No one knows if President Donald Trump will withdraw the United States from NATO, the 75-year-old trans-Atlantic alliance that has kept the peace in Europe since the end of World War II. But the smart money is betting that Trump will, at the very least, downgrade the U.S. role to a junior partner.
Trump has already made the first moves to distance the U.S. from the rest of the 32-nation alliance. He has refused requests from Great Britain and France to serve as a backstop to a possible peacekeeping force in Ukraine, threatened to withhold U.S. protection for NATO members who don’t meet his new, higher defense spending demands, and badgered founding NATO member Demark to hand over Greenland to the U.S. or face possible military action.
The fact is that Trump doesn’t like NATO and never has.
His animus toward NATO, and alliances in general, can be traced as far back as his days as a New York real estate developer, when, after returning from a 1987 trip to Moscow at the invitation of the Soviet government, he took out full-page ads, a big deal at the time, in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe inveighing against the cost of the mighty U.S. “defending those who can easily afford to pay us for the defense of their freedom.”
“The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help,” he wrote in the ad.
“I think Donald Trump simply doesn’t understand what NATO is,” said John Bolton, a former national security adviser in the first Trump administration, arguing that Trump sees all alliances in purely transactional terms, akin to a protection racket. “His basic view is just simple-minded. He believes we’re defending Europe, we don’t get anything out of it.”
“It’s in the self-interest of the European countries to be members of NATO, and it’s in America’s self-interest,” Bolton said. “When you don’t say it, you’re not making the strongest argument why the most successful political-military alliance in history should continue.”
Can this marriage be saved?
Europe is already feeling the chill of an impending divorce or perhaps a trial separation.
At a recent meeting of foreign ministers at NATO, Secretary of State Marco Rubio carried a demand from Trump that all 31 other allies increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP. That is a level that the mighty U.S., at 3.4%, isn’t meeting and won’t be meeting anytime soon, and a standard only one NATO member, Poland, is even close to.
While Rubio insisted the goal was simply to make “our transatlantic partnerships stronger to keep Americans safe,” the between-the-lines message was clear: Europe needs to stand on its own because America won’t always be there to bail it out.
And even as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte declared he is “absolutely convinced” that the U.S. is “completely committed to NATO,” he’s had to admit there are jitters among some countries about America’s commitment to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty that specifies that “an attack on one … is an attack on all.”
“I know that there have been allies, for example, this side of the pond being worried about the long-term commitment of the U.S. to NATO,” Rutte told reporters at NATO headquarters, which is why he said, “Many allies are stepping up their spending in ways we haven’t seen in decades.”
America’s NATO allies have real reason for trepidation about whether the oft-repeated U.S. promise of an “ironclad” commitment is now just empty words, especially because Trump has been recycling his old threat not to come to the aid of countries he feels haven’t “paid” enough, even though NATO has no “dues,” only goals for each country to fund their military.
“I think it’s common sense, right? If they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them,” Trump said during an executive order signing session last month, at which he also cast doubt on whether other NATO nations would honor Article 5.
“If the United States was in trouble and we called them, we said, ‘We got a problem. France, we got a problem’ … do you think they’re going to come and protect us?” Trump said. “They’re supposed to. I’m not so sure.”
For the record, the only time Article 5 has been invoked was after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when hundreds of NATO soldiers fought and died alongside U.S. troops over 20 years in Afghanistan.
The anxiety among the allies only increased upon the leak of a secret memorandum Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth circulated in the Pentagon late last month, which was obtained by the Washington Post.
The memo, marked “secret/no foreign national” in some passages, directs U.S. military commanders to “prioritize deterring China’s seizure of Taiwan and shoring up homeland defense by ‘assuming risk’ in Europe” and suggests that while the U.S. will support Europe with nuclear deterrence of Russia, NATO should not count on U.S. forces.
A significant increase in European defense spending, Hegseth wrote, will ensure NATO can “deter or defeat Russian aggression,” even if the U.S. “must withhold forces to deter, a primary conflict in another region.”
NATO seems to be resigned to the U.S. being a silent partner in the European theater.
“It is understandable, also for the U.S., that over time, they want to focus more and more also on that part of the world,” Rutte said. “And it is only logical for the Europeans to step up even more.”
Another sign that, under Trump, the U.S. no longer wants to fill its historical role as the leader of NATO comes from reports that as part of a streamlining of U.S. combatant commands, the Defense Department is considering allowing the position of supreme allied commander to be filled by a non-American military officer for the first time in the alliance’s 75-year history.
“Transferring the position to another country’s general as European nations are expanding their defenses against an emboldened Russia would be changing horses midstream,” wrote retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, a former U.S. commander in Europe. “This change would not be a minor administrative reshuffle or a simple ‘change of command’ but a seismic shift in the architecture of collective defense.
NATO, Hertling argued, is only as powerful as its credibility. To be able to deter aggression, any adversary must believe NATO has both the strength and the will to go to war.
“Leadership in this multinational coalition isn’t just about directing forces — it’s about projecting trust, capability, and the moral authority that binds coalitions together,” Hertling said. “Moscow would see it as an unmistakable sign of Western division and American retreat.”
Aware that Trump almost pulled out of NATO during his first term and fearing he might try again in his second, Congress in 2023 passed a law, cosponsored by then-Sen. Rubio, requiring a two-thirds vote from the Senate to withdraw.
But as Trump has shown, he is adept at getting around laws he doesn’t like. In the case of NATO, he could simply exercise his prerogative to withdraw U.S. troops from European bases or block the invocation of Article 5, which requires a finding by the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s principal political decision-making body.
“It’s kind of an ‘aha’ moment for Europeans as they look at this U-turn in foreign policy,” retired Adm. James Stavridis said on CNN recently. “They are coming to what I fear is an accurate realization that, at least under a Trump administration, they can’t count on solid support from Washington.”
“Pulling America out of NATO would be a mistake of epic proportions,” Stavridis wrote in an essay for Bloomberg, imagining all the negative consequences that might flow from the U.S. stepping back.
It was, Stavridis said, a “heartbreaking piece” to write as a former supreme allied commander of NATO. “I believe in the alliance.”
