President Donald Trump is sending a “dangerous” message to America’s allies, as is his MAGA team, according to a recent editorial by a conservative publication.
“President Trump has been gearing up for this week’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit by complaining that the alliance is a ripoff,” opined The Wall Street Journal editorial board on Sunday. “But the real question at the meeting is about the United States, as the Administration yanks troops from Europe without owning up to the risks to U.S. security.”
At a time when America’s military allies have expressed increasing alarm over the prospect that the United States is withdrawing its foreign policy commitments, the Journal disagreed with Trump’s claim that America spends more money on NATO than any other country without receiving any benefit from it in return.
“This ignores that peace in Europe is a core U.S. interest and not charity work, as those who survived the 20th century can attest,” the Journal wrote. “The President deserves credit for demanding that Europeans spend on defense, and this is a heavy political lift in complacent democracies that will take persuasion and compromise. Yet NATO allies increased spending 20% last year alone, and an influx of cash is now chasing too little manufacturing capacity after decades of neglect.”
The Journal added that the United States needs NATO to protect its interests in Europe, especially from an increasingly aggressive Russia, and that it runs counter to domestic interests for America not to do so. Given that Trump seems determined to pull America out of Europe, though, the next best thing is giving European countries adequate time to build up their own military and defense establishments.
“The irony is that U.S. leadership in NATO is essential to make sure that money is spent to produce combat power,” the Journal wrote. “Some allies will be tempted to squander money on their own national vanity fighter jet projects or bet on unproven technology to avoid a real military expansion.”
He added, “In other words, European rearmament will take time, and nobody even pretends that European troops are today fully prepared to replace American brigades. Yet Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently trumpeted that the Pentagon had reduced the U.S. footprint ‘to pre-2022 levels with the redeployment of a brigade combat team last year and further reduction of 5,000 forces earlier this year.’”
Even then, though, the Journal expressed concern that Europe alone will not be able to protect itself, and questioned Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bragging that levels in Europe are down to pre-2022 levels. Russia invaded Ukraine that year.
“Pulling troops is a message of American ambivalence that Mr. Putin will hear, which brings us to Ukraine,” the Journal wrote of Trump’s NATO policy. “The President may repeat his refrain that Ukraine isn’t America’s problem, but that would miss a strategic opportunity. Ukraine is hurting Mr. Putin with precision strikes on targets in Russia, and the President likes to ride a winner.”
Overall, the Journal continued that “Mr. Putin’s appetite for risk-taking is all the more reason not to pull conventional forces from the continent. Cuts to conventional assets mean Mr. Trump will have to rely more on U.S. nuclear deterrence. The President professes to hate nuclear weapons, and Mr. Putin may figure Mr. Trump would never use them, say, to defend the Baltic states.”
It concluded, “The NATO meeting will be mostly photos of European diplomats smiling nervously and hoping it ends without a blowup. But for a man who prides himself on understanding that hard power governs the world, the President is getting bad advice that will produce weaker deterrence in Europe.”