Trump’s New Deal: Pay Up

The former (and quite possibly future) US president, Donald Trump, takes a transactional approach to alliances. His speeches do not feature misty rhetoric about the D-Day landings, the Berlin Wall, or the joyous reunification of Europe in 1989-91. He has long believed that other countries are cynical cheapskates who take advantage of American generosity and gullibility. He drives his point home with words and phrases that are deliberately designed to shock. He said in February that he would “encourage” the Russians “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies that were “delinquent” in their military spending.

Parse the remarks a bit more closely and a different approach emerges. Threats not to defend allies that fail to pay imply that those that do pay will be defended. He underlined that stance in an interview in March, telling the British polemicist-politician Nigel Farage that the US would “100 percent” remain in NATO under his presidency—as long as the Europeans “play fair.”

But what does that mean and how will it work? The latest smoke signal from the Trump compound is that NATO members will be expected to spend not 2% of GDP, as currently expected, but 3%. For the frontline states that most need defending, the new target presents little difficulty. Poland meets it already. Estonia is close. The other Nordic and Baltic countries are moving sharply towards it. They do this not to buy insurance from some future American administration. They do it because they perceive (belatedly in some cases) an existential threat.

Elsewhere in Europe, threat perceptions and political will are different. Debt-ridden France and dithering Germany are struggling to meet the existing 2% target. Raising their spending by more than half will be a huge stretch. Other countries (Spain, Canada, Italy for example) are even further behind.

The problem is that US military support (troops, equipment, logistics, enablers, intelligence-sharing) is not allocated just country-by-country but also funneled through the NATO decision-making bureaucracy. That is based in Belgium (a defense spending slacker). Protecting the 3% countries involves facilities, supply lines and military infrastructure in the laggards. Providing a defense guarantee to Poland is meaningless if Russia can destroy the German ports and railheads needed to get the US forces there.

Over time, this could lead to a two-tier NATO, with an inner core that is tightly bound to the US by bilateral defense ties, and an outer category of countries that have looser security relationships. In some senses, that already exists. The US relationship with Hungary is quite different from that with Estonia, for example. A simple way of underlining this would be to say that top jobs in NATO, such as the secretary-general or chair of the military committee, could only go to countries that meet the benchmark. That would rule out the current favorite to lead the alliance, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (whose country spent just 1.7% of GDP on defense last year). It would favor another contender for the top job, Prime Minister Kaja Kallas of Estonia (2.73%)

A bigger problem is that defense is not just about military budgets. Help for Ukraine, for example, should arguably be included: it is better to fight Russia in distant locations than nearby ones. Trump’s utterances on Ukraine are Delphic. Quality of spending counts too. France’s nuclear weapons, for example, make an outsize contribution to NATO’s deterrent. Contributions to US interests in other areas — notably in containing China — are crucial. Economic heavyweights like Italy, Germany, and France matter on that front.

None of this will be easy. But none of it is impossible either.

Edward Lucas is a Non-resident Senior Fellow and Senior Adviser at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.