With Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly open to a potentially Vatican-mediated ceasefire negotiation, an end to the Ukraine war might finally be on the table – and so too may be President Donald Trump’s hopes to reconfigure the United States’ relationship with NATO.
If Trump succeeds in brokering a deal to end the war, he could well use the opportunity to revisit claims that NATO is obsolete, unfair to the United States, and in need of radical reform. A post-war reset could be exactly what Trump needs to demand changes, or even make good on his previously implied threats to withdraw the United States from the alliance entirely.
Trump’s Case Against the NATO Alliance
President Donald Trump has long criticized NATO, though during his first term never went as far as withdrawing the United States from the alliance.
In a 2017 interview, just five days before assuming office for the first time, Trump offered some early commentary on problems he aimed to solve once he entered the White House.
“I took such heat when I said NATO was obsolete,” Trump said. “It’s obsolete because it wasn’t taking on terror.”
A month later, the new president walked back his comments slightly, moving away from his earlier position that seemed to suggest he was in favor of disbanding the group. Trump took a more pragmatic approach, suggesting that NATO members could improve the alliance by taking on a greater financial burden to support it.
While addressing military officials at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, Trump said that he “strongly” supported NATO, and that he only asked that “all NATO members make their full and proper financial contribution to the NATO alliance, which many of them have not been doing.”
By April of that year, following discussions with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Trump said that NATO was “no longer obsolete” as a result of its renewed focus on counterterrorism efforts.
Trump’s criticisms of NATO were not new when he articulated them in 2016 and beyond. In fact, the president’s criticism of the alliance goes back several decades. In his 2000 book The America We Deserve, Trump wrote that European countries used NATO to place the burden of international responsibility on the United States at a time when “their conflicts” were “not worth American lives.”
“Pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually,” he added.
But even as Trump appeared to warm to NATO somewhat during his first term, what followed was years of uncertainty about the United States’ future involvement with the coalition. During his first term, Trump pushed consistently for NATO countries to pay more, and he did secure some concessions.
Between 2016 and 2020, NATO members increased their defense expenditures from $262 billion to $313 billion, an increase of $51 billion. Stoltenberg credited the president for the increase, noting that European allies and Canada added $130 billion to their defense budgets during his tenure.
In the years that followed, this trend continued. Poland has consistently met and exceeded the 2% GDP target, reaching 4.12% in 2024. The United Kingdom also consistently met its 2% target and committed to future increases, aiming for 2.5% by 2027 and potentially 3% by 2029 – an “ambition” laid out by the current Labour government under pressure from Trump in his second term.
What’s the Alternative to NATO?
While Trump has talked a big game about the United States’ commitments to NATO and even gone as far as suggesting he could pull the country out of it, the president has had ample opportunity to make that case in full or even to initiate the withdrawal if he felt it was necessary.
The furthest the president has gone so far was in 2020 when he ordered the withdrawal of approximately 12,000 U.S. troops from Germany, citing the country’s defense spending and other concerns as the reason for doing so. This year, Trump also explicitly proposed ending funding for NATO and other international organizations – but no real steps have yet been taken to facilitate such a dramatic move, nor do they appear to be on the table while he focuses his efforts on resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Will Trump Actually Withdraw?
It’s interesting, too, that the president has never proposed a comprehensive alternative to NATO, choosing only to repeatedly revisit longstanding grievances despite rising spending commitments across Europe. The absence of a proposed alternative to NATO, which binds European and American defense as part of an effort to deter war, could suggest that the president may be deliberately “talking tough” to secure more favorable terms with NATO. It is also unquestionably one of the major points of concern for his critics, not just from the Democratic Party but from the national security community in general.
If Trump were interested in allaying those concerns, and if he is serious about withdrawing U.S. support, he might have offered an alternative by now. Under normal circumstances, that might be enough to assume that a president wouldn’t seriously consider such a dramatic decision, but Trump is not a normal president – and if he were to finally pull the trigger, it might take securing peace in Europe for him to take the first steps.
It wouldn’t be particularly difficult for the United States, but as we have reported here previously, it would cause a cascade of problems for Europe – not least a potential 25-year “window of vulnerability” to military attacks from outside the West.
About the Author:
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society. His latest book is The Truth Teller: RFK Jr. and the Case for a Post-Partisan Presidency.
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