#WTH A NATO rebirth?

Great idea. But only if America's allies are serious.

There is a great deal of pearl-clutching going on in the halls of intellectual excellence in Washington DC. Donald Trump, we are reliably informed, is definitely going to pull the United States out of NATO. Probably he will end U.S. involvement in the “greatest alliance of the modern era.” This will almost certainly lead to apocalypse in Europe, with the Russians almost certainly invading soon… pretty soon.

If you detect a note of sarcasm in that lede, you sense correctly. First, because there is a serious argument to be made that Donald Trump is the best thing that has happened to NATO in a long time; second, because we have no idea whether he intends to pull out of NATO or not; and third, because much of NATO has been disinvesting in the alliance for decades.

Let’s start with some facts about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization: An alliance of 32 countries, it came together in the wake of World War II to ensure there would not again be a conflict on European soil. Unsurprisingly, given that it was America that emerged largely intact from that conflict, the lead role was naturally taken by the U.S. Check out the first decades of NATO defense spending as a percentage of GDP:

If your impression is of a group of nations jostling with each other to get to zero, welcome to reality. And this is present day reality:

When did the jump in spending happen for much of Western Europe? That’s right… Not in the aftermath of 2014, the year NATO members pledged to get to two percent of GDP in defense spending, but during the first Trump administration. And for certain among these stalwarts, not until 2025, when they (Germany) realized that they needed to borrow money to spend on defense, rather than simply insisting that the American taxpayer continue doing so.

How unserious was Western Europe about its own defense? I’ve said this before: In the short-lived NATO-led war in Libya in 2011, our allies in France and the UK were running out of ammo, running out of bombs, and never had the necessary lift to accomplish the hardly awe-inspiring mission of ousting the loony dictator of Libya… In 2015, one year after the first Russian invasion of Ukraine and its occupation of Crimea, a Pew survey found that “roughly half or fewer in six of the eight countries surveyed say their country should use military force if Russia attacks a neighboring country that is a NATO ally.”

For much of the post-Cold War era, London lent itself to Russian oligarchs and Germany did its best to sustain Russian ambitions to dominate Western European energy markets. U.S. sanctions on Russia were rarely matched in the European Union. Indeed, it was only Donald Trump’s objections in his first term that killed Germany’s effort to support Moscow’s anti-Ukraine Nordstream II pipeline…

The question is whether the recent uproar over Donald Trump’s possible split with Ukraine is anything more than performance art. I wrote recently that boastful responses by Western European nations to Trump’s threats to stop arming Ukraine are little more than promises at the moment. Yes, Germany has finally voted to spend more on defense. Sure, the Brits and French are talking about a European peacekeeping force for Ukraine — though UK PM Keir Starmer has already backed out of actually, you know, supplying troops.

When will this happen? That still remains unclear. Indeed, a better measure of Europe’s seriousness is whether it is willing to use $200 billion in frozen Russian assets sitting in European banks to do what is necessary to arm Ukraine if Trump bails. And the answer to that remains a solid no.

NATO has been a commitment to act without a requirement to do so for too many decades. Is the alliance valuable? It should be. Can the alliance be resuscitated? It can be. But the worn arguments of the Foreign Affairs crowd about Trump’s betrayal ignore Western Europe’s consistent and determined betrayal of NATO as a defensive alliance for decades, long before Donald Trump even considered the White House.

We sat down on the pod with our own Foreign and Defense Policy director, Kori Schake, and discussed the real, credible, and important reasons why NATO is vital to the United States. She starts by explaining that, “If Dwight Eisenhower were alive, he would be astonished that the United States was still contributing such a high proportion of effort to the defense of Europe. When he testified before Congress in support of continuing the deployment of American troops to Europe, he argued it should happen just until Europeans regained the economic ability to provide forces on their own…”

There’s a recognition of the harsh realities of recent years, and an understanding of what Europe and the United States can do, if we invest together in deterring our shared enemies. Kori makes the case for hanging on to U.S. command of NATO forces, something Trump has suggested we might relinquish. And explains why ceding command is the antithesis of America first…

Donald Trump may get his numbers wrong, and he may get the question of whether NATO “owes” the United States anything even more wrong. But his basic understanding of the free riders within the alliance is correct. Few in Western Europe have been willing to put their money where their mouths are. If that changes, and NATO is reborn with true purpose and shared commitment, all to the good. Empty rhetoric will not save Ukraine, nor will posturing. A genuine alliance, however, could be the deterrent that Russia finally takes seriously.

