the Baltics, the other Nordics; plus France and Britain and Poland; are now building an advance guard: a durable European capability that no longer depends on the United States showing up. For the first time, “and if the Americans don’t come?” has an answer other than “then we lose.” NATO is becoming a web. Webs are much harder to capture than hubs. And they move by rough consensus, not by the will and whims of a single hub.
We have, from Shankar Narayan:
With commentary:
Shankar Narayan: The Coalition of the Doing : ‘Canada supplied the trigger. But… what is rare is actually walking through the door. Sweden did. And now the results are starting to pile up…. One country begins running hard and fast… and, in doing so, starts connecting… making the entire structure stronger than the sum of its parts…. Let us rewind the clock to May 27 and then roll it forward, one decision at a time. Because when you see what happened next, laid out in sequence, there really is no other way to describe it: this has been extraordinary…
Brad DeLong here: What do I think? This:
Charles Kindleberger taught us that an open international order, whether oriented around trade or security, needs a hegemon willing to be the lender, buyer, and guarantor of “last resort” in economics, and the leader-director in security. In the years after U.S. entry into WWII at the end of 1941 both halves of the post-WWII order outside the Iron Curtain ran on a single anchor, a single hub, the United States.
What Canada triggered, what Sweden walked through, and is now gelling as what Narayan calls the Coalition of the Doing and I call the Viking Alliance is the creation of a new, second potential anchor for the NATO-EU portion of the open international order. What Canada and Sweden and Germany and Ukraine; plus Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, France, and Britain; are doing is building-up an advance guard with a durable, standing capability for military action inside Europe. Procurement, logistics, industrial base, command: the whole stack. And this advance guard’s capability, when built, does not at any point in the causal chain route through the Washington, DC currently controlled by a bunch of grifters, neofascists, and chaos monkeys. An alliance with one indispensable leader is a hub-and-spoke. Hub-and-spokes are brittle exactly where they look strongest. Capture the hub and the thing collapses. But an alliance with two credible centers of gravity in initiating force commitment is a network with redundancy. For the first time since 1945 there exists a plausible answer to the question “and if the Americans don’t come?” that is not simply “then we lose.”
There is irony here, entirely lost on the people who spent a decade demanding Europe “pay its fair share” have gotten their wish: the United States in foreign affairs no longer has its weight multiplied by NATO to the dominant strength of 1,000,000,000 people living in the rich industrial civilization, but only its own 350,000,000.
"Viking Alliance" is pretty good, and I'm glad that for once someone got there before Snyder (as far as I know.)
I do suspect, though I cannot prove, that before Trump everyone more or less knew the score? America would pretend to chastise its allies for not funding large enough militaries, and the allies would pretend to hang their heads and look chastened, but the underlying logic was that if the alliance was going to be directed by America in a way to support American priorities, it would be in America's interest to defend its allies and therefore those allies would be less motivated to field expensive militaries. Conversely, if the allies had independent military means, then they would tend to make independent decisions. Pick your poison.
But in this area, as in so many others, the Trump administration is exploring the wilder shores of incompetence.
The Principality of Antioch? The short-lived Norman Principality of Tunisia? But touché...
Facts Only
* The United States has been the single hub for world security for eighty years.
* The Viking Alliance is being built as an answer to what happens if this hub is captured from within.
* Capture of a hub-and-spoke alliance leads to collapse.
* NATO has carried this vulnerability since 1945.
* The coalition involves Sweden, Canada, and Ukraine at the core; Germany, the Baltics, other Nordics, France, Britain, and Poland are building an advance guard capability.
* A network of two credible centers of gravity offers redundancy against collapse.
* The creation of this alliance builds a durable European capability independent of the United States.
* Shankar Narayan observed that sequential actions create results where one country runs hard and fast, connecting structures.
* The author suggests an alternative to "we lose" if the Americans do not intervene in security matters.
* The text notes that the weight of the United States in foreign affairs is less than its potential when multiplied by NATO across the world population.
Executive Summary
The text discusses the shift in global security architecture away from a structure reliant on the United States as the sole security hub, which has persisted for eighty years. The author posits that the Viking Alliance is building an alternative structure to address the vulnerability inherent in a hub-and-spoke system where the center (the hub) can be captured. This shift is fueled by actions taken by Nordic and European nations building up a "durable European capability" outside of direct U.S. dependency.
The author references insights from Shankar Narayan, who describes a process where one country's action triggers further commitments, leading to a "Coalition of the Doing." Brad DeLong suggests that while a single hegemon is ideal for an open international order, an alliance involving multiple credible centers of gravity—such as Canada, Sweden, Germany, Ukraine, and other Nordic/European states—creates a network with redundancy. This multi-center approach provides a plausible alternative to the risk associated with relying solely on the United States in security matters.
The author notes an irony regarding the principle that Europe should "pay its fair share," suggesting that while demands were made for increased funding, the underlying logic often favored U.S. interests, potentially discouraging independent military development among allies. The text concludes by suggesting that moving toward a network structure mitigates the risk of total collapse if the central hub is compromised.
Full Take
The core argument shifts from a zero-sum view of global power to an examination of structural resilience. The central pattern observed is the transition from brittle, centralized hierarchical structures (the hub-and-spoke model) to resilient, decentralized networked systems (webs). This implies that security stability depends less on the singular will of a hegemon and more on distributed, overlapping capabilities among actors.
The narrative uses historical examples—the post-WWII order anchored by the U.S.—to establish the baseline for risk assessment. The specific reference to Canada triggering action and Sweden walking through, leading to the "Coalition of the Doing," serves as a case study demonstrating how incremental, decentralized commitments can accumulate into significant structural change that bypasses singular dependency. This moves beyond simple geopolitical maneuvering to analyze the mechanics of collective security formation.
The underlying implication is a challenge to the accepted narrative of American primacy in global security by proposing an alternative foundation: interdependence and redundancy. The skepticism applied to the motivation behind prior demands (the "pay its fair share" dynamic) suggests that perceived obligations often mask self-serving priorities. The focus on how smaller, coordinated actions create strength rather than dependence highlights a potential pathway for cognitive sovereignty—understanding that power structures are less about singular control and more about relational capability.
Bridge Questions: How does the concept of "durable European capability" translate into tangible military or economic advantages outside direct U.S. leadership? What are the specific systemic vulnerabilities within current NATO structures that are most exposed by this network approach? If the system is indeed a network, what mechanisms prevent fragmentation when consensus breaks down across multiple centers of gravity?