President Donald Trump faces a gargantuan task as he tries to realign U.S. foreign policy with actual American interests. But this week has already brought major victories.
On Wednesday at the NATO Summit in The Hague, Netherlands, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte pledged changes to an alliance in which the Unites States has spent decades bearing a disproportionate share of the responsibility.
“For too long,” Rutte said, “one ally — the United States — carried too much of the burden of that commitment. And that changes today.”
In the presence of Trump and other NATO nations’ leaders, Rutte spoke of equalizing financial commitments to the alliance.
“To make NATO stronger,” the secretary general said, “we have a concrete plan for all allies to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense. It will go towards core defense, as well as defense- and security-related investments.”
For many years, Trump has complained about NATO’s members failing to shoulder their share of the defense burden.
Rutte, at least, acknowledged the justness of the president’s complaint.
“President Trump, Dear Donald,” the secretary general said, “you made this change possible. Your leadership on this has already produced $1 trillion in extra spending from European allies since 2016. And the decision today will produce trillions more for our common defense to make us stronger and fairer by equalizing spending between America and America’s allies.”
Readers may view Butte’s remarks in the YouTube video below. The relevant segment began at the 10:58 mark.
Is NATO still useful?
Since its inception in 1949, NATO has functioned as a defensive alliance of Western democratic nations. In the wake of World War II, it began as a bulwark against the aggressive, expansionist, totalitarian Communist Soviet Union.
Much has changed, of course, in the last 80 years. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Thus, the democratic West no longer faces the kind of threat that called NATO into existence.
Meanwhile, Europe’s NATO members have reclined under the shade of protection provided by American taxpayers and armed forces. Those same European governments have built welfare states for their own people while contributing relatively little to the alliance.
Moreover, as Vice President J.D. Vance told European leaders to their faces in February, many of those governments have abandoned democratic principles in favor of censorship and other forms of authoritarianism.
This drift toward authoritarianism has coincided with NATO’s hypocritical commitment to defending “democracy” in Ukraine. Indeed, Rutte pledged additional support to that nation, which continues to hemorrhage blood and treasure more than three years after Russia’s invasion.
In short, by promising fairness, the secretary general acknowledged Trump’s point. That might qualify as the minimum required to keep the alliance together in the long run.
One wonders, however, in light of Europe’s authoritarian drift, how much longer the president will see value in that alliance.
After all, as he proved on Saturday when he ordered the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, as he proved again late Monday when he announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, and as he proved yet again early Tuesday when he chided both parties for allegedly violating the ceasefire, Trump will act abroad in the interests of the United States — exactly as we elected him to do.
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