Does this mean NATO membership no longer serves U.S. interests?

The answer is a manifest “no.”

Yes, the failure of individual NATO members to help the U.S. during this conflict is a big problem. Too many allies have rejected or caveated U.S. basing requests. Many have also appeased Iran’s deliberate attacks on their own interests. As I explained on Mar. 17, “Iran’s closure of the [Strait of Hormuz] might not involve NATO commitments, but it is clearly a major European security concern. Iran is deliberately causing significant economic harm to European nations and populations.” America’s closest ally, the United Kingdom, deserves particular criticism. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s performative dithering has badly damaged the special relationship.

IRAN PEACE DEAL REQUIRES A TIGHT NUCLEAR FOCUS

Still, no ally is perfect, and it is silly to suggest that NATO has lost its value. This truth bears emphasizing. After all, some of those who suggest that we now leave NATO simultaneously suggest we double down on Israel in the alternative. They are wrong. We must focus on the benefits and challenges each of our allies provides, not segregate them on the basis of flawed assessments.

Again, NATO’s challenges are real. The alliance has accrued far more from America than it has provided in recent years. The Baltic states and Poland notably excluded, it was not until President Donald Trump turned to office that most NATO allies finally began to invest in defense spending. It is a disgrace that three years of the worst land war in Europe since 1945 didn’t move that needle. It is a disgrace that the U.K. is now badly trailing Poland and Germany in defense spending. It is a disgrace that some allies, such as Spain, match their woeful defense spending with patently anti-American foreign policies. Trump is thus right to consider re-basing U.S. military assets away from allies Belgium, Spain, and Italy.

Nevertheless, NATO continues to provide the U.S. with vast political influence, economic and security benefits, and a great moral cause.

On that moral concern, just as America is right to help defend Europeans from Russian imperialism, the U.S. is right to help defend the Jewish democratic state against fanatics who yearn for a second Holocaust. Beyond morality, Israel provides the U.S. with reliable military basing rights and has killed many terrorists and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers with a lot of American blood on their hands. This is no small issue. In his book The Good Soldiers, David Finkel describes the effect of an Iranian explosively formed penetrator on a U.S. Army Humvee:

“When the door was finally pried open, it was as if a pressurized container had been punctured. Out came a leg. Out came an arm. Out came a headless torso. Out came a flood of blood that coated the pavement. Everything that had been inside — four soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter — was now outside, or at least pieces of them were, and those who were watching, who had seen things like this before, could only look away.”

Beyond the security dimension, Israel has a booming technology sector that injects innovative dynamism into the U.S. industrial and defense base. Cooperation in this area makes both of our nations wealthier. Israeli-American personal connections also run deep across realms of faith, culture, and business. These things matter.

As with many NATO members, however, Israel isn’t a perfect ally.

For one, Israel has continued to prioritize its relationship with Russia at the expense of Western interests. This strategy made some sense prior to the fall of Bashar Assad, being that Israel needed to deconflict with Russia in relation to its military action in Syria. It is no longer justifiable. While it has belatedly now provided some defensive support to Ukraine, Israel continues to provide a financial safe haven for U.S.-sanctioned Russian oligarchs and illicit finance. And on Tuesday, Israel allowed a sanctioned Russian vessel carrying stolen Ukrainian grain to dock at its Haifa port.

More concerning is Israel’s repeated sharing of highly sensitive military technologies with China.

Israel provided key technical support for China’s development of its formative J-10 fighter jet. In 2004, Israel was caught selling upgraded Harpy drones to China, and in 2013, missile cooling systems. The U.S. intelligence community also suspects that Israel provided China with key technical information on the Patriot air defense system. China has far too easily accessed high-tech Israeli research in Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology, and semiconductor chips. Until very recently, Chinese-Israeli cooperation at the XIN Center in Tel Aviv was in plain view. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was repeatedly warned about these concerns by top U.S. officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Unfortunately, Netanyahu made clear his lack of concern.

In 2024, I interviewed former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren. I mentioned how U.S. security officials had told me that technology Israel had shared with China would lead to U.S. military deaths in any future war. Oren responded, “I have sat through meetings with three administrations, now, where I have heard not dissimilar things.” To his credit, Oren argued robustly that this Israeli cooperation with Beijing had to end. He is right.

Other bilateral agitations also need resolution. For all its great victories in the American and allied national security interest, the Israeli Mossad intelligence service conducts aggressive espionage on U.S. soil of a kind unmatched by any other ally (even the industrious French DGSE). Similarly, Netanyahu’s tolerance for pogroms against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank isn’t just morally repugnant — it fuels anti-American jihadi narratives and undermines America’s other Middle Eastern alliances.

Top line: The Israeli alliance benefits America for moral, economic, and security reasons. But this alliance is imperfect.

To be sure, we mustn’t ignore America’s share of blame for the challenge in our alliances. Just as the Obama and Biden administrations undermined Israeli security with the weak JCPOA nuclear accord and their appeasement of Iran, Trump damaged America’s NATO influence when he threatened to militarily seize the Danish territory of Greenland. Alongside Trump’s scorn for the sacrifices of Danish and British troops in Afghanistan, Trump has offended hundreds of millions of otherwise nominally pro-American allied citizens. But like Israel, NATO continues to serve American interests.

NATO aligns allies in support of America’s global diplomatic and economic objectives. It fosters an intelligence-sharing network of unprecedented scale and capability. The alliance would generate significant economic and likely even limited military support for Washington should China ever attack Taiwan, Japan, or the Philippines. Hence why tentative NATO moves to boost activity in the Pacific have so upset Beijing. NATO also protects major economic benefits for Americans.

As the calculations show, “NATO members imported approximately $1.1 trillion in goods and services from the U.S. in 2025. They also invested approximately $300 billion more in new foreign direct investments into the U.S. last year. In 2021, the year before the U.S. imposed major sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, Russian imports from the U.S. were worth approximately $17.3 billion. Russian foreign direct investments into the U.S. that year were estimated at $800 million.”

Throwing all of this away in a doomed gambit to placate Vladimir Putin’s bankrupt mafia state, or over the admittedly serious Iran disagreement, would be the art of the dolt.

ARTEMIS II REMINDS AMERICANS TO STRIVE FOR THE STARS

All alliances are complicated. But the value of an alliance must ultimately be measured on an encompassing, cost-benefit basis.

Israel manifestly passes that test, and so does NATO.