Trump gets NATO to bend to his will

America has long asked its European allies to spend more on their own self-defense. So the astonishing news out of this week’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit is the near unanimity: NATO allies have agreed to devote 5% of their economies to military spending, up from the current 2% floor.

President Trump called the NATO plan “a big one for Europe and for actually Western civilization,” and for once he may not be overselling. The allies will aim to spend 3.5% of GDP on hard military power by 2035. For the remaining 1.5 percentage points, countries can count peripheral but still useful investment such as hardening cyber defenses. 

Mark Rutte is catching flak for praising Mr. Trump, but the NATO Secretary General was correct to give the President credit. “Would you ever think,” Mr. Rutte asked reporters, “that this would be the result of this summit if he would not have been re-elected President?”

It’s true. While President, Joe Biden took a tone that was not just more polite, but almost self depreciating of America. Biden constantly talked about America’s “allies” asking “how long” America was “back,” as Biden put it.

But this of course illustrates the differing views on America from the political right and the political left. The political right sees the US as having propped up Western Europe, which is ungrateful and disrespectful to America anyway.

The political left sees the US as a problem; even though we have given by far the most military aid to Ukraine, it is America who is the problem for daring to ask allies to pull their weight, or for threatening to stop aid if things don’t change.

While many European commentators have tried to claim that Europe can get along just fine without the US, this is obviously not the case. Militarily, economically and politically, NATO and the West absolutely needs the US.

For this reason, to keep the US as the leader of the organization, NATO has made concessions. How much they follow through is another question, but the fact is, Trump gave voice to Americans who are tired of being disrespected while carrying Europe, and forced Europe to get its act together.

We are under no illusions that the liberal Western European countries are putting on a performance. They don’t like Trump; for his calling out of their free riding, and his fight against cultural leftism.

Most likely a decade or two down the road, many of these leaders who play nice to Trump to his face, will write books or memoirs about how they had to put on an act to keep the President onside. That is why, even in the other leaders are personally friendly, it would behoove Mr Trump to watch their country’s actions, not their leaders’ personal niceties.

Either way, Trump has called many Europeans’ bluff, and it turns out they need the US. They still have a long way to go, but for once we are seeing progress in NATO not just bending to America’s will, but starting to pull their weight.