HIGHLIGHTS

Why do you think the U.S. should stay in control of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) position?

KS: I think there are two, and the first is deterrence is stronger if our adversaries, the people who might attack a NATO country, have to fear American involvement. So deterring war is what NATO is good at, and we would prefer to deter it rather than fight it. And deterrence is stronger if the US holds the senior military role. The second argument I would use is that if you plan to have American troops participate in the defense of Europe, you are going to want an American military commander at the top of the chain because very few other countries have had to orchestrate military operations at the magnitude that a NATO defense would require. And you're not going to want American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines fighting under the command of an allied general who doesn't have the experience of doing it at the frequency and level that American military leaders do.

Is Defense Secretary Hegseth right to want to change America’s combatant command structure?

KS: Secretary Hegseth is right that there's an enormous amount of inflation of headquarters staffs, especially in the regional commands. I very strongly favored the recommendation made by Elaine McCusker, John Ferrari, and Todd Harrison, that the service components in the regional commands don't need to be as high ranking as they are. You can downgrade those, you can slim staffs, lots good and useful that can be done. In fact, I think the combination of NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM actually makes an enormous amount of sense because mostly what SOUTHCOM expends its time and effort on is drug trafficking interdiction, which is an increasing focus for the Trump administration of NORTHCOM and of US military forces more generally. And besides most Americans won't understand that we have 1,200,000 thousand military men and women under arms, and it's not their job to defend the territory of the United States, to police its borders to prevent immigration and drug trafficking.

And so NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM make a lot an increased focus makes a lot of sense. The Europe and AFRICOM combination makes much less sense in part because the things that the 54 countries on the African continent need and want from the United States are very different from the things that the what? 32 NATO allies need and want from the United States. And so the distinction and function between those two, I think argues that they should remain separate. And in fact, they should be more separate. AFRICOM's headquarters shouldn't be in Stuttgart, Germany. They should be in one of those 54 countries of Africa.

Do you think the administration is approaching its ambitious overhaul of America’s command structure in a thoughtful way?

KS: I really like Dany's recent substack on competence and what some of the recent actions revealed by the administration suggest that they're not thinking their way through this before they take action. There's also a bad precedent from the Biden administration. In the first few months of President Biden's tenure, the Defense Department adjusted for structure around the world without having a national security strategy or a global posture review. And so the Trump administration isn't the first one recklessly making these kinds of moves, but that's not an excuse for recklessly making these kinds of moves. And you're exactly right that, of course, you should reconsider why things are the way they are with a healthy respect for Chesterton’s Fence. There may be a reason things are the way they are, but you should have to win the argument. And every new administration has both a right and a responsibility to reflect on those kinds of things, especially at a time where they are looking to cut federal spending. And the Defense Department's almost 20% of federal spending.

What is one of the first cost-saving measures you would take if you could make meaningful changes in the Pentagon?

KS: The acquisition system serves the defense enterprise poorly and it's incredibly expensive to operate. So I would go after that with a chainsaw. You need congressional acceptance of that though, and a lot of the reasons the acquisition system is the way it is is because Congress made it that way.

Almost all of defense policy really is run by Congress, not the executive. And so part of the reason that the competence issue matters so much is because you're going to have to persuade Congress to do things differently than they have done.

A second area I would go after is we have to make healthcare, which is a major recruiting and retention advantage for the military, much more cost-effective. I don't know how to do that, but we've got to find a way to do it because it's crowding out everything else. And very often people of the left like to use the American military as a laboratory for social change. I would love to see the current effort produce the American military as a laboratory for fiscal change.

How much money does the Defense Department spend on stuff that doesn’t contribute to war-fighting capabilities?

KS: Elaine's done a study now, I think 18 months ago, where she went through line by line in the J-Book, which is the DOD budget book, and coded what money gets spent on.

