From a Community of Values to an Alliance of Capabilities

As the Western narrative weakens, technology and strategic capabilities are becoming increasingly important for NATO

For decades, NATO was portrayed as more than a military alliance. It was described as the community of the free world under American leadership — an expression of a shared Western project built on democracy, freedom, and common values. The narrative was never entirely coherent or free of internal contradictions, but it provided legitimacy both for the United States’ global role and for Europe’s dependence on American security guarantees. Today, that narrative is rapidly changing.

The shift is especially visible in messaging from the Trump administration and its surrounding circles. Whereas earlier generations of American leaders emphasized responsibility, solidarity, and Western leadership, today’s American right increasingly speaks in terms of exploitation, asymmetry, and costs. The United States is no longer presented primarily as the leader of the free world, but as a country that for decades has allowed itself to be exploited by allies and international institutions.

The shift affects not only NATO but the entire American role in the world. Yet NATO makes the transformation particularly visible because the alliance for decades functioned as a central symbol of the transatlantic community.

At the same time, the idea of NATO as a Western community of values has never been entirely consistent. NATO long included both Turkey, authoritarian Portugal, and Greece under military rule, even while Greece and Turkey themselves were historical rivals. During the Cold War these contradictions could be kept in the background because the Soviet threat gave the alliance a common geopolitical purpose. NATO could thus be portrayed as a community of democracies even though its member states represented very different political traditions and social models, and not all member states were even democratic.

Under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, this contradiction has become more visible. At the same time as parts of the MAGA movement describe Europe as threatened by Islamization and cultural decline, Turkey remains a central member of NATO. Under Erdoğan, the country has gradually moved away from the strictly secular interpretation of Atatürk’s legacy in favor of a more explicitly religious political identity. This illustrates that the alliance’s actual cohesion is not based solely on cultural or ideological unity, but also on strategic and military necessities.

It is against this background that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Sweden on May 21–22, 2026 becomes particularly interesting. At the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, Rubio emphasized that Europe and the United States still form part of the same Western and Christian civilization, while simultaneously suggesting that Europe risks drifting away from this community of values. At the same conference in Munich in 2025, Vice President J. D. Vance had expressed even more clearly and confrontationally his concern that Europe was abandoning the Western value community that had previously united Europe and the United States.

The rhetoric from the Trump administration has often targeted progressive liberalism, mass immigration, and what American conservatives describe as Europe’s cultural disintegration. In American culture-war rhetoric, Sweden has long functioned almost as a symbol of precisely the kind of development criticized by parts of the MAGA movement.

Yet in Helsingborg, Rubio simultaneously described Sweden as a particularly valuable addition to NATO. He noted that generally the additions to NATO have been countries that join because they were in a weak position, whereas the two most recent members brought to the table capabilities that NATO didn’t use to have. The statement clearly referred to Finland as well, even though the country was not mentioned explicitly. Rubio also noted that Sweden was the first European country to join the technological cooperation initiative “Pax Silica” and described Ericsson as a central Western actor in the technological competition with China and Huawei.

Here the transformation of the NATO narrative becomes especially clear. The focus no longer lies primarily on shared values or Western identity, but on concrete military, strategic, and technological capabilities. At the same time, Donald Trump himself has often spoken about “NATO” as if the United States stood outside the alliance and NATO in practice were synonymous with America’s European allies. When Trump criticizes “NATO” for failing to take responsibility, the issue therefore often concerns less the organization itself than legitimizing, before an American domestic audience, a reduced American commitment to Europe, Ukraine, and the role of global policeman. In this context, Finland and Sweden are legitimized within NATO not as vulnerable frontier states in need of protection, but as producers of security.

Finland, in particular, has actively promoted the image of itself as a “security provider” rather than a security consumer. This is an image that appeals both to Finns and to parts of the Trump administration, and which therefore worked well both during the path toward membership and after membership became a reality. Finland emphasizes territorial defense, conscription, large reserves, total defense, and experience dealing with Russia — but also Arctic expertise, icebreaker capabilities, and high-tech competence in quantum technology, telecommunications, and satellite systems. The narrative is that by joining NATO, Finland has not only gained protection itself but above all strengthened the alliance. Sweden has partly been included in the same narrative package through the strategic importance of the Baltic Sea region, the defense industry, and high technological competence.

For Sweden, membership has simultaneously required a more substantial reinterpretation of the national self-image. Whereas Finland has long defined itself through preparedness and defense capability, Sweden has more strongly needed to legitimize a break with the tradition of non-alignment and with the image of the country as a neutral moral superpower. Such legitimization was probably easier within the value-based transatlantic narrative that still dominated under the Biden administration than within today’s more nationalist and transactional American rhetoric.

Rubio’s references to Ericsson and “Pax Silica,” which Finland also joined at an early stage, further demonstrate that the NATO narrative today is expanding far beyond traditional military power. Telecommunications, digital infrastructure, quantum technology, AI, and technological competitiveness are becoming increasingly central components of security policy. In this perspective, Nokia, Ericsson, and Nordic technological expertise become strategic assets in the competition with China.

This suggests the emergence of a new Western security narrative. The old narrative of “the free world under American leadership” is weakening while a new and less ideologically coherent system is emerging — one in which technology, networks, resilience, and strategic capability matter more than the idea of a unified Western community of values.

In my doctoral dissertation Stora och små europeiska historier (Grand and Small European Stories) from 1998, inspired by Jean-François Lyotard’s analysis of computerized societies, I argued that the European Union lacked a single common legitimizing narrative. Europe already appeared then less as a project grounded in one European metanarrative than as a network of partly competing national and ideological stories.

NATO today appears to find itself in a similar situation that could be described as a kind of postmodern condition. There is no longer a single story explaining why the alliance exists. Instead, several different and partly contradictory NATO narratives coexist — some old and established, others new and potentially disruptive.

For France, NATO is largely about European strategic autonomy and the possibility of balancing American influence. For Germany, NATO still concerns stability and the European security order established after the Second World War. For the Eastern European member states, the narrative is often about existential protection against Russia. For Finland and Sweden, membership concerns both security and active participation in the defense of Northern Europe and the Baltic region.

Most interesting, perhaps, is that the United States itself is now producing competing narratives about NATO. The traditional American narrative of NATO has regarded alliances as the foundation of American global power and credibility. It still enjoys strong support both at the institutional level and within parts of the Republican Party. A newer narrative, which today dominates large parts of the MAGA movement, instead portrays alliances as burdens that others exploit at America’s expense.

The Trump administration’s narratives are directed primarily toward a domestic American audience. Whereas previous generations of American leaders needed to legitimize why the United States should bear responsibility for the free world, today’s nationalist narratives instead seek to justify why the United States no longer can — or should — do so. The rhetoric therefore concerns not only NATO or Ukraine, but also preparing American voters for a possible retreat from the mission of upholding the international order that the United States itself helped establish after the Second World War.

Yet the existence of contradictory NATO narratives does not necessarily mean that the alliance is disintegrating. Institutions can continue functioning and even remain strong despite differing stories about their meaning across member states and political environments. Perhaps it is precisely a characteristic strength of pluralistic Western societies that common institutions do not require complete ideological unity or a single shared narrative.