NATO
The Bottom Line
U.S.-European military cooperation is fundamental to the peace and security of the United States and provides valuable partnerships that strengthen our defense, security, and crisis-management capabilities around the world.
The coolest thing about NATO is the Principle of Collective Defense, which is the idea that an attack against one of its members is considered as an attack against all (this principle is commonly known as Article 5). Article 5 has been invoked only once, in response to the 9/11 U.S. terrorist attacks. On one of the worst days in our nation’s history, our faithful allies didn’t blink and had our back 1000%.
It’s highly beneficial for the United States to be a leading member of the transatlantic alliance. Make no mistake, we need NATO now as much as we did in 1949, when the group was formed as a defense against Soviet aggression.
The United States is the largest financial contributor to NATO, providing around 16 percent of the cost. We must insist that other member countries live up to their end of the bargain and be held accountable for their part of the funding to advance global security.
In 2014, NATO members agreed to commit 2 percent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to defense spending. It’s time to increase this percentage from 2 percent to 4 percent.
NATO must be protected at all costs, and we must make sure the alliance survives Donald Trump’s second presidential administration.
On the 2016 campaign trail, candidate Trump made several references to NATO’s waning effectiveness, even calling it “obsolete” at one point (he backtracked on this characterization in 2019, saying NATO has “a great purpose, especially with the fact that NATO is becoming much more flexible, in terms of what it looks at”).
On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump continued to say he would not defend NATO members if they didn’t meet their defense spending targets. This obviously alarmed many of our European allies all over again, whose anxiety has also been heightened by President Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth as his second administration’s Defense Secretary.
In Hegseth’s book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, he wrote: “Why should America, the European ‘emergency contact number’ for the past century, listen to self-righteous and impotent nations asking us to honor outdated and one-sided defense arrangements they no longer live up to? Maybe if NATO countries actually ponied up for their own defense – but they don’t. They just yell about the rules while gutting their militaries and yelling at America for help.”
Trump’s bombastic campaign rhetoric and Hegseth’s pointed words highlight their belief that, for decades, our European allies have taken advantage of our military protection without paying their fair share financially. We agree, although we firmly believe President Trump’s incendiary statements about NATO and many of our closest allies are unhelpful and unnecessary, to say the least.
The good news is that NATO members are finally starting to pay up (and we begrudgingly admit that Trump’s hard-core position is probably one of the main reasons why – although, again, we feel this could have been achieved without being such a jerk about it). In 2024, 23 members are expected to meet or exceed the target of investing at least 2 percent of GDP, compared to only three members in 2014. In 2024, NATO members are expected to invest a combined total of over $430 billion for defense.