Trump didn't really turn his back on NATO, but he rightly decided not to let Europeans take the lead on NATO policies while simultaneously weakening their own militaries.
Ever since the end of the Cold War, the United States has tolerated the systematic demilitarization of NATO countries. When Russian tanks were trained on Germany, that country and its neighbors stood ready to fight alongside the United States to repel Soviet aggression.
Once that threat receded, so did the military capability of the NATO countries, putting all the burden on the United States to defend the Western alliance. Aside from basing rights, it's really hard to see what our allies could contribute other than token forces should a genuine threat arise.
This might be acceptable, in an odd way, if European countries ceded control of their foreign policy to the United States--you want to rely on our military, then you ought to defer to our policies--but that deal never seemed to have been done. Instead, what Europe got was a military umbrella; what the United States got was bitching, moaning, whining, and demands.
Time and again Europeans were warned that the US had other priorities--you know, that "pivot to Asia" that has never quite occurred--yet NATO countries kept reducing their military expenditures well below their treaty obligations, and Spain--I kid you not--counts their "climate change" subsidies as contributions to NATO.
A British military spending boost, including new attack subs and long-range weapons, will make the U.K. "a battle-ready, armor-clad nation," Prime Minister Keir Starmer says. https://t.co/O7BB2TcGuS
— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 2, 2025
Now that Trump has shut off the money spigot, NATO countries are screaming "Betrayal!"--but they are doing something else as well: they are doing exactly what Trump wants them to. They may portray it as a rebuke to Trump and the United States, and complain that we are no longer a reliable ally.
But the fact is that, for the first time in decades, they may actually meet or even exceed their treaty obligations for military expenditures.
If it took Trump offending them to accomplish this goal, then offending them was the best gift an American president has given them since Reagan ended the Cold War and Bush I helped negotiate a non-violent deconstruction of the Warsaw Pact.
As I wrote earlier today, Trump's Ukraine policy doesn't seem to be working--it sure looks like the heat in the war is turning up, not down--but his NATO policies are a smash hit.
Not in the sense that anybody but Americans are applauding--quite the opposite--but Trump is achieving exactly the goal he was looking for: a Europe that can stand on its own two feet.
I foresee no time in the next century when Europe's security will be decoupled from that of the United States — we have interests everywhere, and Europe still matters quite a bit economically. If a major war breaks out there, we will get dragged in.
However, if trends continue, we will not have to bear the burdens alone.
Asia is where the real action is, and as harsh as it sounds, the United States has only the most abstract strategic interest in Ukraine and shouldn't have to pour scarce resources into that conflict. European countries with far more significant strategic interests should be. We could be at war with China soon, and NATO will be of zero help there. Great Britain may pitch in, but, well, Great Britain. Not a big help there.
We should be pouring resources into Japan, Australia, the Philippines, and South Korea, and expanding our ability to operate from small islands. We shouldn't be sending tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to Europe.
So if it took insulting our "allies" to get them off their asses, I say insult away, President Trump.
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