NATO is out of power – America must reorganize the alliance, not abandon it

When President Trump told the Daily Telegraph that NATO was a “paper tiger” and withdrawing the United States “cannot be reconsidered,” the foreign policy establishment erupted. It shouldn’t be like that. Trump has been saying out loud what many inside the Pentagon have known for years. A surprise is not a criticism. What is surprising is how long Washington has waited to have this conversation.

I know this union inside out. During the Cold War, I served as an infantry officer for the United States Army in West Germany, making emergency plans to stave off a Soviet artillery attack long enough to reinforce supplies that might not arrive. Later, as a Pentagon strategist, I spent years alongside NATO colleagues watching the alliance expand its reach, add members and quietly lose the clarity of purpose that once made it difficult. No one in authority asked the hard questions about what we had built for ourselves. Now we live with the consequences.

The Strait of Hormuz removed the pretense. When Washington asked NATO allies to help reopen the area where about 20 percent of the world’s oil flows, Germany’s defense minister bluntly said, “This is not our war, we didn’t start it.” Spain denied us airspace and bases. Most of Europe stood by while Brent crude topped $107 a barrel and American households paid four dollars at the tap. These are the countries we are bound to protect without a doubt. When we asked for something in return, the answer was silence.

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But NATO was founded in 1949 to protect Europe against Soviet aggression – not to add power to the Persian Gulf. The allies knew nothing about Iran’s operations before the first strikes went in. Washington took action, then sought support. Asking an alliance to follow you into a war of choice has never been defined, and you put a cowardly sign of doubt, not a test of loyalty. Listening is a test. Those are separate things and lumping them together weakens a legitimate complaint.

Alliance membership rolls should look the same. NATO has grown from the twelve nations it was founded to thirty-two members, and the expansion has not always served a military mindset. Many post-Cold War additions have brought political symbols instead of fighting power – small nations with great powers and forces that are mostly available on paper, joining not because they can contribute to the fight, but because membership carries a guarantee of security and European identity. A coalition that can’t distinguish between members who can fight and members who provide little beyond a flag on the information slide has a credibility problem that goes deeper than spending percentages.

The numbers confirm what is hidden. The United States accounts for about 62 percent of NATO’s total defense spending – many times more than the second largest donor. In 2014, only three members met the 2 percent of GDP commitment; all thirty-two are expected to reach it soon, with a new pledge of 5 percent by 2035. Progress under pressure, not condemnation – and a commitment made under pressure has a way of softening when the pressure subsides. Ukraine makes a similar point: the United States is making 66.9 billion dollars in military aid to Kyiv from 2022 – the backbone of Ukraine’s survival – because of the conflict on European soil, the richest continent in history. That is not generosity. It is a habit that the side has always wanted to break. Trump’s frustration is earned.

Withdrawal is still the wrong answer. It requires the involvement of congress – no president cancels a deal with a press release. More important is what we lose. The departure gives Vladimir Putin the biggest windfall of his career, shows Beijing that America’s commitments have expiration dates, and undermines 75 years of fundamental rights, intelligence networks, and military cooperation built at great expense. NATO is a flawed institution. It is also infrastructure. Experienced commanders don’t blow up infrastructure because it needs maintenance. They fix it.

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Fixing NATO means dealing with all three problems without moving. Membership standards should reflect military reality, not political ambitions – countries that cannot contribute credible forces or meet spending commitments should not have the same standing as those that do. Burden sharing needs teeth: binding standards with real results, not wishful thinking that members can ignore until Washington loses its grip. And the consensus rule that allows any act of a single government to veto should give way to coalition structures that allow willing, capable countries to go without waiting for the consensus of thirty-two articles with many different threat assessments.

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There is a big question here. NATO was created to serve American strategic interests – as was the United Nations and much of the post-World War II architecture that Washington built and has continued ever since. Do these institutions still do that? If NATO has become the vehicle of European security at the credit of the United States, and the UN is a forum where the enemies force American action in addition to advancing American interests, then the Hormuz crisis is not a strange thing. Diagnosis. A strong administration should be conducting that review across the board – not just to threaten to leave NATO in shambles, but to examine which post-war commitments still serve the country that underwrites them and which have become commitments quietly without reconciliation.

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The underlying problem cannot be solved on its own. Either European NATO members decide the alliance’s survival depends on their willingness to act as partners instead of clients — including honest discussions about which members can actually fight — or the United States concludes that maintaining the myth of shared responsibility is more expensive than changing policies altogether. The Iran crisis did not create that choice. It makes it impossible to ignore. The question going forward is whether the major allies take this as a real turning point or a selling point until American pressure eases. History says they will stop. Statistics say they can’t.

I worked in this cooperative where the work was clear and the commitment was consistent. The Cold War ended without the Fulda Gap shooting because deterrence was real and everyone on our side believed we were right. That trust has been broken for 35 years. Trump did not create this problem. Washington built on it, one difficult question at a time. Those questions – about membership, purpose, reconciliation, and whether these institutions still serve the nation that created them – are on the table. The only thing worse than asking too late is leaving before we get the answers right.

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