Key Points and Summary: Fears of President Donald Trump withdrawing the US from NATO are likely overblown; his threats are a form of high-stakes “gamesmanship” designed to force allies to meet their defense commitments.
-Rather than seeking to abandon the alliance, Trump’s primary goals are to compel member states to increase their defense spending to the newly proposed 5% of GDP target and to replenish their own military stockpiles depleted by aid to Ukraine.
-This “Art of the Deal” approach, while disruptive, is aimed at ensuring NATO allies shoulder more of the financial burden for collective defense against an aggressive Russia, not at dissolving the alliance itself.
Would Trump Pull the US Out of NATO?
One of the favorite themes circulating through Europe’s foreign policy community and think tanks is the fear that United States President Donald Trump “could pull American troops out of Europe and withdraw from the NATO alliance,” leaving Europe vulnerable to a resurgent and increasingly aggressive Russia.
Those who take that threat seriously, say some political commentators, “are those who do not understand how Trump operates in these high-level acts of gamesmanship. They have not read ‘The Art of the Deal,’” which is one of the more famous books authored by the 47th US President.
This gamesmanship is how Trump approaches negotiation, they say. “He comes into with guns blazing, tries to flatten you against the wall and asks for 120 percent of what he really wants,” said one commentator on a podcast this past week. “That way, if he only gets 51 percent, he has still won.”
There is no question that the US suddenly leaving NATO in the lurch would be nothing short of disastrous.
As one senior French military officer said recently to Politico, “The advantage of American leadership is that it was so superior, massive and benevolent that no one could dispute it: It brought order to the playground, there was no question of who decided.”
If Washington were no longer the leading light of the alliance—and European security in general—“There would no longer be a true ‘alpha male’” in the room, the officer added. “No one else can assert its predominance by force.”
What Are Trump’s Real Objectives?
But, in the opinion of political analysts on both sides of the Atlantic, rather than wishing to see Europe prostrate and half-undefended before Russia’s increasingly belligerent Vladimir Putin, a former KGB Lt. Col-turned President, Trump is simply looking for two changes in how the NATO alliance operates.
One is that NATO nations begin to shoulder more of the financial burden of maintaining a strong defense against Moscow.
As of today’s NATO summit in The Hague, only 23 of the alliance’s 32 member states are meeting the 2 percent target of GDP for defense spending.
That target spending level, as Trump likes to remind his NATO partners, was agreed to over a decade ago in 2014.
That was the same year that Russia invaded the Ukrainian region of Crimea and then, a few months later, supported an invasion of the Eastern Donbas region of Ukraine using surrogates supported by Moscow’s military.
Canada, Italy, Luxembourg, and Spain will only reach that decade-old spending level this year. One of the goals of today’s NATO summit is for the alliance members to now agree to a new GDP defense commitment of 5 percent.
As London’s Daily Telegraph reported on Monday, “a tale of the pre-summit tape reveals that most allies have made a concerted effort to follow the narrative required to keep the US president on the straight and narrow,” which means committing to the 5 percent spending level.
If one of the fallouts from Trump’s public castigations of NATO and his seeming disdain for its members is a change in spending habits, then one of his main objectives from his “art of the deal” negotiating style has been met.
NATO Spending Fault Lines
However, despite the European nations’ move towards higher defense budgets, it is more likely that a spending pattern will emerge that is more closely tied to proximity to Russia than anything else.
Rachel Ellehuus, the director of the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) in London, calls out what she sees as evidence of a spending split within NATO along these geographical fault lines.
“It’s the allies who are closer to the threat from Russia in the north and the east of the alliance who are spending more, and as we get down to southern allies, the spending tends to go to 2 percent, if not lower,” she told the BBC News.
What Trump is likely to push for next are other considerations that are in line with increased spending in the defense sector.
One is that all the allies—and this also includes the US—now have to replenish their own munitions stockpiles and armored vehicle warehouses to replace those items that were “on the shelf” and were sent to Ukraine. Those shelves are now becoming empty after having been depleted and the material sent to Ukraine.
Another is a set of capability and capacity requirements for NATO operations planning that the alliance agreed to at the 2023 Vilnius summit. These are force structure enhancements and reorganization initiatives that would optimize the units and hardware necessary to defend allied territory.
This is a more likely outcome than Trump suddenly deciding to quit NATO, even if his approach to achieving his goals is sometimes disruptive.
At the same time, NATO members will be prodded to remember that defense spending needs to be more on real defense items and less on “resilience” or infrastructure projects, reads a recent piece from the Atlantic Council.
“Russian tanks can’t be defeated by allied rail cars. At the same time, NATO tanks are only as useful as their ability to get to a potential front,” the authors point out.
“It is a similar argument that we make to those who insist on the importance of cybersecurity all the time,” said a recently retired NATO-nation intelligence officer. “You cannot cyber your way across a river. Sometimes, the only answer is more boots on the ground.”
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments, and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
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doyle-1
June 25, 2025 at 1:41 pm
No way US gonna quit NATO.
NATO is growing and growing and continues to look for more pathways to grow.
Howda hell US gonna quit such an organization.
Fueled furiously today by steroids, super growth hormones and amphetamines, NATO will one day become the galactic giant once envisioned or dreamed about by the likes of Hitler and Hirohito.
US and NATO, the gog and Magog of our time.
Whooda hell gog and Magog.
They’re one from amongst us, said the ageless sage.
bobb
June 26, 2025 at 7:09 am
NATO is the most dangerous threat to world and is employed by uncle sam as its rottweiler
Since 1991, NATO has been involved in many or numerous blood-bloody gut-spilling wars.
Today, it’s now ready (and eager) to get involved in nuclear wars. Its targets today are countries like Russia, iran and china.
In 1995, yeltsin said of NATO’s bombing of Bosnian serbs, “This is the first sign of what could happen when NATO comes right to the borders of Russia.”
Now, today, NATO is at the very borders of Russia, attempting to intrude into Ukraine, already encroaching on its volatile southern region and jostling into the black sea.
Also, various NATO bigshots have voiced its right to sail into the western Pacific and ‘confront enemies’.
NATO was set up in 1949 to defend western Europe, but today is being used to project power right onto Russia’s borders and to seek war and confrontation in the far east using pretext like freedom of navigation and ensuring open and free Indo-Pacific.
What drivel. Those actions have nothing to do with defending Europe’s security.
They have everything to do with uncle sam’s desire to shackle its near-peer rivals.
So, how on Earth could trump quit NATO. NO WAY !
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