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President Donald Trump was the dominant figure at the latest NATO summit. But the president was easy to manipulate. Basking in the praise of his European supplicants, Trump declared that “this was a tremendous summit, and I enjoyed it very much.” Indeed, he added, NATO’s “not a rip-off, and we’re here to help them protect their country.”
All it required was a little European flattery. The Washington Post reported that “Trump stayed overnight in a royal palace, received fawning messages from NATO’s secretary general and watched as one leader after another took the floor in a closed-door meeting to praise him for his leadership and his recent attack on Iran.” Secretary General Mark Rutte didn’t just deliver Trump “fawning messages”—he even called him “daddy.”
Yet NATO had trouble winning approval for its new requirement that members spend five percent of GDP on security. Trump proposed the idea even before he was inaugurated, proclaiming that the Europeans “can all afford it, but they should be at five percent, not two percent.” However, only Poland comes close, having broken the four percent level. Estonia runs second, at 3.43 percent. The U.S. is third, at 3.38 percent.
Most members have little desire to spend more on the military, let alone that much more. Reported the New York Times: “When President Trump demanded months ago that NATO allies spend 5 percent of their national income on defense, leaders across Europe said it couldn’t be done.” But desperate to preserve their U.S. defense subsidy, they went out of their way to satisfy the president. The answer, explained the Times, was “a bit of creative accounting.” Times columnist Edward Lucas was blunter, terming the agreement “an easy fudge for those wanting to cook their books.” Rutte came up with the ploy of devoting 3.5 percent to the military, supplemented by a 1.5 percent non-military, “military spending” fig leaf, counting “defense and security-related investment, including in infrastructure and resilience.” In short, the deal was not the “monumental win” claimed by Trump.
Even so, Spain objected. Despite possessing one of Europe’s largest economies, Madrid today makes the least effort of any member. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez complained that “for Spain, as for other NATO countries, reaching 5 per cent defense spending will be impossible unless it comes at the cost of increasing taxes on the middle class, cutting public services and social benefits for their citizens.” Why should Madrid contribute to the defense of the rest of Europe, especially with American standing by?
The solution? More verbal legerdemain! Explained Sanchez, “it is not our intention to limit the spending ambitions of other allies or to obstruct the outcome of the upcoming summit.” Just give Madrid an exemption and everyone else, including the U.S., can spend as much as they want. Which is what the alliance seemed to do, despite later denials, by changing the words “we commit” and “all allies commit” to “the allies commit.”
Slovakia then announced it would follow the same path as Spain. Prime Minister Robert Fico declared that his country “has other priorities in the coming years than armament.” Belgium also suggested that it might not hit five percent. They were not the only states reluctant to agree. According to POLITICO, “Canada, France and Italy would also struggle to hike security spending by billions of dollars.” Rome officially asked for a longer deadline and is considering classifying a proposed $16 billion bridge across the Strait of Messina as a “defense” project.
Indeed, many observers doubt that most countries will meet their pledges. With the deadline a decade away, many governments may delay acting, assessing the results of the mid-term congressional elections and eventual selection of Trump’s successor, and then revisit the policy. Nor is there any enforcement mechanism, which left the president to threaten Madrid with higher U.S. tariffs.
However, it isn’t Washington’s job to tell other nations how much to spend on their militaries. The fundamental NATO problem is not that the Europeans are cheap-riding on the U.S. Rather, it is that the U.S. is defending them eight decades after the end of World War II. Why is Washington still treating a continent with 13 times Russia’s GDP and four times its population as a helpless dependent?
Yet when Secretary of State Marco Rubio attended his first foreign ministers meeting a couple months ago, he denied any plan to leave the alliance. “The United States is as active in NATO as it has ever been,” Rubio declared. Trump took the same stance last week, insisting that “I stand with it [Article 5]. That’s why I’m here. If I didn’t stand with it, I wouldn’t be here.”
Worse, regarding the five percent goal, Rubio allowed “that includes the United States.” America already is breaking the trillion-dollar barrier in military outlays, most of which go to defend other countries rather than the U.S. Rubio would have Washington increase its subsidy for its rich allies. Nor is he alone. “America’s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are set to approve a historic defense-spending increase,” wrote Dustin Walker of the American Enterprise Institute. “Is the U.S. prepared to keep pace?” Walker explained: “If NATO allies need to spend 3.5% of GDP to deter and defend against Russia, the U.S. needs to spend at least that much to deal with the even greater threat posed by China. For comparison, the U.S. spent roughly 6% during the Reagan years to defeat the Soviet Union.”
