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Trump’s NATO threat is strategic illiteracy

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by Dan Perry, opinion contributor - 04/08/26 9:30 AM ET

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by Dan Perry, opinion contributor - 04/08/26 9:30 AM ET

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AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

Walking away from the World Health Organization after the greatest pandemic in memory and ripping up global trade were foolish. Undermining the Department of Education and the Federal Emergency Management Authority is reckless. Blocking USAID was cruel. But when it comes to crimes against America, President Trump’s threats to bolt NATO are the winner.

Trump’s threats have NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte bolting to Washington today Wednesday in emergency mode. He hopes to calm Trump’s rage over Europeans’ refusal to join the war against Iran. Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister who once agreed to call Trump “daddy,” is considered an expert handler of the combustible president.

It is madness, all of it. At the very moment the U.S. is projecting power abroad, Trump is openly questioning the alliance that makes such projection possible in the widest sense, far wider than Iran — a colossal strategic illiteracy.

NATO is not the charity that Trump claims it is, but an excellent bargain for the U.S. For a tiny fraction of its defense budget, America gets something no rival can replicate: a network of bases, partners, intelligence-sharing, and interoperability across Europe — the most economically and militarily capable collection of democracies on Earth.

The U.S. gets forward positioning, logistical depth, and allies who multiply its power. That is why NATO has endured for more than seven decades. It is one of the most successful strategic investments in modern history — a system designed to prevent great-power war, deter adversaries, and extend U.S. influence without direct conquest.

This is the infrastructure of global leadership — the echo of a time when we wanted it and also thought it would do good for humanity, not just for America’s ability to grab assets.

The oft-repeated claim that the U.S. “pays for NATO” is simply false. Washington contributes roughly 16 percent of NATO’s common budget — amounting to less than 0.1 percent of America’s defense spending. What it does spend on its military more broadly reflects its status as a global superpower — and, indeed, a country that even before World War II sought to dominate the Americas.

When Trump talks about NATO’s “cost,” he relies on a simple sleight of hand. He points to the roughly $1.2 trillion that NATO countries spend on their militaries, as if that money is being paid into NATO itself — as if the U.S., which indeed accounts for about two-thirds of the figure, is footing some vast alliance bill. It isn’t.

NATO’s actual shared budget — the only money countries collectively contribute to the alliance— is about $4 billion a year. The vastly larger figure is what each country spends on its own military, under its own command, for its own purposes. The U.S. would spend the overwhelming majority of its $800 billion defense budget whether or not NATO existed, simply because it is a global superpower. NATO just helps organize and augment that.

Meanwhile, U.S. defense firms depend heavily on European procurement and joint production related to NATO modernization, anchoring the U.S. defense industry. European arms imports surged in 2020–24, such that more than half of Europe’s arms imports in that period came from the U.S., and U.S. global export share rose to 43 percent.

In the broader sense, transatlantic trade reached $2 trillion in 2024, making it the largest and most integrated economic relationship in the world, supporting American jobs and markets. Europe, whose nations comprise the bulk of NATO, is in general the largest source of inward flows into the American economy, with transatlantic investment exceeding $5 trillion and supporting more than 16 million jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.

The current confrontation with Iran does not expose NATO’s weakness, as Trump suggests, but rather his basic misunderstanding of what NATO is. The alliance is not a coalition for wars of choice but a defensive pact whose members are bound to defend each other. In this conflict, the U.S. was not attacked but rather initiated military action in Iran, and he did so without so much as consulting European allies. There is therefore no obligation for the allies to join in such a campaign.

Trump now tweets that the alliance is a “paper tiger,” and he has told an interviewer that “Putin knows it.” But if Putin thinks that of NATO, it is probably because Trump calls it “obsolete” and, for a few confounding