President Donald Trump has sent a clear message to Europe in his first six weeks back in office that the era during which the continent could assume an American security blanket would cover it is over. The corollary is that Europe must bolster its own security and do more to look after itself.
Trump says the United States has been getting ripped off for years and that Europe has been taking advantage of the superpower’s generosity, particularly when it comes to NATO spending. But as he seeks to wean Europe off dependence on the American military, he risks losing influence over allies on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
“If Europe is less dependent on the United States or builds up its forces, we have to face up to the fact that we may come to a time when Europe will be much more selective about what it needs from the United States,” RAND senior researcher King Mallory told the Washington Examiner. “We rely upon basing in Europe to project power. It’s conceivable in the medium- to long-term that as European powers rearm, they will say, ‘Well, do we really need the United States Ramstein Air Force Base and Morón Air Force Base in Spain?’”
Mallory added: “My overarching message out of this whole thing is that the implications of what’s happened in the last couple of weeks are much more far-reaching than would appear on the surface.”
Nicholas Creel, associate professor at Georgia College & State University, told the Washington Examiner a realignment would allow European countries to act more in their own interests and care less for American interests.
“It also now allows [European countries] to unilaterally make decisions of what to do with their military, with foreign adversaries,” he said.
“[The Americans were] the ones really kind of driving things and deciding things when we were acting as their protector in that way. So it opens up more points of friction and potential conflict that otherwise might not have existed.”
Delivering the message
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent the message loud and clear during his first foreign trip last month when he “directly and unambiguously” told European allies that “stark strategic realities prevent the [U.S.] from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.”
Trump sent a much louder message with the same theme when he argued publicly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office and kicked him out of the White House after the Ukrainian leader had traveled to Washington to sign a long-term economic agreement.
The U.S. also suspended military aid to Ukraine and intelligence sharing over the dispute, though officials indicate the president is willing to reverse that decision if Ukraine demonstrates its commitment to trying to end the war that’s ravaged the country and cost hundreds of billions of dollars, including in aid from the U.S.
Mallory said the Oval Office blowup was the “apotheosis of a process that has been festering for over a decade, and now under the Trump administration, it has been brought to a point where decisions have to be made, and it has widespread ramifications, not just for the war in Ukraine, not just for our relationship with Europe, but also throughout the rest of the world.”
One Trump administration official recently described the president’s approach to diplomacy as “very transactional.”
European leaders rallied around Zelensky in the aftermath of the fight. United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron quickly sought to lead this new coalition without the U.S.
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Their attempts to rally support for Ukraine without depending entirely on the U.S. are, in effect, what Hegseth demanded from them. He said, “Our relationship will prioritize empowering Europe to own responsibility for its own security.”
U.K. Secretary of State for Defense John Healey responded directly during a meeting last week at the Pentagon, in which he assured his U.S. counterpart that he and members of other European governments were acting on this advice or under this pressure.
“You challenged us to step up on Ukraine, on defense spending, on European security,” Healey said. “I say to you that we have, we are, and we will further.”
Europe makes moves to increase defense spending
Several European countries announced increases in defense spending, while the European Commission unveiled a broad plan for the continent. Analysts primarily assess defense spending as a percentage of the country’s overall GDP, and NATO has a 2% spending minimum.
In the aftermath of the Trump-Zelensky dispute, Starmer announced a “coalition of the willing,” which will do its best to fill the void left by the U.S. realignment, though it’s unclear which European countries will get involved.
The U.K. announced a bump in defense spending from 2.3% to 2.5% by 2027, with a goal of hitting 3% by the end of the next government’s term, 2034, at the latest. It’s the largest increase for the U.K. since the end of the Cold War, “and we will go further,” Healey told Hegseth.
Macron urged European leaders to increase their defense spending to 3%-3.5%, though France’s spending this past year amounted to only 2.1% of GDP. Last week, however, Macron announced that he “decided to open the strategic debate” on whether France’s European allies should be included under the protection of its nuclear arsenal.
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“Yes, whatever happens, we need to equip ourselves more, we need to raise our defense posture, and we need to do this for peace itself, to act as a deterrent,” he said. “In this respect, we remain committed to NATO and our partnership with the United States of America, but we need to do more to strengthen our independence in terms of defense and security.”