However, America’s real GDP has increased more than three times since Ronald Reagan was elected, which means the U.S. already is spending almost twice as much in real terms as then. That’s despite Washington’s impending fiscal crisis, with interest payments above $1 trillion annually, federal deficits running $2 trillion annually, and the national debt nearing the 1946 record of 106 percent of GDP—at a time without a hot war, financial crisis, or health pandemic. If there is one country on earth that shouldn’t devote more to the military, it is America.
First, the U.S. is uniquely secure, probably the least threatened great power ever. East and west are vast moats. North and south are weak neighbors. The only existential threat comes from intercontinental missiles and nuclear weapons, the use of which is deterred by America’s superior arsenal. Much more expensive is Washington’s determination to run the world under the guise of protecting the “rules-based order”—rules written by the U.S. and its allies for their advantage and routinely broken by them whenever convenient.
Second, throughout the Cold War the U.S. was defending most of the world, not itself, from the USSR. Moscow could do little directly against America, which therefore focused on protecting war-ravaged states in Asia and Europe from a malign Moscow, backed early on by the new communist regime in China. Even after Washington’s allies had recovered economically, they largely left their defense to the U.S. Had the U.S. instead pulled back as the Asians and Europeans did more, Americans would have spent much less on the military.
Trump understands this point. When asked about the U.S. meeting the five percent standard, he responded, “We’ve been supporting NATO so long… So, I don’t think we should, but I think that the NATO countries should, absolutely.” The Europeans have been cheap-riding for decades. They have to spend a lot to catch up.
Third, ugly though the Chinese regime is, it is not the Soviet Union. Nor is the complicated mix of competition/confrontation between Washington and Beijing anything like the NATO/Warsaw Pact stare down in Europe and confrontations elsewhere. Attempting to project sufficient power thousands of miles away to contain the People’s Republic of China within its own borders is hideously expensive, and directed at guaranteeing Washington’s global primacy, not America’s national survival. Focusing more on the latter would require a much smaller military.
Fourth, just as the PRC can deter U.S. action, the PRC’s neighbors can deter Chinese action. Although progress remains slow at times, the Asian states already are cooperating more to enhance individual and mutual deterrence. Reported the Rand Corporation: “Key U.S. allies, security partners, and diplomatic interlocutors in the Indo-Pacific have been establishing or deepening their defense ties by branching out, engaging with each other on high-level security consultations, selling or transferring defense articles, engaging in joint defense industrial development, carrying out bilateral training and exercises, and signing defense-related agreements. Today, these nations—Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea—are also cooperating with such non-U.S.-treaty countries as India, Indonesia, and Vietnam, which have aligned themselves more closely with the United States as China has grown both more powerful and more assertive in recent years.” Washington should encourage this process even as it reduces its military presence.
Fifth, the U.S. should set priorities, focusing on both what only it can do and what it must do: Confront global hegemonic threats and protect America, its people, territory, liberties, and prosperity, from those and lesser dangers. Europeans doing more for themselves should mean the U.S. doing less for them. Moreover, Washington should minimize its role in the Middle East, rather than launch new wars at Israel’s behest. The region’s importance has dramatically faded in recent years. U.S. interests in forestalling terrorism, preserving access to energy, and preventing hostile domination can be achieved without occupying the region. Then the U.S. could devote more to containing China, if desired, while still reducing overall military outlays.
Today much if not most of America’s military budget goes to offense rather than defense of America. That should change, with the U.S. spending less. In contrast, the Europeans should spend more—if they believe themselves to be threatened. Spain faces few overseas security threats. If Madrid does not want to help its neighbors, that is an issue for the Europeans, not America. Instead, the administration should drop the presumption that the U.S. owes Europe a defense while leaving the Europeans free to make their own spending decisions. American forces shouldn’t be withdrawn precipitously, but they should be withdrawn—from Europe and elsewhere.
Washington would still deploy a significant nuclear deterrent, a superior blue-water navy, and a capable air force. The Army should be concentrated in the reserves, with serious forces available in an emergency, but otherwise left at rest, except for training. Americans have been more than pulling their defense weight for over eight decades. It is time to return to the foreign policy of a republic rather than an empire.