The U.S. will pay for the chain reaction Trump set off in NATO
A Europe that spends more on defense will be less dependent — and less deferential.
Even people who dislike Donald Trump tend to give him credit for one thing: getting NATO to pay its fair share. American presidents have long grumbled about burden sharing. Trump has been crude, theatrical and transactional, but the sentiment he expressed was broadly shared. And Europeans got the message. Non-American NATO countries collectively spent 1.4 percent of their combined gross domestic product on defense in 2014; in 2025, it was close to 2.3 percent.
But be careful what you wish for.
The usual assumption is that if Europe spends more, the United States will spend less. This is demonstrably wrong. European defense spending is at its highest level in decades, yet Trump has proposed a staggering $1.5 trillion defense budget for fiscal 2027.
U.S. defense spending has never been determined only by the needs of NATO. It reflects America’s role as a global superpower, with bases, fleets and commitments across the world. Washington wants to deter Russia, counter China, project power in the Middle East, protect global sea-lanes, defend the homeland, maintain nuclear superiority, dominate space, lead in drones and artificial intelligence, and preserve the ability to fight far from home. In fact, the International Institute for Strategic Studies calculated in 2018 that direct spending on defense in Europe made up only about 5 percent of America’s total defense spending.
As Europe’s spending increases, the continent will become less dependent on the U.S., and less deferential to it.
For more than 75 years, America’s dominance within NATO has given Washington enormous advantages. The U.S. has more than 30 military bases across Europe, and these have allowed it to project power not just in Europe but in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. U.S. operations in the Middle East, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and more recently with Iran, have depended heavily on access, basing and overflight rights in Europe. Often NATO countries have allowed the U.S. to use their facilities even when they disagreed with the war being waged. But as Europeans see that America is unreliable or even hostile, they will feel less need to accommodate Washington.
The U.S. has assumed that its allies will always line up behind its broader strategy, including its economic campaigns. But as former Pentagon official Celeste Wallander writes in Foreign Affairs, Europe already has its own interests and tools. It holds much of Russia’s frozen assets. It has its own sanctions on Russian shipping, finance and technology. It is home to SWIFT, the payments system whose exclusion of major Russian banks has been so important. If Washington wants to relax pressure on Moscow in a bargain with President Vladimir Putin, Europe may refuse. If Washington wants to intensify pressure on Iran or China, Europe may hesitate.
Then there is the issue of weapons. One of the hidden benefits of American leadership in NATO has been that Europeans buy American arms. They have bought F-35s, HIMARS, Patriots, P-8 aircraft and many other systems not simply because they are good but because they bind Europe to the United States. Common equipment makes joint operations easier. It also reassures frontline states that American troops will remain engaged.
But European officials now speak openly of the need to reduce dependence on U.S. hardware. They fear that the Trump administration could in the future withhold software upgrades, spare parts or operational support. When Denmark has to worry about an American president threatening Greenland, it will think thrice before buying its next generation of weapons from the United States.
For American defense companies, this could be a major loss. For American strategy, it could be larger still. Weapons sales are not just commercial transactions. They create habits of cooperation, and shared strategy.
There is a final danger. We speak easily of “Europe” spending more, but defense budgets are still national. And most European governments are broke. As analyst Liana Fix notes in Foreign Affairs, the country with the greatest capacity to spend is Germany. And it is now beginning to do so on a remarkable scale.
This is necessary. Germany has been too passive for too long. It is a liberal democracy deeply embedded in Europe, and there is no reason to fear some aggressive impulse hiding in its political DNA. But size and power matter in international politics. A Germany that spends vastly more than its neighbors will inevitably create anxiety in France, Poland and the smaller countries around it.
The genius of America’s post-1945 strategy was that it solved this problem. It made it unnecessary for European countries to think and act like traditional great powers. Under the U.S. umbrella, France and Germany did not have to balance each other. The U.S. damped down the intra-European rivalries that had produced centuries of catastrophic war. It created a system that was stable, peaceful and pro-American.
We have set off a chain reaction. Over time, Americans will come to miss the old NATO — not because it was fair, but because it was the most successful security system the world has ever known, with America at its center.
What readers are saying
The conversation explores the impact of the Trump administration's foreign policy on NATO and global alliances. Participants express concerns about the destabilization of international relations, with many attributing this to Trump's approach to foreign policy and his perceived... Show more
This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.
NewsletterDaily
Today’s Headlines
The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors, delivered every morning.