John R. Bolton was ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush and national security adviser under President Donald Trump.
Another white-knuckle NATO summit is set to convene in Ankara, Turkey, on Tuesday. External threats to the alliance’s global interests, in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific, are real and pressing. The major threat to NATO’s strength and durability, however, comes from within.
In significant respects, today’s crisis stems from the still-unsettled dispute about NATO’s future after the Warsaw Pact dissolved and the U.S.S.R. imploded 35 years ago. The alliancehad seemingly achieved what its first secretary general, Lord “Pug” Ismay, had asserted, only half in jest, as the alliance’s goals: Keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down. Today, Russia is at war with Ukraine, a would-be NATO member; President Donald Trump seems headed for the door; and Germany is neither up nor down geopolitically. Except for those close enough to feel the heat of Russia’s revanchism, the alliance is muddled.
The underlying historical troubles and current disputes surfaced late last month as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte went to the White House. There, heavy on flattery, he unveiled a chart detailing the “Trump trillion,” the increase in allied defense spending since the president first took office. We will hear that phrase repeatedly in Ankara, and there’s a ring to it.
After the Cold War ended, the United States and its partners slashed their defense spending dramatically. Washington’s outlays rebounded after 9/11 but never reached levels proportionate to the threats the country faced. Europeans did worse, buying the illusion that the West’s Cold War victory represented “the end of history.” Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine shocked them but not enough. It took a second invasion and Trump’s continued haranguing for Europe finally to take defense spending seriously.
The president still remains unsympathetic. His negative views are rooted in the perception that the alliance is a scam. America defends Europe, Europe free rides and cheats and we get nothing from it. In fact, we get plenty: strategic territorial depth, critical economic and political linkages, a functioning military organization that needn’t be re-created with every new threat and unprecedented interoperability of weapons, intelligence and communications systems. NATO and our other alliances aren’t acts of charity. They’re based on cold-blooded calculations of American self-interest that also, justifiably, bring ample collateral benefits to our allies.
Skepticism of such endeavors, however, is nothing new. In 1982, U.S. Marines deployed to Lebanon in an international peacekeeping force alongside French, Italian and British troops. Iran-backed predecessors of Hezbollah bombed the Beirut Marine barracks, killing 241 U.S. service members. Ronald Reagan’s foreign-policy polling took a hit. “The people just don’t know why we’re there,” the president wrote in his diary on Sept. 30. “There is a deeply buried isolationist sentiment in our land.”
The same sentiment animates corners of the left and right alike. Ignoring palpable threats and hoping diplomacy not backed by force will suffice is just as isolationist. One measure of the political failure embodied in the recent U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding is that Obama- and Biden-era negotiators are praising it.
In their own way, many Europeans have also become isolationist. They missed the Russian threat, remain unresolved on China’s and have had trouble seeing Iran’s. Most European capitals opposed the U.S.-Israeli campaign against the Islamic republic and refused to help.
Those who think strategically, however, surely see that the entire West has suffered from Trump’s lack of foresight before the war, lack of resolve while fighting it and poor negotiation while concluding it. These Europeans should realize that he could swing and miss the same three pitches in a conflict fought in coalition with them. Their interests and perils must be considered more broadly, not confined to their home peninsula.
How, then, should Rutte and NATO supporters handle the Ankara summit? Assuming Trump pitches up, he will doubtless be warm toward his host, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the alliance’s most authoritarian figure. No one can predict Trump’s mood or attention span, as demonstrated by Thursday night’s Truth Social blast against the alliance. His fellow leaders’ top priority should be to “do no harm,” particularly regarding Ukraine and Iran. If nothing happens in Ankara, that would be a victory for the alliance.
The goal is that at least some semblance of NATO survives until Jan. 20, 2029. Whatever its leaders’ feelings about Trump, this is no occasion to score points for their personal or national agendas. If in doubt about what to say at any point, simply smile and exclaim: “Thanks for the Trump trillion.”
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