American Thinker

by Monty L. Donohew

    By the time President Trump returned to the White House, NATO had become a textbook example of alliance rot: rich European allies treating U.S. blood and treasure like an unlimited ATM while Russia rearmed on Europe’s doorstep and China plotted global dominance. The old transatlantic bargain, America’s security umbrella in exchange for European lip service, was dead on arrival in the 21st century.

    Trump’s first term called the bluff; his second term is cashing it in. No more blank checks. No more pretending that 2 percent of GDP was some heroic sacrifice. The 2025 Hague Summit’s pledge of 5 percent of GDP on defense and security-related spending by 2035 (3.5 percent core defense plus 1.5 percent for resilience and infrastructure) was just the opening salvo.

    For decades, Europe treated NATO as a luxury the Americans would always underwrite. Europeans spent years dithering over budgets and virtue-signaling about “strategic autonomy” while the United States foots at least 60% of the cost burden in 2026. That era is over. Trump’s transactional hammer has forced real movement, and the February 2026 command realignment proves it. Europeans now run all three Joint Force Commands (U.K. in Norfolk, Italy in Naples, Germany/Poland rotating in Brunssum). Washington kept Supreme Allied Commander Europe and seized direct control of the Air, Land, and Maritime component commands, the actual tools that win wars. Europe gets the photo ops and headquarters prestige; America keeps the firepower and the veto. That is smart power.

    Trump does deals and shows little interest in nostalgia. Look at the Abraham Accords: bilateral normalization between Israel and Arab states that bypassed decades of failed “land for peace” dogma and the Palestinian veto. No grand treaty, no Article 5 suicide pact — just hard-headed mutual interest, economic incentives, security cooperation, and rapid results. Trade between Israel and the UAE alone now exceeds $3 billion annually, with defense-tech corridors and integrated air-defense networks emerging in the background. The Accords ignored the diplomats’ sacred cows and delivered peace through strength and prosperity. NATO needs the exact same creative disruption.

    Why should every NATO member duplicate expensive capabilities when the United States already provides the irreplaceable strategic enablers: nuclear umbrella, strategic airlift, intelligence, logistics  Let allies “subscribe” to American power through direct cash contributions, expanded host-nation support, or bilateral trust funds managed with U.S. oversight. In return, they get calibrated relief from rigid national spending mandates and can focus budgets on niche strengths — for example, Baltic anti-access missiles, German heavy armor, and Polish artillery.

    Critics will likely scream about “tribute” and “sovereignty.” Trump has heard worse. Side deals on trade relief, energy exports, and tech transfers, Abraham-style, can make the arithmetic work quietly and profitably for everyone.

    Better yet, direct financial transfers are transparent and reduce the perverse incentives for corruption that plague indirect arms deals and murky procurement schemes. Many of the weapons and technologies involved are American-made anyway, so payments flow back into the U.S. economy through jobs and investment. As the United States tightens supply chains and roots out corrupt billing practices at home, bringing more NATO-related transactions under DOJ and DOD scrutiny turns them into domestic matters, subject to American oversight, audits, and enforcement. This improves overall alliance readiness while protecting taxpayers on both sides of the Atlantic from waste and fraud. Of course, Congress and the Pentagon must take that oversight responsibility seriously. Half-measures won’t cut it.

    This approach sharpens deterrence and builds mutual trust, cooperation, and benefit. Europe gains flexibility and political cover at home; America gains real burden relief, economic recirculation, and greater leverage without endlessly subsidizing redundant European bureaucracies.

    Expand rotations of NATO officers and enlisted into U.S. combat units. Create targeted visa and service pathways for allied volunteers, and, where skills are critical (cyber, pilots, special operations), even select conscripts, under strict U.S. command and loyalty standards. Call it a NATO Auxiliary Force. This builds ironclad interoperability, spreads training costs, and gives European governments political cover: they contribute manpower without visibly inflating their own standing armies back home. No more “hawkish” optics for domestic voters while the alliance actually gets stronger on the battlefield.

    Grow NATO’s common-funded budgets for munitions, drones, air defense, cyber, space, and A.I. Allies pay their share without jacking up politically toxic “defense” line items on national budgets. Reframe the 1.5 percent “related” bucket as jobs, infrastructure, and economic resilience, exactly the language European leaders need to sell it to skeptical publics and nervous neighbors. Add reciprocity clauses: When America faces threats outside Europe (Hormuz, Indo-Pacific), NATO nations deliver troops, logistics, and intelligence or lose premium access to U.S. capabilities and shared economic benefit. Article 5 is and must be mutual, not a one-way street.

    Hurdles exist: bureaucratic inertia in Brussels, sovereignty sensitivities, varying threat perceptions across 32 capitals. Traditionalists will grouse about “shared values” and warn that transactionalism erodes the alliance. They said the same about the Abraham Accords: impossible, destabilizing, a betrayal of the old order. Instead, the Accords produced normalization, economic booms, and a stronger anti-Iran bloc. Trump’s record is clear: When conventional wisdom fails, creative deal-making succeeds.

    Picture a slimmer American footprint that punches far harder. Europe finally staffs and funds its own continental defense. Interoperability deepens through shared personnel and pooled procurement. The alliance deters Russia today and China tomorrow. American taxpayers see reciprocity instead of subsidy. European publics see “strategic autonomy” and jobs instead of militarism. Adversaries see a lean, mean force with real and demonstrated capability, and not a paper tiger propped up by Washington.

    Instead of dismantling or ignoring NATO, a reorientation and reformation rescue it from irrelevance. Trump’s disruptive reform turned Middle East paralysis into the Abraham Accords. Applied to the North Atlantic, it will produce a New NATO: ruthless on deterrence, realistic on burden-sharing, and politically and economically sustainable on both sides of the ocean. The old alliance limped along on nostalgia and American generosity. The new one will run on realism, results, and raw American leverage.

    Image via Picryl.