The Elephant in the NATO Room: Would Trump Blow It Up?

Western leaders are celebrating NATO’s 75th anniversary with an elephant in the room: Will Donald Trump, who could become US president again within months, blow up the alliance?

This week’s summit in Washington will aim, without saying so explicitly, to “protect NATO against Trump” by expanding the role of the alliance itself, notably by supporting Ukraine, whose fight against Russia has aroused skepticism from the Republican candidate.

Both US President Joe Biden and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg have touted the 32-nation bloc as the most successful military alliance in history, highlighting its role in fighting the Soviet Union and later in protecting Europe’s new democracies after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Trump, whose motto is “America First” and who has previously expressed admiration for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, views NATO in a radically different light, accusing allies of profiting from an overburdened and expensive U.S. military.

In campaign remarks attacked by Biden, the New York real estate developer said he would encourage Russia to “do whatever they want” if NATO allies didn’t “pay the bills.”

Whether Trump meant something serious or was threatening to force Europeans to shell out more money remains open to debate.

In a television interview in March, British anti-immigration politician Nigel Farage asked Trump whether the United States would honor its NATO commitments if allies “started playing fair,” to which Trump replied: “Yes. 100 percent.”

But John Bolton, a hawkish Republican who was Trump’s national security adviser and later became a vocal critic, said Trump complained about spending by NATO allies not as a way to cajole them into throwing in more money but rather as a pretext to begin a U.S. withdrawal.

In his memoir, Bolton recounts that Trump told a NATO summit in 2018 that “we will walk out” and “will not defend” countries that did not meet their spending targets.

Even without withdrawing from NATO, Trump could signal to Moscow that he does not care about NATO’s key Article Five, which states that an attack on one ally is an attack on all.

As president, Trump raised eyebrows when he described the people of Montenegro, a small NATO ally, as “very aggressive” and capable of starting a “third world war.”

Project 2025, an unofficial policy blueprint for a second Trump administration led by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, calls for transforming NATO so that U.S. allies deploy “the vast majority of conventional forces needed to deter Russia,” with the U.S. reducing its forces in Europe and primarily offering its nuclear umbrella.

The United States has about 100,000 troops in Europe, a sharp increase since Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022.

Elbridge Colby, a key Trump adviser who served in his Defense Department, argued that the United States was too concerned with Russia and should instead focus on China, with its much larger population and economy.

Stoltenberg recently pointed out that 23 of the 32 allies spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense, compared to just three when NATO set that goal in 2014 under pressure from U.S. President Barack Obama.

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has significantly changed its calculations and increased its defense spending after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

France has long called for greater European involvement in defense and is considering sending French troops to Ukraine. But few Europeans believe they could fill the void left by Trump’s withdrawal from NATO.

“It would be the end of NATO if the United States withdrew and it would be the end of deterrence,” said one European diplomat.

But Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who studies transatlantic security, cautioned that Trump ultimately did not harm NATO during his first term.

“What I tell Europeans all the time is: stop worrying about Trump,” she said.

“You did that for four years, and guess what? It actually wasn’t so bad for Europe,” she said.

“There were some harsh words that were annoying, certainly, but the policies that Trump has implemented towards Europe have not been detrimental to NATO.”

NATO has named Mark Rutte as Stoltenberg’s successor, who as Dutch prime minister is believed to have played a key role in calming Trump at the 2018 summit in Brussels.

Some have noted that Trump is both transactional and susceptible to flattery.

“If you kiss Trump’s ass persistently enough, then he will be happy with you,” a second European diplomat said.

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