The first category she identified was things that contribute directly to fighting and winning the nation's wars. The second category was things that keep the people we want and need to fight those wars in service. Third category was marginal. The fourth category was things that have nothing to do with the defense enterprise. Things like breast cancer research, which are good things in and of themselves, but don't belong in the defense budget.

$1 in seven in the defense budget is in that fourth category that has nothing to do with defense. But because the National Defense Authorization Act has been... must pass legislation, it gets stuffed in there by members of Congress in order to get the money for it.

Secretary Hegseth is calling to cut and reinvest 8 percent of the DOD’s budget to better align the budget with strategic priorities. Where would you want to reinvest that money?

KS: So the first place I would go is cyber, because there is no military more dependent on command and control and communications than is the American military. And we are very much at risk of having our satellite and communication systems targeted in a conflict.

We've been operating on the basis that we will have connectivity. And it's been a long time since American sailors have been proficient at dead reckoning or navigating by the celestial positioning. And that is our use of it is an incredible advantage. Our reliance on it is an incredible vulnerability. So that's where I would start.

How important is it that America remains in control of SACEUR, but also does something to force the Europeans to begin to sustain this alliance in a burden-sharing way?

KS: If Dwight Eisenhower were alive, he would be astonished that the United States was still contributing such a high proportion of effort to the defense of Europe. When he testified before Congress in support of continuing the deployment of American troops to Europe, he argued it should happen just until Europeans regained the economic ability to provide forces on their own. And that threshold has long ago, decades ago been met. The only thing I would say in defense of our European allies is that it's true they don't do as much as they should and it's certainly true they don't do as much as we want, but it is also true that no dominant power has ever had as much voluntary assistance in upholding an order as the US gets from its allies. Europeans don't just help us in Europe. They help us around the world and they help us carry out economic sanctions. They help us do other things that if we leave Europeans to their own devices in Europe, we are not going to have the help in other areas we want.

All that said, one other thing is that the assumption that unless Europeans do more, we will do much less, it relies on an expectation that if we abandon our friends, whether Europe or in Asia, that they will make choices consistent with our interests. I think that's wrong. My experience in government doing coalition management is when we step back, allies step back further. And we actually don't want a Europe that concedes to Russian aggression. We want a Europe that does more than we do. And so figuring out how to get Europeans to do more than we do typically should rely on more than just threatening that we won't defend them if they don't do more.

Why have the Europeans not done more in recent history to distance themselves from the Russians and make themselves more resistant to Russian coercion?

KS: The mistake Europeans, and particularly Germany, have made is actually the same mistake the United States made with China. A belief that entanglement and engagement would produce positive change. And in fact, both in the case of Russia and in the case of China, what it produced is them gaming the international order to their advantage using the openness of free societies as a weapon against those societies and increasing their ability to shield themselves against our influences. I mean, Nord Stream 2 is the most exasperating example, but it's by no means the only example. So, we and the Europeans got that wrong.

I am more confident though that the European debate on China, for example, is moving strongly into alignment with, what at least has been, the American debate. It's not entirely clear to me yet where Trump administration policy will go on China, but at least, until recently, what Australia has been on the front lines of and we, the second adopter, Europeans are beginning to see economically, politically and in terms of security about China. Where Russia is concerned ... I mean, it's shocking that the Russians have an enormous campaign of espionage and gray zone warfare going on all across Europe that Europeans now see, but continue to be fearful to acknowledge because they don't know what to do about it. And unless we put our shoulder to the wheel and deal with it with them, they're going to concede it because they won't believe they can prevent it.

Why are NATO allies only now spending more on defense when they committed to spending 2 percent of GDP on defense decades ago?

KS: I think Europeans didn't do more because they felt safe. And it's Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014 that begins to change European perceptions. I think that more than anything, countries that feel safe spend their money on stuff other than defense, and then when they started to feel genuinely unsafe, they started to panic and ramp up. Marc, you may remember this, but the reason 2% gets chosen, it's driven by the British government because it's the threshold they meet that others don't, and they just barely meet it and they didn't meet it in subsequent years. Right? So, everybody's gaming the system and there's a terrific report just out from Mackenzie Eaglen and Cole Spiller that shows that even in meeting 2%, it's worse than your imagining, Marc, because NATO countries put retirement into it... so, everybody's gaming the system, and what we should be invoicing is war-fighting ability, not amount spent on defense when the Germans can claim that strengthening the Autobahn counts because tanks may have to roll down it, or Belgium counts retirement for its military among their defense spending. We need a better metric if we really want Europeans to improve their ability to contribute to their own defense.

