NATO’s future is now on the table

When President Trump told The Daily Telegraph NATO is a “paper tiger” and withdrawing the United States is “beyond reconsideration,” the foreign policy establishment erupted. It shouldn’t have. Trump was saying aloud what many inside the Pentagon have known for years. The surprise isn’t the criticism. The surprise is how long Washington waited to have this conversation.

After the Cold War, the alliance expanded its reach, add members and quietly lose the clarity of purpose that once made it formidable. Nobody in authority asked the tough questions about what NATO was building toward. We are now living with the consequences.

The Strait of Hormuz stripped away the pretense. When Washington called on NATO allies to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the European countries said flatly: “This is not our war, we did not start it.”  These are the countries that the U.S. is treaty-bound to defend without question. When the U.S. asked for something in return, the answer was silence. The alliance’s membership rolls deserve the hard look.

NATO has grown from 12 founding nations to 32 members, and the expansion has not always served military logic. Many post-Cold War additions brought political symbolism rather than combat power — small nations with minimal deployable forces and armies that exist largely on paper, joining not because they could contribute to a fight, but because membership carried a security guarantee and a European identity. An alliance that cannot distinguish between members who can fight and members who provide little beyond a flag on a briefing slide has a credibility problem that goes deeper than spending percentages.

The numbers confirm what rhetoric obscures. The United States accounts for roughly 62% of NATO’s total combined defense spending, many times more than the second-largest contributor. In 2014, only three NATO members met the 2 % of GDP commitment; all 32 members are projected to reach it soon, with a new 5% pledge by 2035. Progress under duress, not conviction, and commitments made under pressure have a way of softening once the pressure eases.

Ukraine makes the same point. The United States committed $66.9 billion in direct military assistance to Kyiv since 2022 — the backbone of Ukraine’s survival — for a conflict on European soil in the wealthiest continent in history. That is not generosity. It is a habit neither side has had the will to break. Trump’s frustration is earned.

Fixing NATO means confronting three problems. Membership standards must reflect military reality, not political aspiration. Nations that cannot field credible forces or meet spending commitments should not carry the same standing as those who do. Burden-sharing needs teeth — enforceable standards with real consequences, not aspirational targets members can ignore until Washington loses its temper. And the consensus rule that lets any single government veto collective action must give way to coalition structures that allow willing, capable nations to move without waiting for unanimity from thirty-two capitals with just as many different threat assessments.

NATO was built to serve American strategic interests, but has become a vehicle for European security on American credit. Consequently, the Trump administration must evaluate which postwar commitments still serve the country that underwrites them and which have quietly become obligations without reciprocity.

The underlying problem will not be resolved on its own. Either Europe’s NATO members decide the alliance’s survival depends on their willingness to act like partners rather than clients — including honest conversations about which members can actually fight — or the United States concludes that maintaining the fiction of shared burden costs more than changing the terms altogether.

During the Cold War, the mission and commitment of NATO were clear and mutual. That credibility has been eroding for 35 years. Trump didn’t create this problem. The questions about membership, mission, reciprocity and whether these institutions still serve the nation that built them are now on the table.