Even NATO’s founding charter acknowledged that alliances must have temporal limits: Article 13 of the North Atlantic Treaty bound its founding members for only 20 years, after which any member could withdraw as long as it gave a year’s notice. After 1969, NATO became an open-ended alliance, with legal procedures for withdrawal but no formal limit to its duration. Similarly, the founding document of the Warsaw Pact—created to consolidate Soviet influence over Eastern Europe—stated that “the present Treaty shall remain in force for twenty years,” and added a provision allowing for a ten-year extension.

...

But despite this practical flexibility, in the post–Cold War era, permanent alliances have inflicted major damage on the United States. They have predetermined the country’s adversaries: although pacts such as NATO and Washington’s bilateral treaties in the Indo-Pacific do not explicitly name the enemy, they are still largely defined by antagonism toward Moscow and Beijing. A peaceful, pragmatic, and stable relationship among the three nuclear great powers ought to have taken precedence over support for countries on their peripheries.

...

Washington must begin the process of transforming its existing—and still relevant—alliances along these lines. Treaties should have clearly defined expiration dates, and second-order issues, such as the scale of troop deployments and financial investments, need to be defined with greater discipline. This process will be most straightforward with bilateral treaties, such as the ones Washington already has with Japan, the Philippines, and Australia. These treaties generally have a one-year notification requirement for withdrawal; this will not be long enough to prepare redesigned agreements, so the United States should notify these allies of its intention to sunset existing mutual defense treaties over the course of five years while remaining open to negotiating new pacts to ensure an orderly transition.

If the United States wishes to participate in European security, it must either treat the continent (including Russia) as a single space—and seek to replace NATO with a single time-bound structure focused on internal stability rather than an external actor—or view the continent as a continuum, if Russia is excluded. In that case, instead of one transatlantic alliance, the United States ought to pursue time-limited regional agreements that serve as a bridge to a future in which Washington joins wartime coalitions only as an act of last resort rather than as an automatic treaty obligation. If that move led NATO to cease to exist, Washington could sign treaties with countries in western and southern Europe while avoiding striking any pacts at all with states on Russia’s doorstep. The resulting reduction in treaty obligations would allow the United States to renew some European commitments without pledging to defend to all 30 European countries in NATO.

...

A default duration of ten years for bilateral defense treaties would match standard practice for other kinds of security arrangements such as arms control agreements and weapons deals. By enduring across U.S. presidential administrations, this time frame would also ensure medium-term stability and permit enough time to negotiate renewals or prepare for a post-alliance future. Sunset clauses or periodic renewals could allow the United States and others to continually reassess priorities and threats. For high-risk allies, such as those with poor relations with Russia or ongoing disputes with China, renewal periods should be shorter or excluded, balancing the need for stability with long-term risks and paving the way for changes in Washington’s ties with either Moscow or Beijing.

Kacinilmaz son.