Poland is now voluntarily increasing defense spending to 5 percent of GDP. Why shouldn't we move our troops out of Germany and put them in Poland?

KS: A couple of reasons. The first is that Germany is in the midst of a pivot to being serious about their defense. The German Bundestag has just passed legislation, removing defense spending from the debt break and essentially saying, our government should spend as much as necessary on defense because Germany is now imperiled. That's a huge change and we should be celebrating and supporting that.

The second reason not to move troops to Poland is it's really expensive. And if you think you're going to cut defense spending, building training areas, building bases, it adds up, it takes time to do. And I think given Russia's threat to Europe right now, I would rather see us capitalize on what we already are doing.

I very much agree with you that Poland's making incredible choices, Finland's making incredible choices. The new members get it. And they didn't have to be threatened by President Trump to increase their defense spending because they feel threatened by Russia. And I think that's the affirmative basis on which to get everybody online. Germany it had the buffer of Poland, so it wasn't serious about its defense. Now they're really worried that Poland's not a big enough buffer. And so Germany's getting serious and should be getting serious.

The Ukrainian military has been able to decimate the Russian military without foreign troops. How much of a threat does Russia actually pose to the rest of Europe?

KS: A Russian military that's been fought to a near standstill by a smaller Soviet structured military in Ukraine is no match for Poland, France, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Britain. You don't even have to go full NATO. Probably one or two of those countries could defeat the Russian military. So I agree with you that anxious Europeans are overstating the likelihood of Russia being a threat to a NATO invasion.

But I take it as a measure of just how scared they are and how worried they are that we won't join in deterring that Russian attack that they're overstating the case. That is, it's salesmanship more than it is strategic judgment. But they're worried because Russia is so incredibly aggressive, dangerous, and what they are doing in Ukraine, it's more than conquering a country, it's an attempt to erase it. And that feels so scary to Europeans that I think they are overstating the case. It's not true that Europeans are militarily incapable. It's simply true that they couldn't fight like we fight. But that doesn't mean they couldn't do it in different ways than we would do it. And if push comes to shove, I believe they would.

Read the transcript here.

SHOWNOTES

Pentagon weighs major cuts to top of US military (CNN, March 24, 2025)

Remarks: Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth Discuss Defense in the Oval Office (Transcript via Rollcall, March 21, 2025)

Trump admin considers giving up NATO command that has been exclusively American since Eisenhower (NBC News, March 18, 2025)

Hegseth addresses strengthening military by cutting excess, refocusing DOD budget (Air Combat Command, February 21, 2025)

Former NATO commander on Trump giving up alliance role: ‘Nothing could make the Kremlin happier’ (The Hill, March 22, 2025)

Japan stresses US alliance after Trump cost-cutting reports (Channel News Asia, March 21, 2025)

McConnell warns US giving up military command of NATO would weaken alliance (The Hill, March 20, 2025)

Chairman Rogers, Chairman Wicker Joint Statement on Reports of Potential Combatant Command Changes (Mike Rogers and Roger Wicker, House Armed Services Committee, March 19, 2025)

Admiral James Stavridis, USN, Ret. X Post (March 18, 2025)

Ukraine Without America (Kori Schake, AEIdeas, March 3, 2025)

America Opens the Door to Its Adversaries (Kori Schake, The Atlantic, February 15, 2025)

What Trump Doesn’t Understand about the Military (Kori Schake, The Atlantic, November 30, 2024)

The Supreme Allied Commander Must Be an American (Mark Hertling, The Bulwark, March 21, 2025)

Congress Rejects a Pentagon Retreat (The Editorial Board, WSJ, March 20, 2025)

Endurance test looms for ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ that’s always put US in lead of NATO forces (John Vandiver, Stars and Stripes, March 6, 2025)

Why Americans Still Need NATO (Kathleen J. McInnis, Foreign Policy, June 28, 2022)