President Donald Trump‘s administration left European leaders reeling last week, prompting unattributed rumors that he was “considering” withdrawing the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the militaristic pact that has bound the U.S. and Europe since 1949.
Confirmed talks in Saudi Arabia between Russian and U.S. officials, alongside comments made by Vice President JD Vance to the Munich Security Conference, have stirred worries that the U.S. relationship with Europe may weaken as Washington pursues a more nationalist agenda.
Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment.
The Saudi talks, which U.S. officials have confirmed Europe will not be a part of, have worried Euro leaders. Before being elected to a second term as president in 2024, Trump indicated a potentially frostier future with European powers, driven by a disparity across the alliance on military spending.
During his first term, Trump attacked allied NATO leaders for failing to meet their defense spending targets; allies agreed in 2014 to a guideline spending figure of 2 percent of their GDPs on militaries by 2024.
Now, with Russian talks on the way, unverified and sourceless rumors spread on social media that the president was planning to withdraw from NATO.
Political commentator Dominic Michael Tripi posted Sunday on X, formerly Twitter: “BREAKING: President Donald Trump is reportedly considering withdrawing the US from NATO.” Neither this nor similar posts by other commentators included references to verified information that supported this newest claim.
What Has Trump Said About NATO?
At a rally in South Carolina in February 2024, Trump said he told NATO summit discussions that the U.S. would not protect NATO allies if they did not increase their defense spending.
“I said: ‘Everybody’s gotta pay.’ They said: ‘Well if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said: ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer,” Trump said.
NATO’s charter states if a NATO nation is invaded then all other members, including the U.S., are obligated to treat the invasion as if it were an attack on themselves.
Trump went on to suggest that he would “encourage” Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” if it attacked another NATO ally that hadn’t met spending commitments.
In 2019, The New York Times reported that Trump had privately said “several times” the previous year that he wanted to pull the U.S. out of the alliance.
In his first post-election interview after the 2024 race, Trump also told journalist Kristen Welker that he would “absolutely” consider leaving NATO if they weren’t “paying the bills” or treating the U.S. “fairly.”
But any current claims that he was considering withdrawal from NATO might be based on educated speculation but not direct evidence, amid recent talks with Russia, Ukraine, and European leaders.
What Has Driven Recent Speculation?
One of the commentators who spread the claim, Dominic Michael Tripi, cited news stories in follow-up social media posts when asked for evidence to support the allegation.
Although plenty of commentary has followed the Trump administration’s talks in Europe, the substance of recent NATO withdrawal claims seems based on analysis and prediction. In an interview with British broadcaster LBC on February 13, Trump’s former security adviser, John Bolton, said the president was using the bid to end the Ukraine war as a path toward NATO withdrawal.
“I think it’s highly probable that Trump will try and withdraw the United States from NATO, and he’s already setting preconditions that will justify it,” Bolton said.
“You know, first he said back in his initial term, well, all these Europeans are not spending two percent of GDP on defense, which they pledged to do at the Cardiff NATO summit in 2014.
“Now he’s saying you need to spend five percent of GDP on defense. I personally think that’s what the US should spend. I think in a challenging world, we’re not spending enough, and we’re at about three now,” Bolton said.
“But I suspect there’s almost no country in Europe, maybe the Baltics and Poland and a few others that will go to five percent. So in a year when it doesn’t happen, Trump will be able to say, ‘NATO is just as worthless as I always said it was. I’m getting out.’”
Bolton has been a vocal critic of Trump since he was dismissed as the president’s national security adviser in 2019. Trump has referred to Bolton as a “moron” who was used to intimidate foreign leaders who thought the U.S. would acquiesce on certain issues.
Others have based their prediction on the actions of Trump’s cabinet. On February 12, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Ukraine Defense Contact Group that the U.S.’ “strategic realities” prevent it from “being primarily focused on the security of Europe.”
This comment was picked up by former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, who told Politico that Hegeseth’s comments, combined with rumors that Trump could withdraw 20,000 U.S. troops from NATO, signaled “the twilight of NATO.”
As noted by Politico, Landsbergis’s comments were made as Hegseth told an audience in Warsaw: “Now is the time to invest because you can’t make an assumption that America’s presence will last forever.”
Elsewhere, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has evoked the possibility of withdrawal, warning that Russia would invade European nations if the U.S. pulled out of the alliance.
Zelensky said that Putin was waiting for a “weakening of NATO by, for instance, policy of the United States of America.”
The Ukrainian leader claimed Ukraine has information that has led it to believe there could be an invasion of some NATO countries that had been “Soviet republics.” Zelensky added that if the U.S. left NATO “the risk that Russia will occupy Europe, is 100 percent.”
Analysts have previously told Newsweek that they either could not predict or did not believe he would pull the U.S. from NATO.
Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Newsweek in November 2024: “I do not expect Trump to withdraw from NATO. I doubt he wants to be remembered as the U.S. president who dismantled the Western Alliance.
“Russian aggression against Ukraine and the continuing threat Moscow poses to European stability, even if Trump is able to help end the war in Ukraine, provides ample reason to keep U.S. forces in Europe.
“Trump will keep pressing allies to spend more on defense, but I don’t expect him to cut and run.”
Stephen M. Walt, a Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, said: “To be perfectly blunt, no one knows. He has no deep commitment to NATO and he has long argued that Europe should do much more to defend itself.
“But he may prefer to stay in NATO in order to have influence over its policies, while constantly complaining about what the Europeans are doing and using the threat of withdrawal to coerce them on both economic and security matters.”
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