Germany, Belgium, Poland, and Denmark have also recently said they would increase defense spending.
The 27 members of the European Commission held an emergency meeting in Brussels last Thursday to discuss proposals unveiled collectively as “ReArm Europe.”
One element of this is activating a “national escape clause” from spending restrictions in the Stability and Growth Pace. This move would allow countries to increase their defense spending without triggering a mechanism against countries exceeding a deficit limit. This could free up more than an estimated $700 billion. A second proposal would call for borrowing $160 billion for new defense equipment.
“This is a watershed moment for Europe,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said. “And it is also a watershed moment for Ukraine, as part of our European family.”
Zelensky, who attended the meeting, said, “We are very thankful that we are not alone.”
NATO’s pay-to-play
Trump has had a rocky relationship with the NATO alliance since his first term. He toyed with the idea of leaving the coalition and pressed members to increase defense spending.
Some NATO countries did so, and more have increased their defense spending in light of the war in Ukraine.
One of NATO’s core principles is Article 5, which calls for each country to treat an attack on any one of them as an attack on all of them.
Trump has equivocated but sounded aggressive when considering whether he would support a country under Article 5 if it is not reaching the defense spending minimum. “I think it’s common sense. If they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them,” Trump said last week.
Of the alliance’s 32 members, 23 hit the 2% defense spending minimum last year. NATO established that goal in 2006 and reaffirmed its commitment in 2016.
“I got into a lot of heat when I said that. You said, ‘Oh, he’s violating NATO.’ And you know, the biggest problem I have with NATO … I know the guys very well,” the president added. “They’re friends of mine, but if the United States was in trouble, and we called them, we said, ‘We got a problem. France, we got a problem.’ Couple of others I won’t mention. Do you think they’re going to come and protect us? They’re supposed to. I’m not so sure.”
Trump has said he wants the alliance to increase minimum spending to 5% of GDP. No country hit that last year, and only five countries did better than 3%: Poland (4.12%), Estonia (3.43%), the U.S. (3.38%), Latvia (3.15%), and Greece (3.08%).
The president’s nominee for NATO ambassador, Matthew Whitaker, said during his Senate confirmation hearing last week that the U.S. commitment to the alliance would be “ironclad,” seemingly differing from the president’s rhetoric.
To date, the only time the NATO alliance has invoked Article 5 was in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. Several members of the alliance, including the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Canada, deployed troops to Afghanistan to support the U.S.’s hunt for the al Qaeda perpetrators of the attack.
Russia’s war in Ukraine didn’t only uncover weaknesses in Europe’s security and defense industrial base, according to Catherine Sendak, who served as the principal director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy during the first Trump administration.
“One of the major lessons coming out of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine in 2022 is showing that the West is not prepared,” Sendak, now at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told the Washington Examiner. “We do not have what we need to confront real conflict. We do not have the munitions. We do not have the stockpiles, we do not have the capabilities in place to do that. And that’s not just a lesson for the Europeans. It’s a lesson for the U.S. as well.”
“History has shown [things] play out in ways that we may not anticipate,” she added.
Outside of Europe
The president has repeatedly expressed a belief that the U.S.’s foreign spending over several years has not paid off, prompting the administration to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development, goaded by the Department of Government Efficiency’s review of the State Department.
But that goes beyond just Europe and includes the U.S.’s long-term efforts all over the world.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday he was canceling 83% of programs at USAID, totaling “tens of billions of dollars.”
“A lot of the benefits we received by taking on security arrangements for the world and pushing democracy in other countries weren’t direct,” Creel added. “We never saw a direct repayment going straight to us in any way. But we did see it in this kind of more distilled way, where a more stable developing world is one where businesses can invest, and they can take advantage of cheaper labor, which can then allow us to offshore factory jobs that allow us to get cheaper goods.”
“I think [there is] no realistic debate that we’re torching soft power under this current administration,” he added.
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A decrease in cooperation between the U.S. and Europe could also open the door for anti-Western powers, such as China with its Belt and Road Initiative, to fill the void America leaves behind.
“If our cohesion with our allies declines, then our ability to set the rules of the international system decreases, and that means attempts to engage in mercantilist trade policy, which we’ve already seen by China, or coercive or predatory trade behavior, which we’ve seen by China increases,” Mallory said.