Former President Donald Trump sparked fury on Saturday when he claimed to have told the leader of a NATO member state he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” if a NATO ally did not “pay your bills.”
“You don’t pay your bills, you get no protection. It’s very simple,” Trump said.
Leaving aside for the moment that NATO member states don’t pay the United States anything, Trump’s flippant arrogance about Russian aggression undermines national security by making this country the linchpin of NATO. It is true that many NATO member states should spend more of their budgets on defense, but encouraging Russia to attack delinquents isn’t productive.
Trump’s suggestion that he would “encourage” Vladimir Putin to launch an attack on a U.S. ally is plainly unconscionable. Even if he only said this to emphasize NATO’s reliance on America, it is an outrageous dereliction of his duty to choose his words carefully. Trump is publicly musing about being open to wars of aggression against people who are American friends. Trump cares little about this, no doubt, but his bluster undermines America’s necessary claim to be the best friend that peace-loving nations can have.
The U.S. can credibly sell itself as the world’s best ally because it promotes mutual prosperity and the democratic rule of law. Trump’s words cede political space to China as it seeks to woo American allies with the offer of massive investment in return for their political obedience. This threatens the foundations of an international order that has given America and its allies wealth and security since 1945. It is an order that has expanded the frontiers of freedom, an order Xi Jinping intends to replace with his own feudal mercantilism.
The ironic fact, however, is that beneath Trump’s crass delivery, there lies an important truth. The notion that NATO members who fail to spend 2% of their economy on defense should not expect unconditional American protection is not an outrageous one. Indeed, it is outrageous that they do so.
All NATO members pledged to move toward 2% of GDP at the alliance’s annual leaders meeting 10 years ago. Yes, 10 years ago. Those leaders recognized, at least on paper, that a successful alliance depended on reasonable burden sharing and shared interests. A 2% minimum on defense spending is reasonable, especially amid renewed Russian military imperialism. Western European complaints of economic challenges in meeting NATO’s target are utterly false. They fail to get there because they arrogantly presume American forbearance.
But Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, three of the six smallest economies in the 27-member EU, each spend at least 2.25% of GDP on their militaries, according to the latest NATO figures. If they are able to meet the target, so can much wealthier NATO states.
Yet, two years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany, the EU’s largest economy, continues to falter, and many of the wealthiest NATO states remain well short of 2%. In declining order of GDP defense spending, they include the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Canada, Turkey, Spain, and Belgium. The results of this feebleness are clear, as last summer’s NATO air defense exercise demonstrated.
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With communist China churning out fleets of advanced warships, batteries of anti-ship ballistic missiles, and squadrons of fighter aircraft at breakneck speeds, the U.S. military faces a profound challenge in the Pacific. The casual assumption of American military superiority no longer holds true for war with China over Taiwan, a democracy of critical importance to the semiconductor supply chain. To deter China requires the U.S. to deploy its most potent weapons in high numbers to the Pacific on short notice. Because our European allies systematically fail to meet their defense commitments, U.S. defenses are diverted in greater force to Europe. American air-to-air refueling aircraft, strike fighter squadrons, overworked Navy destroyers, and maneuver airborne infantry units are all filling in gaps in Europe’s defenses. They should be in the western Pacific, but they are currently doing duty in the face of European fecklessness.
Trump’s invitation to attack those nations who are letting the West down was outrageous and strategically incontinent. But he spoke an underlying truth that European allies need to understand: they are destroying NATO because they refuse to do their duty to it. They need to understand their own outrages as well as Trump’s.
