It would backfire like Brexit. Imagine the USA openly shunted by all former allies about their war crimes and other international crimes. The US forgets they currently can get away with a lot, and they do, because they are also an important ally. If you remove their NATO support, what reason is left to whistle ignorance?
I’m not in favor of leaving NATO immediately, but to say that Europe would have much leverage is disingenuous. The US enjoys many strategic advantages over Europe besides NATO membership they have:
Large wealthy consumer base with healthy demographics, worlds most advanced military, fastest growing net exporter of energy, worlds largest blue ocean navy that has kept sea lanes open for trade, etc. etc.
Europe is incapable of projecting power beyond EU boarders without US logistical support. They lack the necessary logistical support to do it at scale. They also can’t perform SEAD operations and don’t have the satellite and intelligence gathering assets that the US has.
In short they can take action against the US at their own peril.
It’s not about Europe. It’s about the massive fuckton of TS//SCI shit shared directly with FIVE EYES and NATO, which shows the exact locations of US strategic nuclear weapons, strategic weapons protocols, intelligence gathering techniques and sources, etc that can almost immediately be sent directly to Russia and China as soon as the US walks out the door. It’s about the first line of defense missile detection radars, the cryptologic keys, Global Campaign Plans, Contingency Plans, PBNZ coordinates, non-overflight coordinates, FLAGWORDS, etc.
And that’s not all - you also lost all international trade, everywhere, forever. Bye-bye middle eastern oil and Chinese manufactured goods, because all your oh-so-friendly shipping lanes and freedom of the seas is now contested waters full of could-be-privateers. If the EU, by pure necessity, pivots Eastward into a pan-Eurasian bloc, that’s game for the US.
Breaking away would be painful but there is nothing you’ve stated on the Op Sec side that can’t be changed or moved. Early warning radars are forward positioned for the safety of our allies. Shuttering them would hurt them more than us.
Cheap Chinese goods are a thing of the past. The CCP under Xi is openly hostile to the West. Due to the one child policy their demographics are even more terminal than Europes or Russia’s. The US is in the middle of the largest industrial build out in modern history because of this.
We don’t need Middle Eastern oil, the US is the fastest growing net exporter of oil and gas. If anything they compete with our energy products. Europe and Asia would be hit harder by the US pulling back from guaranteeing freedom of the seas for the global order. If US ships were not on station off the coast of Yemen you would see a larger disruption of trade. Europe has contributed very little to this operation which they are arguably more dependent on.
The US also has the best demographics of the Western world, we are the largest driver of international trade. Europe needs our healthy growing market and workforce more than we need theirs which are in terminal decline.
So, you cool if Canada nopes out of NORAD too then? Gonna use smoke signals for your DEW?
Canada can’t defend their own airspace without US assistance. They have 78 VERY old and tired CF-18s that date back to 1982 to patrol an airspace larger than the US.
They can nope out of whatever they want and get taken over by Russia and China. (Shit even India doesn’t respect their sovereignty and runs Special Ops on their soil.) However I very much doubt the US will let that happen.
Brexit was a disaster because the UK economy was third-place-and-shrinking in the economic block. They had no leverage.
NATOXIT would be a much bigger deal, because the US is the premier global military power and the single largest exporter of weapons and associated tech.
Also, the NATO thing is pure bluster in order to assert leverage over the bloc, while Brexit was a dog-catching-the-car scenario. The Tories invented so many fictions about how awful EU membership was that they couldn’t accept what generous concessions were offered. Meanwhile, Trump will happily take a big personal kickback for a small concession on arms sales.
