NATO
The Bottom Line
U.S.-European military cooperation is fundamental to the peace and security of the United States and provides valuable partnerships that fortify our defense, security, and crisis-management capabilities around the world.
It is highly beneficial for the United States to be a leading member of the transatlantic alliance. Make no mistake, we need NATO now as much as we did in 1949, when the group was formed as a defense against Soviet aggression.
The coolest thing about NATO is the Principle of Collective Defense, which is the idea that an attack against one of its members is considered as an attack against all (this principle is commonly known as Article 5). Article 5 has been invoked only once, in response to the 9/11 U.S. terrorist attacks. On one of the worst days in our nation’s history, our faithful allies didn’t blink and had our back 1000%.
We must insist that other member countries live up to their end of the bargain and be held accountable for their part of the funding to advance global security.
While it’s true there were many years that NATO members fell short of their financial obligations, those days are over. All 32 members of the alliance met or exceeded the two percent spending commitment in 2025 – the first time this has happened since the spending target was created in 2014.
There is an argument to be made that this percentage should be increased. However, the “5 percent of GDP by 2035” that was agreed to at the 2025 NATO Summit – a figure that sets a goal of spending 3.5 percent of GDP on core defense requirements to meet NATO capability goals, with the remainder allocated to other defense and security-related spending – is too much for the United States to consistently be spending on defense.
(see 1787’s Plan of Action for defense spending here)
NATO must be protected at all costs, and we must make sure the alliance survives the Trump/Vance administration.
On the 2016 campaign trail, candidate Trump made several references to NATO’s waning effectiveness, even calling it “obsolete” at one point (he backtracked on this characterization in 2019, saying NATO has “a great purpose, especially with the fact that NATO is becoming much more flexible, in terms of what it looks at,” whatever that means).
On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump continued to say he would not defend NATO members if they didn’t meet their defense spending targets. This obviously alarmed many of our European allies all over again, whose anxiety has also been heightened by President Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth as his second administration’s Defense Secretary.
In Hegseth’s book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, he wrote: “Why should America, the European ‘emergency contact number’ for the past century, listen to self-righteous and impotent nations asking us to honor outdated and one-sided defense arrangements they no longer live up to? Maybe if NATO countries actually ponied up for their own defense – but they don’t. They just yell about the rules while gutting their militaries and yelling at America for help.”
Donald Trump’s bombastic campaign rhetoric and Pete Hegseth’s insulting words highlight their belief that, for decades, our European allies have taken advantage of our military protection without paying their fair share financially.
While it’s true there were many years that NATO members fell short of their financial obligations, those days are over. All 32 members of the alliance met or exceeded the two percent spending commitment in 2025 – the first time this has happened since the spending target was created in 2014.
There is an argument to be made that this percentage should be increased. However, the “5 percent of GDP by 2035” that was agreed to at the 2025 NATO Summit – a figure that sets a goal of spending 3.5 percent of GDP on core defense requirements to meet NATO capability goals, with the remainder allocated to other defense and security-related spending – is too much for the United States to consistently be spending on defense.