When Donald Trump called our NATO allies “delinquent” and mused on how he might encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” with allies that don’t spend the required 2 percent of GDP on defense, the foreign policy blob pilloried him. Shouts of “strategically illiterate,” came pouring in from diverse swaths of the political spectrum. Certainly, the portion about encouraging Russian attacks on the West was over-the-top, if only perhaps meant to scare the allies (namely Germany, Italy, Canada, Spain, and the Low Countries) into taking their obligations seriously. But Trump’s basic point on feeble allies — that a failure to contribute to the alliance justifies its abandonment by the dominant nation if it is that nation’s interest — finds historical support.

During the 1702-1713 War of Spanish Succession, Britain, Holland, Prussia, and the Austrian Empire formed a Grand Alliance against France to prevent Philip V, the grandson of French king Louis XIV, from taking the Spanish throne. A united French/Spanish super-state with vast combined colonial possessions would dramatically alter the balance of power in Europe, an outcome the allies found worth preventing with arms. England’s Duke of Marlborough and the Austrian Empire’s Eugene of Savoy defeated France’s land forces in multiple campaigns. But these victories came at such a cost in lives and treasure that, by 1710, the English public clamored for peace and a resumption of normal commerce. After Louis XIV had withdrawn from Spain, England’s main strategic aim — to keep France and Spain separate kingdoms — looked achievable in negotiations. (READ MORE: NATO’s Bleak Future)

So, England began secret deliberations to reach a separate peace with France, in violation of Britain’s obligation to fight alongside its allies (particularly Holland, a state which shared a long border with France and had a formidable navy but weak land forces). When an informal truce in 1712 removed the English troops from the battlefields of Europe, Holland especially howled in protest of the treachery. According to Alfred Mahan’s classic The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, “The remonstrances of Holland were met by the reply that since 1707, the Dutch had not furnished more than one third their quota of ships, and taking the war through, not over one half.” Further, the British Parliament complained that Holland “has been greatly deficient every year in proportion to what your Majesty hath furnished … Hence your Majesty hath been obliged to supply those deficiencies with additional reinforcements of your own ships” (emphasis mine).

To again quote Mahan’s classic Influence of Sea Power: “To these complaints, the Dutch envoy to England could only reply that Holland was not in a condition to fulfill her compacts.” The Dutch, having borne the brunt of the French land assault on her border towns and harbors for years, had a point. The war impoverished Holland and deprived her of the shipping trade on which she previously enjoyed a near-monopoly. Today, Germany and Western Europe have no such excuse. The post-recession era has been one long peacetime economic expansion, largely due to the American security umbrella. Nations much poorer than Germany or Canada, such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, and Hungary (in other words, the NATO member states closest to Russia) manage to hit or even radically exceed the 2 percent threshold (Poland spends the most at 3.9 percent of GDP, exceeding America’s 3.5 percent). If our allies are this unserious about their own defense, it should be expected that America will care only in proportion to its own strategic interest, rather than treating Article V of the NATO treaty, which obliges all parties to mutual defense if one ally is attacked, as ironclad.

The British justified their abandonment of the alliance and the negotiation of a separate peace amenable to its own strategic interests by the fact that Holland was deficient, or in Trumpian language, “delinquent” on its furnishment of weapons to the alliance. The Dutch retort that they were unable did not nullify the deficiency. The British decision to seek separate peace proved deft. The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, on which Britain’s diplomats had a three-year head start, granted Britain both Gibraltar and Port Mahon in the Mediterranean, a monopoly on trade with Spain’s New World colonies, and a guarantee that France and Spain would remain separate kingdoms. This despite the fact that France (an absolutist Catholic monarchy) and Britain (an emerging Protestant parliamentary democracy), by 1713, had generations of archrivalry and represented diametrically opposed worldviews. (READ MORE: Trump: The New Eisenhower on NATO)

Whether America would benefit from a similar “separate peace” with Russia, diametrically opposed to American values though it is, or any other NATO foe is debatable. I remain skeptical of such claims, especially with more easterly allies meeting their obligations. However, the principle is important to recognize regardless of the current strategic situation: for unserious allies, as for unserious romantic liaisons, the United States reserves the right to go Dutch.